Canada Can’t Flip Script on Russia at LinesMaker

Canada Can’t Flip Script on Russia

CALGARY — It read like the per­fect script.

After being down 6–1 with a lit­tle over 11 min­utes remain­ing in the game, Dougie Hamil­ton scored. Then cap­tain Jaden Schwartz. Bren­dan Gal­lagher fol­lowed. Bran­don Gorm­ley, too.

Star­ing at a five-goal deficit, four tal­lies in a span of 4:57 had brought Canada to within one of tying the Rus­sians with a spot in the gold-medal game against Swe­den at the World Juniors on the line.

After Rus­sia scored five con­sec­u­tive goals in the third period to snatch gold from Canada a year ago in Buf­falo, the tables were teetering.

But they didn’t turn.

Russ­ian coach Valeri Bra­gin pulled starter Andrei Vasilevski and inserted Andrei Makarov into the net, who made seven clutch saves in just over five min­utes of action to slam the door on Canada’s hopes with a 6–5 victory.

“It’s tough when you come back into the room and you’re down 6–1,” Gorm­ley said. “I thought the boys did a great job of stay­ing pos­i­tive and bat­tling back. We def­i­nitely looked back on last year and that team had a three-goal lead and they came claw­ing back so that’s what we tried to do. When you give up six goals, it’s hard to come back.”

Though he wasn’t Wednesday’s starter, Mark Visentin ended up back between the pipes when Yaroslav Kosov crashed into him after Yev­geni Kuznetsov’s hat-trick goal.

Visentin, the goalie on record for Canada’s loss to Rus­sia a year ago, could feel the team in front of him begin to ride the wave of momentum.

“As we started tak­ing it, I don’t even think they entered our zone once in the third period,” he said. “It shows how good we played. That’s the type of hockey we need to play for three peri­ods if we want to win. To see us rally like that is incredible.”

But in the end, it was dis­ap­point­ment for Canada.

For Brett Con­nolly, it stung twice as bad. As a return­ing player, Con­nolly was hit hard by both Russ­ian defeats.

“Yeah, it’s … I don’t know how to explain it,” Con­nolly said. “It (stinks).”

And, in the end, it never should have got to a five-goal spread, accord­ing to start­ing goalie Scott Wedgewood.

“Any of those I feel I could’ve had … a cou­ple deflec­tions and then a 2-on-0,” Wedge­wood said. “The job as a goalie is to stop the puck. It doesn’t mat­ter what hap­pens, how it goes in, deflec­tion or not, break­away or not. Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t get my job done today.”

The loss shouldn’t fall on Canada’s starter, who could do lit­tle on three deflected goals and a 2-on-0 oppor­tu­nity fea­tur­ing the explo­sive Nail Yakupov and Yev­geni Kuznetsov.

“We weren’t happy obvi­ously when it was 6–1,” Schwartz said. “We had too many defen­sive break­downs and were undis­ci­plined at times, but we bat­tled back hard.”

But it wasn’t enough for Canada, which will quickly have to shake off the heart­break­ing loss and turn its atten­tion to Fin­land for the bronze medal game, sched­uled to take place Thurs­day at 5:30 p.m. ET.

“It’s not what we came here for,” Wedge­wood said. “We’re obvi­ously going to pick our heads back up and play the bronze game like we’re sup­posed to and try to come out and win that game. Guys are upset and it’s not what we wanted, but it’s a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for all of us. You’ve got to play a full 60 min­utes. The cliché is said, but proven there, it’s true.”

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