Stephane Da Costa Scores Twice in Shootout In Big Win For France

Two-goals from Stephane Da Costa in the shootout gave France a 4-3 victory over Belarus to keep their quarter-final hopes afloat at the 2017 World Hockey Championships.

The French have had an up and down tournament so far at home, so an early goal was what the team needed to keep things moving. At 12:29, the team did exactly that. Sascha Treille would get the game's first marker after taking a feed from Teddy Da Costa and sending a shot on net, going bar down on Kevin Lalande to make it 1-0.

54 seconds into the second, France took the 2-0 lead. Damien Fleury would skate into the high slot after receiving the puck and sent a fast snipe over the glove of Lalande and in, taking the 2-0 lead to take any energy Belarus may have had to start the second.

Still, Belarus managed to cut the lead in half. After a couple of misplays by the French in their own zone, Yegor Sharangovich took a shot on net that Cristobal Huet deflected to the directly up. Alexander Pavlovich was there to knock the flying puck out of the air and in to score, with Belarus finally finding a way on the scoreboard.

At 17:37, Belarus tied the game up after tremendous chances. It was a strange goal, as Sharangovich was stopped, but Huet knocked it in his own net sliding across, bouncing off the inside of his right leg and in to tie the game up at two heading into the second.

France wanted to win to keep their quarter-final hopes alive, but an early third period goal would change the entire game. At 1:20 on the power play, Sergei Kostitsyn re-directed a feed in the slot past his former Montreal Canadiens goaltender to make it 3-2, Belarus' first lead of the game.

With just over seven minutes left in the game, however, the French scored to tie it up. France's second top scorer of all-time, Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, would tie the game up after somehow squeaking the puck below Lalande's glove, getting through an impossible hole to make it 3-3 with time running out.

Nobody could take the victory after 65 minutes of play, so the battle required a shootout. In the skills competition, former Ottawa Senators forward Stephane Da Costa scored a pair of beautiful shootout goals to give the win to France and to keep their hopes alive.

Due to the game heading to overtime, Belarus was eliminated from quarter-final contention. A loss to Slovenia on Saturday would put result in relegation, while a win would relegate their opponents instead. For France, their hopes of heading to the quarter-finals remained alive thanks to the win, but it will just get tougher from here for the hosts.

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