Canada enters the championship game against a raucous crowd and knowing that they have not won a world title since 2007. Despite being the two-time defending world champions, Slovakia beat the host Czechs the night before in a draining game that is going to be difficult to recover from. Slovakia stormed out and incredibly, took a 3-0 lead at the 7:22 mark of the first period. Canada answered right back with goals 30 seconds apart from Larencelle and Martel to cut the lead to one. Despite hitting two posts, Canada managed two goals in a wild opening period. On a Slovak powerplay midway through the 2nd, Barlow made arguably the save of the tournament on a Slovak breakaway shorthanded, and this would be telling as Canada fired two powerplay goals soon after to pull ahead 4-3. Milan Rampacek tied it with a minute left in the 2nd period for the host Czechs. Barlow was outstanding in the 3rd period for Canada, as he turned away several high quality chances. But it wasn’t until Canada was forced to take back to back penalties with minutes to go that Slovakia was able to score the game winner on the powerplay. It was […]