A crushing semifinal exit followed by a historic overtime loss to Norway left Team Canada empty-handed.
For a third straight year, Team Canada will return home from the World Hockey Championships empty-handed.
On Saturday in the semifinals, in a battle between Sens' teammates Dylan Cozens and Nikolas Matinpalo, Canada's gold medal hopes died with a 4-2 loss to Finland.
And then Canada's disappointment from that setback seemed to bleed into the first half of the game in a 3-2 overtime loss to Norway in the bronze medal game on Sunday.
It was very clear that the bronze medal meant a whole lot more to the Norwegians than it did to Canada.
Before today, Norway had never won a World Championship medal. Never. Their best previous result was a fourth-place finish in 1951. The fact that they defeated the legendary Sidney Crosby and Team Canada made it all the more special for Norway as a hockey nation.
Norway jumped out to a 2-0 lead before Canada finally got things going. But it remained 2-0 until the dying seconds of regulation. Canada finally broke through on two goals by Robert Thomas, both coming in the final 1:16 of regulation.
But the Norwegians, who seem to dominate every other winter Olympic sport, recovered and made national history on an overtime goal by Noah Steen. On a 2-on-1, Steen beat Jet Greaves on the short side to win it.
Steen's goal was his 7th of the tournament, tying him for the tourney lead with former Senator Rudolfs Balcers of Latvia.
As much as Greaves will want that one back, it was his brutal fumbling of the puck behind his own net that gifted Norway the opening goal that will probably haunt him most.
For Canada, which had rolled through the group round and then blanked the USA, the gold medal seemed well within reach. But this 24-hour turnaround in their fortunes was both dramatic and harsh.
If the Ricky Bobby mentality of "If you're not first, you're last" ever applied to real-life sports, it's exactly how Team Canada, whether they'd admit it or not, seems to approach this tournament.
Senators centre Dylan Cozens had a solid tournament, with 7 points in 10 games. But he may have run out of gas in the knockout stages, at least as far as the coaching staff was concerned. He had been skating on the top line with Sidney Crosby and Macklin Celebrini, but was replaced in Sunday's game by Porter Martone.
For Cozen's Ottawa teammate, Nikolas Matinpalo, the show goes on. Matinpalo is one win away from lifting the trophy with Finland. It would be Finland's fifth World title and first since 2022.
They'll face Switzerland, which has never won. But at this year's tournament, the Swiss have never lost.
As for Canada, this is the first time since the 1980s that Canada has gone an entire calendar year without winning gold at an IIHF event. They settled for bronze at the Hlinka Gretzky, bronze at the World Juniors, silver at the Olympics, sixth at the World U18sm and now fourth at the Worlds.
It's also the second year in a row that Canada has been sent packing by a world hockey minnow. Denmark edged Canada 2-1 to eliminate them in last year's quarter-final.
By Steve Warne
The Hockey News
By Steve Warne
The Hockey News
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