Ville Heinola secures championship glory over Nino Niederreiter in an overtime thriller, while Norway stuns a veteran-heavy Canadian squad to leave Winnipeg’s stars empty-handed in Zurich.
Members of the Winnipeg Jets played out the final day of the World Championship in Zurich - with various levels of success.
Ville Heinola - a 2019 first round pick, who became the first player born in the 21st century to score an NHL point, but has since been unable to crack the Jets' six-man defensive unit - took home the gold with Finland on Sunday.
Photo courtesy of Ville Heinola via InstagramHe did so by beating Nino Niederreiter and the host Switzerland. It was a back-and-forth game that needed overtime to determine a winner. Switzerland, which went a perfect 9-0 at the tournament heading into the final, faltered in extra time, as Konsta Helenius scored the golden goal, giving Heinola something to be proud of following another tumultuous year in the Winnipeg press box and with the Manitoba Moose.
For Niederreiter, it was his fifth-straight gold medal game to which his team came out on the losing end. In fact, the Swiss have now played 250 minutes of gold medal game hockey without scoring a goal - an unbelievable statistic that only makes Sunday's loss sting that much deeper.
On the other side of the coin, Canada faced off in the bronze medal game earlier in the day against a dominant Norway team.
The Norwegians took it to the Canadians early, pulling ahead 2-0 through 40 minutes of play. But it was a late-game effort from Robert Thomas, who single-handedly put his country on his back, scoring both goals to tie the game - with the game-tying goal coming with just seven seconds left in regulation.
But it was all for naught, as Norway got the overtime victory just a handful of minutes later, kicking Mark Scheifele, Dylan DeMelo and Gabriel Vilardi to the curb in the process.
After what looked to be a lengthy off-season for the majority of the Jets following an unexpected drop from the post-season race, the five players suiting up in the medal round will finally get some time away from the game, before preparations begin for the 2026-27 NHL season.
For Heinola, next year will likely be spent elsewhere, while Scheifele, Vilardi, DeMelo and Niederreiter are all locked in under contract with Winnipeg this fall.