Canada defeated the Slovaks 6-3 to advance to the Semi Finals at the World Hockey Championships.
Calgary Flame Martin Pospisal is not playing for Slovakia because he has left both the team and tournament after sustaining an apparent upper-body injury in the country’s final preliminary game against Sweden on Tuesday.
Jared McCann scores first for Canada at 2:45 of the first period with the assist going to St. Louis Blue dman Colton Paryako. Thats McCann’s third goal of the tournament. McCann also represented Canada at the World Championships in 2019 in Slovakia where Canada got Silver.
Pierre Luc Dubois makes it 2-0 for Canada (just 90 seconds later) at 4:15 of the first period. The assists on the goal went to Bowen Byram and John Tavares. Dubois reminds me too much of Huberdeau. Like way too much I keep getting them confused.
Hagel scored a nice goal too bad it was on the Canadian net. That puts the Slovaks within one. That was a very nice tip. I am a big fan of Hagel considering he use to be a Red Deer Rebel. Nice goal Hagel. I am hoping in a few hours you can laugh about that. The goal was given credit to Peter Cehlarik. The IIHF website even gave an assist to Slafkovsky on the goal. Cehlarik was a third round choice of the Boston Bruins in the 2013 NHL draft. He played in 40 NHL games. He now plays for Leksands in Sweden.
Shots on goal in the first period were 13-7 for Canada
Nick Paul makes it a 3-1 game with beautiful passes from Connor Bedard and Dylan Guenther at 3:48 of the first period. Bedard seems to have played more in this period and a bit of this game than he appeared to in the last 3 games.
Shots on goal in the second period were 13-9 for Canada
Dylan Guenther then makes it 4-1, the Slovaks left their goalie Samuel Hlavaj to fend for himself. I felt for the guy on that one. The goal was at 6:20 of the third period with the assists going to Nick Paul and Brandon Hagel
Brandon Tanev then scores on another rebound of a shot 20 seconds after at 6:40 of the third period to make it 5-1 Canada. The assists on that goal went to Dawson Mercer and Damon Severson..
Then Milos Kelemen scores for Slovakia at 7:08 of the third period just 28 seconds later to put the Slovaks within 3 goals. The assists on the goal went to Pavol Regenda. Keleman plays for the Tucson Roadrunners of the AHL. He has played in 24 NHL games over the last 2 seasons with Arizona. I am assuming he is going to see some play time with the new Utah franchise next season.
Slovakia got a 5 on 3 Power Play with about after a Bunting hook and for something Bedard said or did that was unsportsmanlike.
Slovaks got with 2 and made it a 5-3 game when Marek Hrivik scored on the Power Play assists on the goal went to Libor Hudacek and Simon Nemec at 16:57 of the third period.
At 2:40 and down by 2 goals the Slovaks pulled their goalie.
Nick Paul scored on the empty net to make it 6-3 having it hop over the Slovak defenders head and bounce in the net.
Shots on goal in the third period were 17-5 for Canada with the Canadians outshooting the Slovaks 43-21 in the game.
Jordan Binnington made 18 saves on the 21 shots that he faced for the win for Canada. Samuel Hlavaj made 37 saves on the 42 shots that he faced for Slovakia.
Canada’s player of the game was Dylan Guenther. Slovakia’s player of the game was Martin Fehervary who plays with the Washington Capitals.
Canada’s next game is the semi finals
