By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 
And then there were two.
The World Championships conclude this weekend with the semi-final round on Saturday setting the stage for Sunday’s medal games.
Canada used a third-period rally to advance to the Gold Medal Game, while Sweden handily rolled past Finland.
Canada-Russia
The first period went scoreless before Russia jumped into the lead with a pair of goals in the second. Evgeny Kuznetsov opened the scoring at 12:16 of the period. Nikita Gusev added a power-play goal at 14:50 to make it a two-goal game.
Canada wasted no time getting on the board in the third. Just 17 seconds into the final period, Mark Scheifele scored on the power play to cut Russia’s lead to one.
Russia’s 2-1 lead held up until the final five minutes of regulation, when Nathan MacKinnon scored to tie the game with 4:53 to play. Travis Konecny had the only assist on MacKinnon’s goal.
Ryan O’Reilly put Canada in front with 3:02 remaining. With 1:07 to play, Sean Couturier iced the game with an empty-net goal, capping a four-goal third period for Canada to send them to their third straight Gold Medal Game at World Championships.
Claude Giroux had three shots and was a plus-one in 12:57. Wayne Simmonds had two shots and was a plus-one with two penalty minutes in 13:14. Brayden Schenn had two shots in 6:44. In addition to the assist, Konecny had two penalty minutes and two shots in 10:13. Couturier scored into the empty net on his only shot of the game in 14:16.
Ivan Provorov had five shots and was a minus-two for Russia in 13:34.
Finland-Sweden
Early in the game, the two teams traded goals. Sweden opened the scoring with a goal from Alexander Edler at 1:49. Finland answered with a goal by Joonas Kemppainen at 4:45. The teams skated to a 1-1 tie through one period.
Sweden would take the lead for good at 4:36 of the second period with John Klingberg getting the goal. William Nylander added a goal later in the second period to give Sweden a two-goal lead with 20 minutes to play.
Joakim Nordstrom iced the game at 13:52 of the third period with a goal to make it 4-1. Sweden easily held the margin the rest of the way, with Henrik Lundqvist making 22 saves in the win, including 12 in the final period.
Valtteri Filppula had one shot and took a penalty in 20:02.
Provorov and Russia will face Filppula and Finland in the Bronze Medal Game on Sunday morning at 10:15 a.m.
Five Flyers will play for Canada against Sweden for the gold medal on Sunday afternoon at 2:15 p.m.
