Sidney Crosby, Parker Wotherspoon, and Team Canada opened the IIHF World Championship with two straight wins.
Team Canada got a nice boost for the IIHF World Championship when Pittsburgh Penguins' captain Sidney Crosby decided to take a plane to Switzerland and join the team as another one of the alternate captains.
And, even without much contribution from Crosby up to this point, they're off to a good start in preliminary round play.
On Friday, Canada beat Sweden, 5-3, and on Saturday, they ousted Italy, 6-0. After being held pointless against Sweden, Crosby did register a secondary assist in the win over Italy, which came on a second-period goal by captain Macklin Celebrini, which was his second tally of the game. Penguins' defenseman Parker Wotherspoon didn't register any points but had two penalty minutes in the first game.
In Canada's tournament opener, the scoring was opened by John Tavares less than two and a half minutes into the game. Ryan O'Reilly also added a tally before the end of the first to make it 2-0 heading into first intermission.
Sweden responded in the second with subsequent from Jacob Larsson and Lucas Raymond (PPG) to tie the game at 2-2. Dylan Holloway responded four minutes after Raymond's goal to briefly restore Canada's lead, but Mattias Ekhlom lit the lamp just over a minute later to knot things at 3-3 heading into the third period.
And that's when Canada finished things off with goals from Connor Brown and Dylan Cozens for the 5-3 victory.
In Game 2, things got off to a pretty fast start for Canada. Around the midway point of the first period, Dylan Holloway potted one to make it 1-0, and 47 seconds later, Fraser Minton made it 2-0. Celebrini scored his first goal a little less than seven minutes later to give Canada a 3-0 lead after one.
Celebrini scored his second goal, assisted by Cozens and Crosby, a tad more than two minutes into the second. Then, nearing the end of the second, Canada had two quick-strike tallies again when Evan Bouchard recorded a power play goal at 18:14 followed by an O'Reilly goal 25 seconds later to seal the 6-0 win.
Canada next plays Denmark on Monday at 10:20 a.m. ET. Celebrini, Holloway, and O'Reilly lead Team Canada with two goals and three points each, while ex-Penguin Jesse Puljujarvi leads the tournament with three goals and five points.
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