Canada bounced from men’s U18 hockey worlds with OT loss to Finland

Joakim Kemell scored in time beyond regulation to finish a hat trick, and Finland got here again to beat Canada 6-5 in quarter-final motion Thursday on the world males’s under-18 hockey championship.

Canada in management when Connor Bedard scored his second objective of the sport halfway by way of the third interval to place Canada up 5-3.

Finland, nevertheless, pressured time beyond regulation with a pair of late targets. Aleksanteri Kaskimaki scored with 4 minutes 17 seconds remaining in regulation to chop Canada’s result in 5-4, and Kasper Halttunen tied it with a power-play objective with 1:43 left.

Canada got here into this 12 months’s event in Kaufbeuren and Landshut — situated within the German province of Bavaria — because the defending U18 champion.

However a title defence was removed from a given. Canada is historically not as dominant on the Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation-sanctioned occasion, as it’s held similtaneously the playoffs within the three main junior leagues.

Canada has 22 gold medals on the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, a U18 occasion held in the course of the main junior low season that isn’t sanctioned by the IIHF, in comparison with 4 titles on the world U18 championship.

The 16-year-old Bedard, an early favorite to be chosen first general on the 2023 NHL draft, was the one returning participant from Canada’s 2021 championship crew.

Kocha Delic, Connor Hvidston and Brayden Schuurman additionally scored for Canada. Reid Dyck made 29 saves on 35 pictures.

Tommi Mannisto had the opposite objective for Finland. Topias Leinonen stopped 24-of-29 pictures within the Finnish objective.