World Championships Update: Canada Advances to Face Finns in Final

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

Two teams have the chance to earn gold at World Championships following Saturday's semi-finals. One team will feature three Flyers players and their new head coach.

Team Canada advanced to the Gold Medal Game on Sunday with a 5-1 win over Czech Republic. They will face Finland in the title game.

Canada got the first goal of the game at 5:18 of the first period. Once again, the hero from the quarterfinal game was on the scoring end. Mark Stone scored his eighth goal of the tournament to put Canada in front.

That was the only goal of the opening period, but Canada opened things up in the second. Just 10 seconds into the period, Sean Couturier had a shot stopped but Darnell Nurse picked up the rebound behind the net and banked it in to make it 2-0. Five minutes later, Pierre-Luc Dubois finished off a brilliant feed from Jonathan Marchessault to make it 3-0. 

Canada put the game away 6:26 into the third as Anthony Mantha set up Kyle Turris for a goal to make it 4-0. Thomas Chabot scored with seven minutes remaining to make it 5-0. Czech Republic got on the board with a goal by Tomas Zohorna with 6:01 remaining to break up the shutout bid for Matt Murray. Murray finished with 40 saves on 41 shots.

Couturier had an assist, two shots on goal and was a plus-1 in 17:12 of ice time. Phil Myers had a strong game defensively and was a minus-1 in 11:36 of ice time. Carter Hart served as backup to Murray again. Canada is also coached by new Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault.

For the Czechs, Jake Voracek had one shot on goal and was a minus-2 in 18:50 of ice time. Radko Gudas had two shots on goal and was a minus-1 in 18:57 of ice time.

Canada advances to face Finland in the Gold Medal Game on Sunday at 2:15 p.m. Finland upset Russia with a 1-0 win in the first semi-final game on Saturday.

Russia will face Czech Republic in the Bronze Medal Game at 10:15 a.m. on Sunday.