Canada beaten by Swiss

SWITZERLAND 3 CANADA 2

COPENHAGEN — Canada will not play for a gold medal at the world hockey championship for the first time in four years.

Bo Horvat and Colton Parayko were Canada’s scorers in a 3-2 loss to Switzerland on Saturday in the semifinal of the men’s international tournament. Struggling special teams were Canada’s undoing.

The Swiss took just one penalty, in the third period, then killed it off successfully.

“It would have been nice to get a power play earlier in the game,” said Ryan NugentHopkins, a mainstay on Canada’s first unit throughout the tournament. “We were working for them. You can’t say whether there were calls that were missed or not.”

Canada’s power-play unit was potent on Thursday, scoring three times in its 5-4 quarterfinal win over Russia.

“Our power play was going the other day and tonight when we had the chance, we put a lot on net, we had a lot of chances,” Nugent-Hopkins added. “That usually turns the game. They capitalized on the power play and we didn’t get those opportunities.”

Switzerland went 2 for 3 on the power play against a topranked Canadian team that had successfully killed 24-of-26 penalties headed into the semifinal. Darcy Kuemper made 14 saves for the Canadians, who will face the United States today in the bronze-medal game.

Gaetan Haas’s third-period power-play goal was the eventual winner for the Swiss, while Tristan Scherwey and Gregory Hofmann also scored. Leonardo Genoni stopped 43 shots in net for Switzerland.

“They were solid defensively,” said Canada’s captain Connor McDavid. “They did a good job of kind of packing it in and making it hard for us to come to the middle.”