Canada topped their group at the World Cup of Hockey! An extremely inconvenient opponent defeated.
Rodion Vlasov May 20, 2024, 00:45 Moscow time
Switzerland has long created a lot of problems for the reigning world champions, but today the Canadians scored three times on the power play.
The Swiss team has lately become Canada’s most uncomfortable rival on the international stage. It is the Swiss who have become the last team that did not allow the Canadians to reach the World Cup final, beating them in the semifinals of the 2018 championship. A year later, Patrick Fischer’s team was seconds away from eliminating Maple in the quarterfinals, losing 59:59 and losing in overtime. The last three matches of the World Cup group stage were also won by the Swiss.
In principle, the “white cross team” gave a worthy rejection to the Canadian stars even at the Vancouver Olympics, when the generation of Hischier and Fiala had not yet reached adult hockey. Now Fischer’s team has almost all stars in service, except Timo Meier, who failed the season. The Swiss are converting 40% of their power play attempts (although most of those goals came in the game against Austria), and Roman Josi, as almost always in the World Cup, seems unstoppable. The Canadians came to the match with a defeat: defender Bowen Byram decided in the last match to test the strength of Esse Puljujarvi’s shell and was disqualified from the match.
From the first turn, the Canadians got involved, as if proving to many Russian experts that in Prague the NHL guests are not only interested in local beer. Good activity in the rival zone led Christian Marty to inadvertently hit Pierre-Luc Dubois in the face with his stick in a single combat. Most of the Canadians did not do well in the tournament, even taking into account that they managed to play with all the outsiders in the group – only two goals. However, very quickly, thanks to a rebound from Dean Kukan, the puck bounced to Dylan Cozens, who crossed to an empty corner and scored with the first Canadian shot.
However, Switzerland soon remembered that they ran most of the tournament to perfection. Jamie Oleksiak used his elbow carelessly and Kevin Fiala beautifully beat the Canadian defenders, who were slightly pressed towards their goal. The Swiss were more dangerous the rest of the time, although the Canadians almost took the lead: some players had already started celebrating the goal, but Josi managed to save the goal at the last moment and cleared the puck. At the beginning of the second half, the Swiss took the lead: Romain Loeffel shot from the blue into an almost open corner, Binnington was strongly blocked by his team and other players, so he did not see the moment of the shot and did not have time to move . And it would seem that the Swiss had an excellent opportunity to play for fun, but Fiala himself, in a normal moment at center ice, decided to take out Cozens himself on his knees. The forward from Los Angeles was not injured, although in the worst case scenario he could have been: several Canadians flew to beat Kevin at once, and then Fiala found out that he had received 5 + 20.
Due to brutal Canadian retaliation, it was mostly reduced to three minutes, but it proved to be very hectic. At first, Cozens scored very quickly, showing all the sharpness of his shot. Then, Calvin Thurkauf took advantage of the fact that Connor Bedard fell asleep at center ice: a foul by the first pick in the draft led to a penalty shootout that the Swiss did not convert. After a couple more lapses on defense, it looked like the Canadians were completely relaxed on their relentless power play, but in the end they put together a cool combination with Nick Paul scoring the empty net. Our old “friend” from Riga, Andrew Mangiapane, scored an assist hat trick.
After this, the Canadians were able to score the fourth, but Jack McBain was greedy: the Arizona forward was able to take out his teammate and describe the situation as “2 against 0”, but instead he did not choose the best throw to the pads. Leonardo Genoni, the most experienced. In the end, Power could have scored the fourth goal, but he missed.
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But the third half, in the context of a rather bright and eventful 40 minutes, was a bit boring. For a long time, the Swiss team could not reach Binnington’s goal; This was only helped by another power play, which Fischer’s team did not take advantage of. The losing team’s next period of activity came in the final minute and a half, but Canada held on in 5-on-6 play.
André Tourigny’s team won all six group stage matches, although they narrowly missed out in the match against Austria. At the World Cup, for the first time since 2015, Canada won a match against Switzerland in regulation time; Then the World Cup was held in Prague. To secure first place in the group, the Canadians must not lose to the Czech Republic, but the Boston team formed by Zaha and Pastrnak is already running to their aid.
