Canada conceded their first defeat at the Men’s Ice Hockey World Championships, losing 6-3 to undefeated Switzerland
Dean Kukan and Nico Hischier had power-play goals and Denis Malgin provided two assists as Switzerland beat Canada 6-3 at the Ice Hockey World Championships in Finland on Saturday.
Michael Fora, Jonas Siegenthaler, Pius Suter and Timo Meier also found the net for the undefeated Swiss (5-0-0-0) at the Helsinki Ice Rink.
Kent Johnson opened the scoring for the Canadians (4-0-0-1) who suffered their first loss of the preliminary round. Adam Lowry and Drake Batherson had the other goals and Mathew Barzal added two assists.
“The Swiss have played well in this tournament so far and they showed it again tonight,” said Canada head coach Claude Julien. “Our special teams game wasn’t great today. We didn’t score on the power play. We didn’t do a great job on the penalty shootout and that kind of dug us into a hole.
“We had a five minute power play that we didn’t capitalize on and something like that can come back and haunt you later in the game.”
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Switzerland tops Group A as the only undefeated team in the championship.
Canada goalkeeper Logan Thompson made 21 saves. Switzerland beats Canada 26:25.
Gaudette leads the USA to 4th victory
“It’s always disappointing to lose but I think in the long run it will be a good learning experience for our team,” said Batherson. “We always want to win every game, but today it didn’t go that way.”
In other games, Adam Gaudette scored in overtime for the United States to beat Sweden 3-2.
Gaudette was involved in all three US goals, scoring the first and assisting Nate Schmidt on the second. The win improved the Americans to 4-1 overall; The only defeat was against hosts Finland.
Finland’s Olympic champions lead Group B after recording their fifth win in six games, beating Austria 3-0 and overtaking their opponent 39-19.
Elsewhere, the Czech Republic defeated Norway 4-1, Denmark beat France 3-0 and 18-year-old Olympic tournament MVP Juraj Slafkovsky had two assists as Slovakia beat Italy 3-1.
Canada plays Denmark on Monday.