Snow, Team Canada find gold in Japan
Clarke’s Beach star part of national team to win world U18 women’s championship
Newfoundlander Shailynn Snow is a world champion.
Canada, with the 17-year-old Snow in the lineup, defeated the United States 3-2 in overtime early Sunday morning to capture the IIHF under-18 women’s hockey championship in Obihiro, Japan.
It was a second straight overtime win for the Canadians, who had edged Russia 4-3 in extra time in the semifinal game earlier on the weekend.
The result gave Canada its first gold at the event since 2014; the Americans had captured four straight titles before this year.
Maddi Wheeler scored the game-winner 1:34 into OT. It was produced on the power-play, one of four tallies in the game that came with a team enjoying a player advantage.
Canadian goalie Raygan Kirk was named MVP of the tourney, which saw Canada win four games and lose one. Four of those five games were decided by one goal, including a preliminary-round match that saw the Americans down Canada 3-2.
Snow, a forward from Clarke’s Beach, is in her last year at Ridley College, an Ontario prep school, and in her first with the national team program.
She competed for Newfoundland and Labrador as a 13-yearold at the 2015 Canada Winter Games and for Team Atlantic at the 2017 national U18 championship, where her performance helped earn her an invitation to the national U18 selection camp last year.
In her home province, she played for two seasons with the male-dominated Tri-pen Osprey bantam AAA team, including 2015-16, when she was the team’s second-leading scorer behind future Quebec Major Junior Hockey League first-round draft pick Dawson Mercer. The year previous, as a 13-year-old and in her first of bantam play, she suited up for a Tri-pen team that included four players who would go onto the QMJHL — Mercer, Kyle Petten, Liam Leonard and Zach Bennett.
At 15, Snow began the first of her three high school years in Ontario.
The captain of the Ridley Tigers women’s hockey team, she is headed for the American college ranks later this year on an NCAA Division 1 athletic scholarship to St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.