It took until the late stages of Saturday’s gold medal game, but Canada finally faced adversity at the World Junior Hockey Championships. After blowing a two-goal lead to the Finns, Kent Johnson came to the rescue. At 3:20 of overtime, Johnson grabbed the rebound off his own shot to give Canada a 3-2 win and the gold medal. Going into the third, Canada took a 2-0 lead, but the Finns began to chip away at the tied game in front of 13,327 fans at Rogers Place. After being credited with just 13 shots in the first two periods, the Finns fired 17 shots on net in the third and got goals from Aleksi Heimosalmi and Joakim Kemell to send the game into overtime. The Canadians had plenty of chances to bury the Finns, but went 0-for-6 on the power play in regulation. Canada also got goals from Joshua Roy and William Dufour. With two assists in the game, Mason McTavish finished as the tournament’s top scorer with eight goals and nine assists. He was named MVP of the tournament. But McTavish’s finest moment may not have been a goal or an assist, but clearing what looked to be a tournament-winning effort from Topi Niemela off the goal line just seconds before Johnson scored the decisive goal. From the group stage to the qualifying round, Canada’s narrowest margin of victory was three. But the gold-medal game against Finland marked a new challenge for the Canadians, as the opposition went into a defensive shell from the get-go. The Finns blocked the middle of the ice and disrupted the flow of the game. When Canada established control of the puck in the Finnish end, four of the five Finnish skaters collapsed in front of their own goal, acting as a block for goaltender Juha Jatkola. From above it looked like the Finns were playing with only one striker and four defenders. But Canada broke the Finnish shutout at 11:18 of the first. McTavish got in behind the Finland goal, his shot was stopped by Yatkola, but the rebound fell to Joshua Roy, who made no mistake. At 12:05, Finland’s Kalle Vaisanen finally registered his team’s first shot on goal. Canada didn’t allow the Finns a chance to slow them down in the second. Just 41 seconds into the period, a Dufour wrist shot beat Jatkola. Canadian forward Kent Johnson had a chance to put his team up three near the halfway point of the period, but Jatkola denied him a chance to break free. Perhaps the Finns’ lack of performance — just 13 shots — in the first two periods lulled Canada to sleep. They came out with more aggressive determination in the final period and cut the Canadians’ lead in half at 4:09. Heimosalmi’s point shot went through traffic and over the shoulder of Canadian goaltender Dylan Garrard. At 10:46, the Finns scored the tying goal, with Kemmel one-timeing home a perfect pass from Topi Niemela. Canada outshot the Finns 33-31. Where does this Canadian performance rank in world junior history? Prior to the final, the closest the Canadians came to making the Canadians sweat in this tournament was Switzerland, who went 5-3 on the Canadians in the quarterfinals, a game the Canadians would go on to win 6-3. Canada won the four Group A matches by a combined score of 27-7. But in 2005, Canada’s most potent youth team — featuring Sidney Crosby, Patrice Bergeron, Ryan Getzlaf, Brent Seabrook and Corey Perry — went 4-0-0 in the group stage, scoring 32 goals and being shut out. only five. The Canadians beat the Czechs 3-1 in the semi-final and triumphed 6-1 over Russia in the final. While the world juniors have been plagued by poor attendance, the gold medal game featured the biggest and most animated crowd of the event. For the only time in the tournament, seating was opened for fans in the upper bowl at Rogers Place. This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 19, 2022.
