The US and Canada continued their 2016 World Cup of Hockey pretournament mini-series tonight in Ottawa with the Canadians prevailing on their home turf, 5-2.
Canada got off to a quick 3-0 lead in the first period. Logan Couture of the San Jose Sharks scored first from Joe Thornton and Corey Perry at 11:14 to make it 1-0. At 13:25, the Islanders’ John Tavares scored his first of two on the night from Steven Stamkos and Drew Doughty. Jay Bouwmeester tripled up Canada’s lead when he scored at 15:38 from Ryan Getzlaf and Perry.
Before the first frame was through, though, the Rangers’ Ryan McDonagh and Derek Stepan would team up to cut the Canadian lead to 3-1. McDonagh scored the goal at 16:35 while Stepan got his second assist of the pretournament.
The second period began with New Jersey-raised John Carlson of the Washington Capitals bringing the US closer, scoring just 38 seconds into the second stanza. However, Canada would reestablish themselves with a 4-2 lead when Matt Duchene scored at 12:11 from Tyler Seguin and Doughty.
Canada put the game out of reach when Tavares scored his second from Stamkos and Jonathan Toews at 8:01 of the third period, finishing up the scoring.
The theme of the game for Team USA was penalties. They took too many of them and Canada converted on the power plays. At the center of all of that was Kyle Palmieri. Palmieri had eight penalty minutes on the night, including serving a too many men on the ice bench minor. Canada did not score on any of the power plays resulting from Palmieri’s time in the sin bin. He also took a roughing penalty in the first, an interference call in the second and a high-sticking penalty in the second.
However, the US took a team total of 28 penalty minutes, with Canada going 3-for-8 with the man advantage. The Canadians took 24 team penalty minutes, and the Americans were 1-for-5 on the power play.
A lot of those team penalty minutes came from a post-game scrum where Canada’s Marc-Edouard Vlasic was called for slashing and roughing, USA’s Justin Abdelkader took a double minor for roughing and TJ Oshie (USA) and Shea Weber (Canada) each took an unsportsmanlike conduct minor. This mirrored the end of the second when Abdelkader and Canada’s Perry were both whistled for roughing and Perry drew an extra charging call (served by Claude Giroux) as the period expired. This was a very chippy game.
Palmieri’s stat line saw him a minus-1 on the night with one shot, one blocked shot all in 8:03 time on ice, which included 1:56 of time on the power play.
As expected, Cory Schneider did dress and, in fact, got the start. He made 20 stops on 24 shots to garner an .833 save percentage before Ben Bishop took over and made 9 saves on 10 shots faced for a .900 save percentage.
Canada split time between Braden Holtby and Corey Crawford. Holtby got the bulk of the time, making 11 saves on 13 shots for an .846 save percentage, while Crawford was a perfect 7-for-7.
Canada outshot the Americans, 25 to 20 on the night. True to the type of game the US wanted to play going into the tournament (tough, gritty, hard to move off the puck once they gained possession), the Americans led Canada in hits, 20 to 12. Canada had 12 blocked shots to Team USA’s 10 and also led in giveaways, 11 to 7.