Canada beats Sweden to stay perfect at hockey world championship
Canada rallied to maintain a perfect record at the ice hockey world championship by beating Sweden 6-4 on Wednesday for its fourth straight victory.
In other matches, defending champion Russia bounced back from a loss to the United States with a 5-2 victory over Denmark and Latvia and Norway ended their three-game losing streaks by edging Switzerland 2-1 and Slovakia 3-2 respectively.
Buffalo Sabres forward Tyler Ennis wristed a shot high into the net from the left circle on a power play for Canada's winner with 6:29 left in the final period and Dallas Stars forward Tyler Seguin added the sixth into an empty net with 1:50 to go.
Canada leads Group A with 12 points. Sweden and Switzerland are second with eight.
"That was a battle," Seguin said.
Anton Lander, Victor Rask and Filip Forsberg scored first period goals to put Sweden, the 2014 bronze medalist, in early command.
Sweden outshot Canada 14-5 in the period as its players skated fast and appeared more organized than the star-studded Canadian team.
"We had a pretty much big wakeup call in the first," Seguin said. "A lot of guys were talking -- `we can do better, we can score goals, we can do better defending' -- and we put it all together and came away with three points."
Aaron Ekblad, Taylor Hall from a penalty shot for his fifth of the tournament and Sean Couturier rallied Canada as their team outshot Sweden 19-9 in the second period.
Oscar Moller restored the Swedish lead from the top of the right circle with 4:41 remaining in the second and Patrick Wiercioch tied it for Canada at 4-4 midway through the third.
"Obviously, our first period was good," said Forsberg, Sweden's Nashille Predators forward who has five goals at the worlds. "After that we kind of sat back too much, let them come and attack. That was the biggest thing. They're a good team, but so are we. It was a good game."
Sergei Mozyakin scored two goals to help Russia to its third win in four games.
Artemi Panarin, Evgeni Dadonov and St. Louis Blues forward Vladimir Tarasenko also had a goal each as Russia joined the U.S. at the top of Group B in the eastern city of Ostrava with nine points. The Americans have played one game less.
Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin set up both Mozyakin's goals for his first points at the tournament.
Morten Green pulled one back for Denmark at 2-0 in the second period and Thomas Spelling cut the Russian lead to 3-2 midway through the third.
Russia was far less dominant than expected and had to wait for late goals from Mozyakin and Tarasenko to control the game.
"We scored goals, but of course we didn't quite play the kind of game we need at the world championship," Panarin said. "We'll have to keep working on it."
Captain Kaspars Daugavins scored the winning goal for Latvia, 2:19 into overtime.
Matthias Bieber tied the game for Switzerland with 1:51 to go, after Latvia's Andris Dzerins scored in the second period.
"Our guys played real hard," Dzerins said. "They gave their all and that's why we won. We got the one and hopefully we'll get another one next time."
Mattias Norstebo scored two goals for Norway's first three points in Group B. Slovakia has seven.
