CANADA ON TOP OF THE WORLD AGAIN
Team rallies from early 2-0 deficit to end U.S. streak of five straight championships
And snap, just like that, Canada's gold-medal drought has ended.
Marie-philip Poulin snapped a shot off the goalpost into the net at 7:32 of overtime, on a play that was being reviewed as play continued, to give Canada a 3-2 victory over Team USA in Tuesday's final of the women's world hockey championship.
The victory also snaps the U.S.'S five-straight championships domination.
The bronze medal was awarded to Finland thanks to its 3-1 victory over Switzerland.
Canada has now won 11 world titles to the U.S.'S nine.
Many will view it as a dress rehearsal for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, scheduled for Beijing in February. But for the two teams on the Winsport ice on Tuesday evening, that wasn't even a consideration.
The question everyone had was how different would the U.S. look from its round robin drubbing by Canada, a 5-1 decision. The answer was quickly answered. Night and day.
Defensive play was the focal point early on in the game. Neither team was allowed to sustain pressure in the opposition zone, the shots few and far between as were scoring opportunities. The U.S. attempted to establish a net presence and eventually it paid off.
While Canada had a slight advantage in shots midway through the first period, it was
the Americans who struck first. Alex Carpenter was allowed to plant herself in front of Ann-renee Desbiens' net and she whacked her own rebound past the Canadian goaltender at 9:55.
At 12:35, with Jocelyne Larocque sitting in the box after a kneeing infraction, Lee Stecklein tore a shot toward the Canada net and Carpenter pounced on the rebound for her second goal.
The closest Canada came to scoring in the first was a blast by Rebecca Johnston that rang off the post. The U. S. players were on their Canadian counterparts quickly, and thus we saw more giveaways by the latter than we have all tournament long.
A stern talking-to was in order between periods and obviously heeded.
Canada made good on a power
play of its own at 4:13 of the second, Brianne Jenner taking a page out of Carpenter's playbook and scoring on Nicole Hensley's doorstep. Then two minutes later, Jamie Lee Rattray deflected a hard shot by Larocque into the net for the deadlock.
The Americans ran afoul of the law three times in the second and Canada was dangerous on all three man-advantage tries, scoring on the one.
The U.S., meanwhile, got away from its game plan, the tenacious forecheck that served them so well in the first. Hensley was brilliant in the U.S. net, as 16 often difficult shots came her way.
Canada had a handful of penalties to kill off in the evenly matched third and Desbiens was sharp, holding the fort as her teammates waited for a break the
other way. But none came.
The edge in the bronze-medal game had to go to the Finns, the 2019 silver medallists. Two of the best goalies in this world tournament stood at opposite ends of the ice — Finland's Anni Keisala and Switzerland's Saskia Maurer. Keisala let just one of 19 shots get by her, while Maurer faced 32.
The Finns took a 2-0 lead, both goals coming early in each of the first and second periods with Tanja Niskanen and Ella Viitasuo drawing blood. Swiss captain Lara Stalder got her team on the scoreboard at 7:36 of the second and it was a contest once again.
Late in the second, three seconds into a Swiss penalty, Petra Nieminen — one of the most lethal forwards over the entire event — tipped in a point shot to give the Finns a two-goal margin.
The Swiss worked on their attack in the third, getting a handful of good chances, but in the end the Finns were bigger, faster and more talented.
It was Finland's 13th bronze medal, cementing its claim as the third-best nation in women's hockey. Switzerland had to be extremely pleased with the fourth-place finish, their best since 2012, when they were third.
In the fifth-place game, ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) blanked Japan 2-0 on goals by Valeria Pavlova and Viktoria Kulishova.
On a positive note for all countries, the IIHF announced that after the last round of testing “all 3,322 PCR tests conducted in the Calgary bubble have been negative and teams can travel to their home countries (Wednesday).”