Vancouver Canucks forwards Conor Garland and Drew O’Connor made history last Sunday, helping Team USA to their first IIHF World Championship gold medal since 1933 with a 1–0 win against Switzerland. This was Garland’s third IIHF World Championship and his second medal, as he won bronze in 2021. Earlier today, he joined Sportsnet 650’s “Canucks Brunch” to talk about his experience at the tournament.
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“It’s pretty amazing. We were talking about it the whole tournament, how long it’s been since USA has done it, and it kind of felt surreal when it happened,” he said during a brief interview on the radio program. “A great day, a great month with a really good group of guys.”
Team USA was filled with a bunch of young, up-and-coming talent such as San Jose Sharks forward Will Smith and Frank Nazar of the Chicago Blackhawks. However, just because they were younger, Garland noted that their stints with Team USA at the World Juniors made them look experienced beyond their years. “I was actually surprised at how calm they were in the gold medal game,” he said.
Garland mentioned Seattle Kraken forward Matty Beniers as one of the players he was most impressed with during the tournament, making note of “just how hard he plays, how good he is defensively.” Nashville Predators defenceman Brady Skjei also got a shoutout for his “shutdown play,” with Garland referring to him as an “unheralded name.”
Team USA captain Clayton Keller (9) hands the IIHF World Championship trophy to assistant captain Conor Garland (83). (Photo Credit: @USAHockey/X) This tournament in particular was a great one for Garland, who was selected as “Player of the Game” twice, as well as being named one of Team USA’s top-three players in the tournament. He noted how it was “pretty special” to be a part of this team’s leadership group, especially with Clayton Keller — who’d been the best man at his wedding — as the team’s captain. “To kind of be an assistant [captain], help him through it was pretty cool.”
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