Canada sweats out OT win over Sweden in raucous open to 4 Nations Face-Off
MONTREAL — Here came the return of best-on-best hockey and here came the wall of noise at the Bell Centre, crashing down in delirium over the ice.They roared for Sidney Crosby.They got louder with the introduction of legends for each of the four teams competing at this best-on-best renewal.
They lost it for Mario Lemieux.They belted “O Canada” so loud it drowned out the singer.
They watched Team Canada beat Team Sweden, 4-3, to open the 4 Nations Face-Off on Wednesday in a game that went 360 degrees from blowout to blown lead to ecstasy in the form of Mitch Marner’s overtime winner, then they lost it some more.The Galacticos here were Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Crosby and Connor McDavid.This was about the foursome that delivered a spellbinding power-play goal 56 seconds into the match with McDavid feeding Crosby feeding MacKinnon into an open net.
And this was about Team Canada, in Canada, giving a loud reminder of what hockey supremacy looks like.Sweden did not record a shot on goal until 15:15 into the match, when Gustav Forsling’s wrister went harmlessly into Jordan Binnington’s glove.By then, Canada had already scored twice, the crowd had already started singing “Ole” and McDavid had already put in a handful of shifts where he looked like a man among boys.It looked like this would be easy.It was not.It would take overtime in the end, meaning Canada took just two of three points, with Sweden getting one, and it would take Marner, finishing a pulsating overtime period by ripping a shot past Filip Gustavsson.This was the sort of game — and the sort of finish — that left everybody in the vicinity needing a cigarette.Canada never turned this into the sort of blowout on the scoreboard that it looked like on the ice for the first 20 minutes, with the game settling down, Sweden finding traction and turning this into a real game just like that.
The first sign of trouble came midway through the second period when Binnington let up a short-side g...