King on WJCH: Canada rolls into the semis
Posted December 31, 2011 11:16 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
EDMONTON, Alta. — Scott Wedgewood is hoping someone got a shot of his flip.
The soft-spoken goaltender claims not to have much of a vertical leap, but his was helped along by American forward Emerson Etem in the second period of Canada’s 3-2 win in the world junior hockey championship. Etem came racing in for a loose puck near the high circle when he slid along the ice in front of Wedgewood. The goaltender got to the puck first, fired it away and tried jumping, but was clipped by Etem before flipping in the air.
It was a moment that was noted on many social networking web sites, something Wedgewood’s hoping to continue.
“I think I need a new Facebook profile picture, so we’ll see if someone picked that one up,” he kidded after the game. “He made his play, I made mine and everything’s alright.”
It didn’t appear to be at the time, as 16,647 fans held their breath at Rexall Place when the goaltender lay on the ice and held his head. The play stopped and Etem was assessed a clipping penalty, which put Canada up by two with a 3-0 lead in the second frame.
“I think he tried to block the pass,” Wedgewood said when asked if he thought Etem intentionally tried tripping him. “He was down pretty early. I don’t know what his intentions were, but I got the play in there and came up with the power-play, so it was fine by me.”
Canada got a two-man advantage out of it, as Kyle Rau was off serving a slashing penalty at the time. The power-play sputtered and the best chance came to Rau, who was sent on a breakaway the moment the penalty expired.
He failed to score on the breakaway, but drew a penalty to Dougie Hamilton.
Canada jumped out to an early lead on a goal by Mark Stone, his seventh of the tournament on a pass from Jonathan Huberdeau. Captain Jaden Schwartz put Canada up by two goals midway through the second period on a play assisted by Stone. Brett Connolly then made it 3-0 late in the first period on a two-on-one where he shot instead of passing.
“Our mindset is to get on teams early,” Stone said. “We want to come out with quick starts. That’s when we’re playing our best is when we’re playing for the full 60 (minutes).”
There were some tense moments in the third period when Charlie Coyle broke Wedgewood’s shutout streak at 109:49. Coyle collected a loose puck in the slot and fired it over Wedgewood’s glove to give his team life.
American captain Jason Zucker then scored his second of the tournament on a quick wrap-around play where he banked the puck off Wedgewood’s left skate and in. Wedgewood checked the scrum in front of his net, taking his eye off the puck and he wasn’t able to relocate it before it was in the back of his net.
“Unfortunately, it was a mental error on my part, but we came out with the win, which was important,” he said.
Canadian head coach Don Hay called a timeout after the goal and his team stayed composed enough to retain the victory. It was one of the few times the Canadian team was challenged in the four-game round robin.
“We’re definitely going to learn from it,” Schwartz said. “At the same time, we weren’t happy they were taking it to us, but give them credit. They came at us hard, but it’s definitely a learning curve for us and just gives us a little practice, I guess. It’s good to go through adversity like that. It’s going to help us moving forward.”
Zucker raised a lot of eyebrows the night before when he declared his team would beat Canada after Friday’s loss to the Czech Republic. He backed off those statements after the loss to Canada.
“You saw what happened,” he said. “We came out and we had sparks flying all night. I thought we played great, that’s the whole purpose of it. It wasn’t a full guarantee victory. I said we’re going to come out and try to beat them. That’s it. That’s what we tried doing tonight.”
It was the third loss in a row for the Americans, who now have to suffer the embarrassment of playing in the relegation round.
Canada finished a perfect 4-0 in round robin play and had already earned the bye to the semifinal. The tournament shifts to Calgary for the remainder of the games.
“It was great playing in front of a crowd like that and we definitely used that to our advantage,” Schwartz said. “It was great playing in front of them and we’re definitely going to miss Rexall, but we’re looking forward to Calgary.”
Notes: The 50/50 draw was its largest of the tournament in games held in Edmonton. The announced pot was $146,140.
