80 minutes of epic hockey comes to an unfortunate end for Canada
Going into the 2017 World Junior Hockey Championships held in Toronto and Montreal, Team Canada was heavily favoured to win gold. With top prospects like Dylan Strome, Mathew Barzal, and Thomas Chabot leading the team, there was very little doubt that Canada would have trouble coming away with the gold medal on home ice.
This was until they faced the U.S.A. in the last game of the preliminary round—the only team that managed to remain undefeated in the tournament.
A 3-1 loss to the U.S. team in the preliminary round caused a lot of doubt about whether Canada would be able to overtake them should they end up competing in the medal round.
Canada beat Czech Republic in the quarterfinals, then Sweden in the semifinals to face the rival U.S. team again for the gold medal game on Jan. 5.
In one of the best games ever played in the history of this tournament, the U.S.A. did not take the lead until the end of the game. Canada held a lead of 4-2 in the game, which the Americans were able to equalize to force the game into overtime.
Canada outshot the USA 17-7 in a wild 20-minute overtime which many will argue should have kept going.
According to International Ice Hockey Federation rules, however, if a gold medal game is not decided at the end of regulation, then a 20-minute sudden death period will be played. If no goal is scored in overtime then a shootout round will be the decider.
In the end, just one goal was scored by U.S.A.’s Troy Terry, whose shootout heroics the day before earned them a spot in the gold medal game over Russia in the first place.
The silver lining is that Canada’s Chabot won MVP of the tournament. Chabot scored the first goal of the game and added an assist later on. He played an impressive 43:53 minutes in the game and saved Canada from an overtime defeat by pulling a puck off of the goal line. Chabot, an Ottawa Senators prospect, ended the tournament with four goals and six assists, surpassing all defencemen.
The last time Canada won gold in the World Junior Hockey Championship was in 2015, which was also the last time the tournament was held in Canada.
Photo by Kylie Armishaw/The Ontarion.