HEARTBREAKER
WORLD JUNIORS Canada bounced from tournament after late fluke goal, missed chances
One Vancouver Canucks prospect trumped another Vancouver Canucks prospect on Wednesday at Rogers Arena.
Finnish defenceman Toni Utunen, the Canucks’ 2018 fifth-round draft pick, beat 2017 Canucks’ third-rounder Michael DiPietro in the Canadian net at 5:17 of overtime to give the Finns a 2-1 victory in their 2019 World Junior Hockey quarter-final showdown. Finland had come down the ice after a glorious Canadian chance was foiled when Noah Dobson’s stick shattered on an attempted one-timer.
The Finns tied the elimination game 1-1 with 46.4 seconds remaining in regulation time when Eeli Tolvanen’s centring attempt from the side of the net hit Aleksi Heponiemi’s skate and then rolled up DiPietro’s stick, over top of his blocker, and into the cage.
The Finns now face surprising Switzerland in the semifinals on Friday at Rogers Arena. The Swiss shocked highly favoured Sweden 2-0 in earlier quarter-final action on Wednesday.
Canada will now deal with questions for days.
The defending world champions and 17-time gold medal winners are finished for this tournament. They won’t medal for the first time since 2016, when they dropped a 6-5 decision to the Finns in the quarter-finals in Helsinki.
This marks the first time in 14 world junior tournaments hosted on Canadian soil that Canada won’t earn a medal.
They won gold in 2006 when the tourney was split between Rogers Arena, Kamloops and Kelowna.
“I’m sad, angry. It’s not good,” said DiPietro, who finished with 32 saves. “Sometimes you’re going to get the bounces and sometimes you’re not. For the game to end up like this, it’s disappointing. For our group, it’s a tough pill to swallow.”
DiPietro was Canada’s best player throughout the tournament, despite the pressure of playing in front of the many fans from the NHL club that drafted him. There were multiple “Di-Pi-Etro” chants Wednesday from the announced crowd of 17,047.
“I felt comfortable. I felt pretty good with the way I played, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t good enough. At the end of the day, we lost,” he said.
Coach Tim Hunter added: “It’s a tough pill to swallow. You just reflect on what you could have done better as a player or a coach, and what you did well, and you move on.”
Here’s what else we think we learned Wednesday:
TIMELY GOAL FOR UTUNEN
Utunen, who is playing in the Finnish pro league with Tappara, didn’t have a goal in 26 games heading into the tournament.
“I’m just starting to realize what I just did. I didn’t really think anything right after the goal ,” he said .“It was a huge goal for our team.”
The puck seemed to deflect off Cody Glass’s stick. The Canadian forward was back deep in his team’s zone, filling in for Dobson, who had gone to the bench for a stick.
“I did see it,” he said of the room over DiPietro’s shoulder, “but I tried to shoot it a little bit lower. It doesn’t matter now.”
Utunen on the tying goal: “It was luck, which we needed. We had our chances, but we couldn’ t score. That’ s usually how it goes in.”
OVERTIME SAVE SPOILS PARTY
Canada had a glorious chance to win when Tolvanen hooked Evan Bouchard on a break away at the 1:14 mark of overtime.
Hunter elected to have team captain Maxime Comtois take the shot, but he was foiled by a pad save by UkkoPekka Luukkonen.
“He’s really good in prac- tice,” Hunter said of picking Comtois.
Comtois, the lone returnee from last year’s gold-medal team in Buffalo, said he was “confident with his move” on the penalty shot.
“It’s not the first one I’ve missed. It won’t be the last one. It hurts,” said Comtois.
Luukkonen sparkled throughout the game in the Finland net, finishing with 24 saves.
POWER PLAY FIZZLES
Canada went 0-for-3 on the power play and finished the five-game event 3-for-18 (16.7 per cent) with the man advantage.
Canada officially cancelled practices during the week. It’s easy to wonder now if the power play didn’t need to be polished up.
Hunter did change the formation with his first unit.
He kept with the 1-3-1, but moved Owen Tippett from the left wing wall to the bumper spot, Jack Studnicka from bumper to net front, and Barrett Hay ton from net front to left wing wall.
JUGGLING THE LINES
Hunter also juggled his lines against the Finns, flipping Nick Suzuki and Brett Leason. Suzuki, who had been playing centre, was moved to right wing with Hayton and Morgan Frost on an all-OHL line. Suzuki plays for the Owen Sound Attack.
Jaret Anderson-Dolan, who had been on the wing with Suzuki, moved into the middle, between Leason and Shane Bowers.
Anderson-Dolan and Leason are both WHLers.
Bowers is at Boston University. He’s one of two NCAA players on Canada, along with Mitchell, who plays at Denver.
DEFENCE SUPPLIES THE OFFENCE
Ian Mitchell opened the scoring for Canada, jumping up in the play to rifle a high shot past Luukkonen at 1:30 of the second period.
Mitchell’s goal was the second of the tournament by a Canadian defender, in addition to Dobson’s tally against Denmark.
Canada, on their way to the gold medal last year in Buffalo, got four goals from defencemen through seven games, highlighted by three from Cale Makar.
At the 2017 world juniors split between Toronto and Montreal, Canada received six goals from rearguards, highlighted by four from Thomas Chabot. They lost the goldmedal game to the Americans 5-4 in a shootout.