Canada needs power play to come through against Russia

HERNING, Denmark — If Canada is going to beat Russia in today’s quarterfinal matchup at the world hockey championship, it will need a better effort from its power play.

For a fourth-straight game, the power play sputtered in Tuesday’s 3-0 win over Germany to close out the round robin.

Canada has now failed to score on its last 16 man-advantage opportunities.

“We’ll get it addressed,” said coach Bill Peters. “We’ll change it again.

“We’ll work on it (Wednesday) when we get into Copenhagen. We’ve got some ice time and it’ll be an area that we definitely have to address. It’ll need to be fixed if we’re going to have the success that we want.”

With a quarterfinal berth already locked down, Tuesday’s game served as a tune-up for the playoff round as Peters continued to experiment with his line combinations and work on the team’s special teams.

Kyle Turris debuted against Germany and saw time on the second power-play unit.

At the other end, Darcy Kuemper wasn’t busy but stopped 12 shots for his first shutout of the tournament in starting back-to-back games.

“I thought, as a team, we played super responsible,” said Kuemper. “We were committed to playing defensively. That’s what we want to build on going into the medal round here, so I think we’re right where we want to be.”

Today’s other quarterfinal in Copenhagen will see Sweden take on Latvia, while Finland is set to meet Switzerland and the United States faces the Czech Republic in Herning.

Canada finished third in Group B thanks to Tuesday’s win, while Russia wound up second in Group A.

A quarterfinal victory would give Canada the opportunity to play for a medal for the fourth straight year after winning gold in 2015 and 2016 and silver in 2017.