Montreal Canadiens' captain Nick Suzuki made his Olympic debut in a 5-0 win for Canada over Czechia and he even found the back of the net.
Team Canada’s coach, John Cooper, surprised everyone earlier today when he put Montreal Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki back on his second line alongside Nathan MacKinnon and Brandon Hagel, rather than on the fourth line with Bro Horvat and Brad Marchand, as the last practices indicated.
Skating on the wing, with MacKinnon taking the faceoffs, Suzuki spent 13:33 on the ice and looked pretty comfortable in this new role. Despite tending to defer to MacKinnon in the offensive zone, the Canadiens’ centerman still took three shots on goal and scored the first Olympic goal of his career when he tipped a Connor McDavid shot, meaning he finished the game with a plus-1 rating.
According to Dimitri Filipovic’s data, Connor McDavid contributed to 14 chances during the game, and Suzuki came second, with Hagel contributing six chances each. Overall, it was a good game for Canada, although it took some time for Cooper’s men to establish their lead and take over the game, so to speak.
Each team had 11 shots in the first frame, and Canada could have had an early lead had it not been for an unfortunate penalty on Suzuki, who tripped an opponent just as MacKinnon was unleashing his shot. Still, both the player and the country were able to shake it off and get right back to work, killing the penalty. Macklin Celibrini scored Canada’s first goal in the dying seconds of the first frame, and the Canadian’s never looked back.
Mark Stone and Bo Horvat added a pair of goals in the second frame as Canada had a small shot advantage with 12 against 11. Jordan Binnington was unbeatable in the Canadian net, even though he’s not the kind of goaltender that Carey Price was; always in the right position to make the save look easy, he still managed to stop them all.
Czechia looked out of its depth in the third frame, only managing to test Binnington with four shots while the Canadians unleashed another 13 shots on Lukas Dostal. MacKinnon scored on the power play, and Suzuki completed the score with a late goal.
A 5-0 win for the Canadians, the kind of performance to give this very strong side plenty of confidence moving forward. Canada will be back in action on Friday, taking on Switzerland at 3:10 PM ET. Just like the Canadians, the Swiss won their first game, beating Alexandre Texier and France 4-0 on Thursday morning.
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