Canada comes from behind to beat Slovakia

Slovakia came out strong against a Canadian side that didn't seem fully focused in the first period. Slovakia's best player Marko Dano opened the scoring already at 2:53. Canada got a bit frustated and when JC Lipon was sent of the ice with a major penalty and a game misconduct for checking to the head Tomas Mikus gave Slovakia a 2-0 lead.

The 2-0 lead was well deserved after the first period and Slovakia had 11-5 in shots but Canada came out strong early in the second and Ryan Strome put Canada on the board at 22:16. You expected to see Canada come out stronger after that but another major and game misconduct penalty, Camara for charging gave Slovakia the momentum again. And when also Strome went to the penalty box Slovakia got a five on three and Dano scored his second goal of the game after a nice cross pass by Emil Bagin.

At this point Slovakia was close to a surprise but then they gave it all away with three stupid penalties. Dano and Buri went to the box and Morgan Rielly took advantage on the five on three, with the help of a deflection from a Slovak defender putting Canada just one goal behind, just 1:07 after the Slovak 3-1 goal.

A few minutes later Martin Reway took another stupid penalty for a cross-checking when the puck wasn't close. Nine seconds later the game was tied after a beautiful play which left Ty Rattie with an easy tap in at the far post. After that the momentum was in Canada's hand and Mark Scheifele also got the important 4-3 goal before the intermission when he manage to deflect a shot by Ouelett.

The Slovaks didn't have the energy to come back after that and they could only create some single chances in the third instead Canada added two goals more the first one a beuaty by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and later Ryan Strome scored his second of the game.

Canada showed their skill when they neeeded but need to play better for the full game for the upcoming games against USA and Russia. Slovakia shows again that they can shake the better teams in this group, can they do it against USA as well?

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