Bedard is not needed? Canada begins its MFM title defense with a victory

 The winning goal is scored by the favorite of the next draft.

The 2024 Youth Hockey World Championship started today in Gothenburg, Sweden. Under normal conditions in our country, this tournament would have aroused genuine interest - fans were looking forward to the participation of our youth team in the fight against their strongest peers, which became one of the main decorations of the New Year holidays. However, again the IIHF decided to identify the strongest without the Russian national team - that’s why much less attention is paid to this championship among domestic fans of the most popular winter sport, and what there is is mostly superficial.

In the opening match, the participants of Group B - the national teams of Slovakia and the Czech Republic - met, and in it the former won a major victory with a score of 6:2. And behind them came the representatives of Group A - Finland and Canada, which is the current champion. The Maple team arrived in Sweden without their leader and player of the generation, Connor Bedard, who remained in the United States to bring at least some joy to the fans of Chicago, which was languishing at the bottom of the NHL Western Conference. By the way, Bedard really pleases fans of the Hawks, being by far the team's top scorer - he already has 30 effective actions, one of which was a lacrosse goal against St. Louis the other day.

Adam Fantilli, who also performed well in Columbus, will also be missing. But Matthew Poitras arrived, unexpectedly breaking into the Boston core. However, this team really lacks big-caliber stars - which is also why the US team is called the main favorite of the MFM, and not Canada. It was Poitras who was the main “igniter” of the Canadians in the first minutes - the Bears’ forward created chances for his partners and made shots himself, but neither he nor his line-mates were able to translate these opportunities into goals.

The Finns periodically snapped back and had a killer chance to open the scoring shortly before the break - two Suomi players went after one Maple goalkeeper at once, but Matis Russo showed excellent stretching and emerged victorious from this episode. For this sluggishness, the Europeans were punished in the very next attack - Maverick Lamoureux threw and hit Nate Danielson, from whom the puck jumped into the goal.

In the second twenty minutes, the Canadians also looked more dangerous and doubled their lead in the middle of the game - the Finns left Owen Allard completely alone in the backfield, who easily hit Niklas Kokko with a pass from the author of the first goal, Danielson.

The North Americans could have gone into the second break without conceding goals, but indiscipline played against them. The Finns were sent off only once in two periods, while their opponents were sent off three times, and the defending champions paid in full for the third penalty. Jani Nyman made a shot from the blue line, and Aleksanteri Kaskimaki, who was in front of goalkeeper, reduced his team's gap to a minimum.

The third period almost started with an own goal from the Finns - Fraser Minten fouled shortly after the throw-in, and the Suomi player almost sent the puck into his own empty net. But the next goal was still scored by the Canadians. The top prospect of the next draft, McLean Celebrini, could shoot more than once, but either Cocco or the crossbar could handle his shots. Celebrini's next attempt to open a sniper's account was looked at to see if the puck crossed the goal line and still decided in favor of the North American forward.

This goal turned out to be the winning one - Poitras was still able to score points by throwing the puck into an empty net, then Ere Lassila pulled one goal back, but the removal of Esse Pulkkinen deprived the Finns of any chance of a comeback. The last goal scored was scored by Lamoureux, who sealed Canada's victory. The current world champions began their title defense with a victory over a fairly strong opponent - do the Canadians really need Bedard?