Zach Poirier and Stan Butler hold up the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cup after their Team Canada victory today. PHOTO COURTESY TWITTER.
Team Canada exploded for four first period goals and hung on for a 7-3 win over Team Sweden in the gold medal game at the U-18 Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cup.
Pierre Luc Dubois scored twice for the Canadians who led 6-1 after two periods of play.
Sweden made it interesting with a pair of goals less than 90 seconds apart early in the third period.
Team Canada is coached by Battalion bench boss Stan Butler and Battalion forward Zach Poirier is on the championship roster. Poirier finished the tournament with 1 assist in five games.
Tyler Benson, Michael McLeod, Beck Malenstyn, and Jordan Kyrou had the other goals in the gold medal contest.
“I´m really proud of this group of players,” Butler said to www.hlinkamemorial.com in the aftermath of the team´s 7–3 win in the final against Sweden.
“They all pulled together for one thing. We told them when we got here: this is about one team and one goal. We were one team and we chased one goal, which we got here today.”
Butler was thrilled with the dominant start to the contest.
“I think we had a big scare with the Russians last night and we wanted to make sure that didn´t happen again today. We wanted to play our best game today and we got off to a good start. We probably deserved more goals in some of the other games, like last night, but today we got to the point where we needed to score.”
Scoring summary here: http://stats.hockeycanada.ca/game/show/11039750?subseason=235738&_ga=1.60022570.641567579.1397514423
Canada finished the tournament unbeaten, including a close 2-1 shootout win over Russia in the semi-finals on Friday.
The win was the eighth straight for Team Canada at the prestigious summer tournament hosted in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Team Canada storms onto the ice after the final buzzer. PHOTO COURTESY TWITTER.
