2007-Super-Series IIHF World Junior Championship

#3
2006 IIHF World Junior Championship, Gold Medal Game
January 5, 2006 – Vancouver, BC

- CANADA 5, RUSSIA 0 -

Returning only one player – Cam Barker – from the team that dominated the competition in 2005 in North Dakota, Canada’s National Junior Team wasn’t considered the favourite heading into the 2006 tournament in British Columbia. That title went to the Americans and the Russians.

But Canada beat the Americans in a key round robin game, meaning the two favourite would have to go through each other to get to the gold medal game.

It would be the Russians, and superstar Evgeni Malkin, that Canada faced for gold, and the hosts were in their very best shutdown defensive mode.

Led by a stifling defense and standout goaltender Justin Pogge – who became the first to record three shutouts in a single World Juniors – Canada silenced the high-powered Russian offence, which had scored 26 times in five games coming into the final, and captured Canada’s second straight gold medal.

Michael Blunden led the way with a pair of powerplay goals 2:42 apart in the second period, the second fastest two powerplay goals for one player in Canadian World Junior history, turning a 2-0 game into a 4-0 game and all but sealing the win.

“We came out and played our game,” Pogge said after the gold medal game victory. “We're in Canada, the gold stays here in Canada.”

“I think that if someone said that this game would be a 5-0 hockey game before it started, I don’t know if you could believe them or not,” said Canadian head coach Brent Sutter. “But the kids are a great group of young men. They just stuck with it and stuck with it. Going into the game you heard all the talk about how skilled the Russians were and how good of a team they have and rightfully so. But I think the one thing everyone underestimated was the skill level we had. I never questioned whether we could score enough goals or not. I knew our defense would get better every game, and I knew our forwards would adjust to what we wanted to with our system.”

Canada was at its defensive best in Vancouver, allowing only six goals in six games, breaking the record of the 2005 team, which allowed seven goals in six games on the way to gold.

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André Brin Director, Communications | Directeur, communications