Marco Rossi after comeback vs Canada: “In 50 years, I’ll think back on that game”

It was the biggest deficit in the history of the top division of the IIHF World Championship that a team has ever had and managed to take a point. Down 6-1 entering the third period, The Austrians scored five in the third period to force overtime, eventually losing 7-6. The tying goal with 49 seconds left in regulation time was scored by the team’s lone NHLer, Marco Rossi of the Minnesota Wild. He spoke about it afterward.

“It was a crazy game! At 6-1 after the second period, our mindset wasn’t that we were going to tie this game. Our focus was to keep playing, keep it simple in our end, and focus on playing the right way because we’ve got some big games coming up. So we started on the forecheck and scored some goals, and suddenly we had the belief in ourselves. After 6-4, you know, and then 6-5, we really believed and just kept going. Then it was a lucky bounce onto my stick but I’ll take that. If you want to score goals, you need some luck.

“In 50 years, I’ll think back on that game because it’s a huge achievement for us.”

It was maybe a lucky bounce that the puck ended up on your stick, but once you got it, what were you thinking?
“I wasn’t thinking, to be honest. I just had the puck on my stick and you don’t have that much time to think about it. I just put it on my backhand and tried to go high because I know (Jordan Binnington) is really aggressive and he goes low.”

Is there a feeling that the one point gained could be big down the road or is there still some disappointment with losing the game?
“For sure it’s a big point but still, in overtime, you want to win, you know? That part sucks, but coming back from 6-1 is incredible. I’m so proud of the boys. We didn’t lose the belief.”

What do you think was the key to your comeback?
“I think it was important for us to play hard against them. They didn’t want to battle against us when it was 6-1. When you’re up that much, you just want to play the last 20 minutes and get it over with but our mindset was to play hard and make it tough on them.”

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In the last two games against Switzerland and Canada, you’ve now scored 11 goals. Does that give you confidence for the rest of the tournament?
“It’s going to help us for sure for the next few games. We know we can score goals. It’s important that we’re not too happy because we still have some big games that we have to win. We have to stay focused and we know that if we play like in the third period, we can win some games. But we can’t be thinking that now everything’s going to be easy because we came back against Canada. We still have to win against Norway and Great Britain.”