Canada 4 - Sweden 5

Qualifying Round
May 7, 2005
Innsbruck, AUT

INNSBRUCK, Austria – Shayne Doan can’t wait to play Finland and he’s not alone.

Doan and his Team Canada teammates want to atone for the 5-4 loss to Sweden on Saturday night at the world championship and they’ll get their chance less than 17 hours after the stinging defeat.

Canada plays Finland on Sunday in its second game of the qualification round of the world championship tournament.

A loss to the Finns could result in Canada finishing fourth in their bracket and a possible quarter-final match-up against the Czech Republic.

A win changes the equation in Canada’s favor and the Doan is all for showing the world that Canada is far from done.

“You want to get back right at it,” said Doan, who along with Dany Heatley scored his first goal of the tournament. “You don’t like the taste of losing in our mouth and when it is fresh it usually gives you a bit of an edge and that is always good.

Team Canada had the edge, both in territorial advantage and on the scoreboard in the opening period.

Joe Thornton and Dany Heatley scored 35 seconds apart on Henrik Lundqvist, who was perhaps the best goalie in Europe this season. For those keeping track, that marked six straight goals the Canadians scored on Lundqvist, including four last year in a 5-3 win in the gold medal final in Prague.

But the Swedes made it 2-1 before the period ended on a goal by Daniel Sedin.

Doan restored Canada two-goal lead in the second but the Swedes didn’t quit. They worked themselves back in the game and took a 4-3 lead into the dressing room for the second intermission.

Rick Nash continued with his hot hand and tied it in the third with his seventh goal in four games but Kenny Jonsson put a rebound past Marty Brodeur late in the period for the winner.

It was Sweden’s first win over Canada in the world tournament since 1999.

The Canadians knew they played a bad game but they had already moved on by the time they emerged to talk to the media.

“It is gut check time now,” said captain Ryan Smyth.

“We’ll drop it here tonight and carry forth and get some good rest. It’s a big game tomorrow. We have to work a little better defensively and we have to play a full 60 minutes. If we do that we are a tough team to beat. We go into this tournament thinking we should win.”

The win put Sweden, with six points, in strong position to win the qualification round pool and get an advantageous opponent in next week's quarter-finals.

“We can improve on a lot of things and we will,” said Joe Thornton. “We have not lost in a long time and it will be nice to get back at it and play another game.

“We have to forget about this game and come out hard tomorrow. We had a great start tonight and it is too bad we could not finish it off.”

“We want to play,” said Kris Draper. “This is a proud group of guys in that room and we’ll be ready.”

NOTES: An IIHF first was record on Saturday when four ex-Soviet Union satellite states were competing at the same time. Belarus was playing Kazakhstan in Vienna while Latvia toiled against Ukraine in Innsbruck. . . .  The Latvia-Ukraine match seemed totally irrelevant early in the second period when a Ukrainian player collided with teammate Yuri Gunko and Gunko’s head snapped back upon impact. The game was stopped for several minutes as Gunko lay motionless on the ice. Gunko was taken off the ice on a stretcher to the University of Innsbruck hospital for tests. He was diagnosed with a spinal injury but was found to have feeling in all his extremities.