Slightly late, but...

...fresh off the embarrassing loss by my Saints to the Seahawks in the biggest playoff upset in NFL history, I'll take a moment to update the World Juniors.

In the first semifinal, Canada jumped all over a flat US team and got up 4-0 by the middle of the third. Jack Campbell gave it his best in a losing effort, but the US stayed bottled up in their own zone and couldn't generate any second chances. The final was 4-1, but save for the heroics of Campbell, this could have easily been an 8-0 game.



In the second semifinal, Russia jumped out to a 2-0 lead over Sweden before surrendering three goals, the last one coming with 3:20 or so to play in regulation. One could be easily forgiven for assuming that Russia was cooked, but they scored to tie it with about 1:20 to play. This led to a shootout,and Russia ultimately prevailed.



This led to matchups of USA-Sweden for the bronze, and Russia-Canada for the gold.

The US started off slow against the Swedes, relying on Jack Campbell to make a bunch of key saves in order to keep them in the game, down 1-0. In the second period, the US woke up and tied the game on a goal by Chris Kreider. A Justin Faulk deflection early in the third put the US out in front, 2-1.

Nick Bjugstad got another gorgeous deflection at 11:40 to put the US up 3-1, only to have Sweden's Jasper Fastin answer at 5:42.

A good breakout pass after a decent Swedish opportunity with less than three minutes to play led to a USA 2-on-1 back the other way, and a gorgeous pass from Kyle Palmieri to Chris Kreider (for his second of the game) finished the scoring, and showed some great character from the US.



Finally, the main event: Canada and Russia. Canadian players were crowing after dominating the US, exulting in "sticking it to the Americans". Meanwhile, Russia looked somewhat out of sorts, and when Canada jumped out to a 3-0 lead by 6:27 of the second, it looked as though the Canadians would backstroke their way to a sixth goal in seven years.

Unfortunately for them, someone forgot to tell the Russians that that was the plan. They replaced starting goaltender Dmitriy Shikin with Igor Bobkov, and the Russians began to wake up.

Two and a half minutes into the third, Artemy Panarin and Maxim Kitsyn scored goals eleven seconds apart, and the sensation of Canadian unraveling was palpable. At 7:29, Vladimir Tarasenko tied the game for Russia. To that point, the Canadian defense had really been sort of blithely skating around, and at this point, you could see them really gripping their sticks. Canada called a timeout at that point, but the damage was done.

Finally, at 15:21, the dam broke for Canada. A horrible turnover, a few scoring chances, and an inability to clear the puck out of the zone led to a second Panarin goal out of a scrum in front of the Canadian net. Then, finally, at 18:44, Nikita Dvurechensky fought off a couple of defensemen to score the fifth Russian goal.



A monumental collapse by Canada overshadowed another grim reality for them- it's the second year in a row that Team Canada has made it to the gold medal game only to lose late. It's a very curious trend for Canada, who did a whole lot of talking on their way to historically snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.