Men’s hockey upset caps tough few days for Canada
For a nation already in despair over no curling medals and a women’s hockey loss to the United States in the gold-medal game, Canada now must live with Chay Genoway, shown, and the men’s hockey team’s semifinal loss Friday to Germany.
GANGNEUNG, South Korea — The Russians expected to play for the Olympic men’s hockey gold medal for the first time in 20 years.
Their opponent is quite the surprise: Germany will play in its first Olympic hockey final on Sunday hours before the games conclude.
Patrick Hager’s power-play goal at 12:31 of the second period wound up being the gamewinner as Germany beat twotime defending gold medalist Canada 4-3 Friday night to set up a very unexpected goldmedal game. Germany has only two bronze medals in hockey in its history — the last in 1976.
Earlier Friday, the Russians cruised 4-0 over the Czech Republic.
After beating top-seeded Sweden and Canada, the gold medal is suddenly within reach for Germany.
“Who knows? Who knows?” German goalie Danny aus den Birken said with a big smile. “If we keep fighting like this, we have nothing to lose.”
The Germans may believe in each other, but this is a country that didn’t even qualify for the Olympic men’s tournament four years ago at Sochi. The Germans finished 11th in Vancouver in 2010, and they had to qualify for this tournament.
Coached by former Sharks center Marco Sturm, the Germans scored two power-play goals against Canadian goalie Kevin Poulin, who was playing in place of the injured Ben Scrivens. This wasn’t the Canada team that won gold in 2010 and 2014 with a roster stocked with NHL stars.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” Sturm said. “Everyone, the best players should be in Olympics. All the NHL guys should be in the Olympics. That’s just what the event is for and hopefully in the future they will be back on Olympic ice.”
Matthias Plachta had a goal and an assist and Frank Mauer and Brooks Macek also scored for Germany. Gilbert Brule had a power-play goal for Canada before being ejected for a high hit on David Wolf. Mat Robinson and Derek Roy also scored for Canada.
Next up for Germany is a powerhouse Russian team that has looked every bit the favorite. Goaltender Vasily Koshechkin stopped all 31 shots he faced to put the “Olympic Athletes from Russia” into the final with a 3-0 victory over the Czech Republic earlier Friday.
Russia last reached the Olympic final in 1998 when it lost to the Czech Republic and hasn’t won gold since 1992 when it played as the unified Community of Independent States team.
Russia scored only twice on 19 shots against Czech goalie Pavel Francouz and Koshechkin did the rest.
Nikita Gusev and Vladislav Gavrikov scored goals 27 seconds apart in the second period on plays goalie Pavel Francouz had little chance of stopping.
Former NHL All-Star Ilya Kovalchuk added an emptynetter with 20.9 seconds left.
The Russians brought a roster almost entirely made up of players from SKA St. Petersburg and CSKA Moscow, the top two teams in the Kontinental Hockey League. Stephen Whyno is an Associated Press writer.