Still work to do as Canada into semis at women’s hockey worlds

Canada heads into the final four at the women’s world hockey championship still a work in progress.

Defender Renata Fast scored twice in Canada’s 5-1 win over Sweden in a heavy Thursday quarter-final of collisions and grinding checks along the boards.

Canada meets back-to-back bronze medallist Czechia, and defending champion United States faces Finland in Saturday’s semifinals. The medal games are Sunday.

The Swedes challenged Canada on Thursday until they were rattled by a third-period call that went against them.

Sweden’s subsequent crosschecking penalty and defensive breakdowns allowing two goals in the span of less than a minute salted the win away for Canada.

“I honestly like winning a game like that. You’re going to the semifinals, and there’s still things to work on,” Canadian head coach Troy Ryan said. “We’re confident, but we’re not necessarily thinking the job’s done.

“We got to tighten up our game if we’re going to be successful, and not just in a final. We’ve got to tighten it up to be successful in the semis.”

Laura Stacey, Natalie Spooner and Jaime Bourbonnais also scored for Canada, which has goal production from a dozen different players in the tournament. Defender Jocelyne Larocque had two assists.

Canada required a Sarah Nurse overtime goal to beat Sweden 3-2 in last year’s quarterfinal in Brampton, Ont., but got the job done more emphatically in Utica, N.Y.

Emerance Maschmeyer got the start in Canada’s net for the quarterfinal as she did in Brampton, with Kristen Campbell backing her up. Maschmeyer made 17 saves.

But the Canadians gave up their first power-play goal of the tournament and were shorthanded five times. They were also scoreless on four powerplay chances to be 1-for-14 in the tournament.

“We lost the special teams battle that I don’t like to lose, but we definitely lost them tonight,” Ryan said. “Too many penalties to kill.

“Because of the penalties the flow of the game was just blah. It was painful to be honest. I thought we did a relatively good job sticking with it and not getting too frustrated with it.

“My message to the group after the game [was] ‘you accomplished what you came here to do.’ No one got injured; we’re in a good spot. Maschmeyer had a good game, came up big in times when we needed her.”

Sweden’s Emma Soderberg, who had 51 saves against Canada last year, stopped 39 in front of an announced 1,512 at the Adirondack Bank Center.