Blues forwards Schenn, Schwartz and Tarasenko remember facing off in thrilling world junior championship final

MONTREAL Brayden Schenn, Jaden Schwartz and Vladimir Tarasenko have something in common besides being the big three in the St. Louis Blues’ attack.

All three played in the 2011 world junior hockey championship in Buffalo, where Tarasenko’s Russian team stunned Schenn and Schwartz’s Canadian side by erasing a 3-0 lead with five unanswered third-period goals for a 5-3 victory.

The world junior tournament is headed back to Buffalo, starting Dec. 26, and that will stir memories of the 2011 event where Canada looked to be coasting to a gold medal only to have it snatched away.

“We got beat by Vladdy in the final,” Schenn recalled Tuesday. “We were up 3-0 going into the third and, in junior hockey, anything can happen. “Obviously it was nice to get into the gold medal game.” Schenn had won silver at the 2010 world juniors, where Blues defenceman Alex Pietrangelo was a teammate, only to fall short a second year in a row. “Two silvers in the tournament and, looking back, it would have been nice to win one, but now you try to win other things along the way and try not to worry about that too much,” he said.

Canada opened the 2011 tournament with a 6-3 win over Russia but finished second in their round robin group after a shootout loss to Sweden.

They beat Switzerland 4-1 in the quarter-finals and the United States 4-1 in the semis, while Russia needed overtime to top the Finns 4-3 and a shootout to beat Sweden 4-3.

Then Canada took a three-goal lead in the final on tallies from Schenn, Ryan Ellis and Carter Ashton. All looked set for a big win in front of a full house of mainly Canadian fans who had crossed the border from Ontario.