In what’s become pretty much the historical matchup in the finals of recent international para hockey tournaments, it will be the United States taking on Canada in the gold medal game of the 2019 Canadian Tire Para Hockey Cup, being played at the Paradise Double Ice Complex.
The two teams advanced to Saturday’s final with semifinal wins on Thursday night.
Canada downed Russia 3-1, while the United States blanked the Czech Republic 8-0.
The Americans are the defending the current world, Paralympic and Para Hockey Cup champions, although when they last won the current tournament, it was known as the World Sledge Hockey Challenge.
In each of the latest finals in those event, they defeated Canada.
In the Canadian win Thursday, Dominic Cozzolino put up a goal and an assist, St. John’s Liam Hickey recorded two assists, and Rob Armstrong and James Dunn had the other tallies for Canada, which held a 26-10 shot advantage in defeating the Russians, who had handed them a 3-2 shootout loss in round-robin play in he four-team tourney.
“I think we came in extremely motivated,” Hickey told hockeycanada.ca after the game..
“It was a tough loss to [Russia] in the preliminary round, so we wanted to come out and wanted to make sure that we got the job done. We stayed positive, we knew that we had to come shift after shift, keep the positivity up on the ice and on the bench, and we did that.
“You could tell the feeling on the bench, that everyone was firing on all cylinders.”
Hickey has six points (2G, 4A) in four games in the tourney.
Vasilii Varlakov scored the opening goal in Thursday night’s game, but the Russians couldn’t get any more pucks past Canadian netminder goaltender Dominic Larocque, who made nine saves.
In the Americans’ semifinal victory over the Czechs, Kevin McKee scored twice and added an assist, Brody Rybal also had a three-point game with a goal and two assists and Jen Lee made six saves for the shutout.
The Americans have outscored the opposition 27-1 in winning all four of their games so far in the tourney. That included a 4-1 victory over the Canadians in preliminary play.
Saturday’s championship final has a 6 p.m. start. It will be preceded by the bronze-medal game between the Czech Republic and Russia at noon.
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