The U.S. Junior Select Team wins the 2024 World Junior A Challenge title with a victory over Sweden Sunday.
The U.S. Junior Select Team wins the 2024 World Junior A Challenge title with a victory over Sweden Sunday.
The U.S. Junior Select Team is becoming accustomed to winning at the World Junior A Challenge. The team picked up its 10th gold medal in 16 tournament appearances with a 7-4 victory over Sweden Sunday in Camrose, Alberta.
Green Bay Gamblers forward Will Zellers and forward Lucas Van Vliet of the Dubuque Fighting Saints led the charge for Team USA with multi-point nights.
It only took 37 seconds into the first period for Team USA to get on the board first. Van Vliet fired a wrist shot over Swedish goaltender Love Harenstam’s left shoulder, with the Fargo Force’s Reid Daavettila and Brendan McMorrow (Waterloo Black Hawks) picking up assists.
Zellers earned his first tally of the night later in the frame on a power-play opportunity, grabbing a rebound and rifling a shot past Harenstam for a 2-0 Team USA lead. It was Zellers’ third goal of the tournament.
U.S. and Madison Capitols goalie Caleb Heil thwarted a two-on-one opportunity by Sweden five minutes into the second period and denied Arvid Drott to keep the Swedish team off the board.
Zellers struck again seconds later after getting a nice pass from Des Moines Buccaneers forward Ben Kevan to increase the U.S. lead to 3-0.
Sweden finally got on the scoreboard when Morgan Anderberg potted an unassisted goal to cut the U.S. lead to 3-1 at the 8:58 mark of the middle frame.
Just over two minutes later, the lead was trimmed to 3-2 when Theo Stockselius netted a power-play tally for Sweden.
Team USA capitalized on another power-play chance when Youngstown Phantoms forward Ryan Rucinski scored off a pass from Capitols forward Ryker Lee, who picked up his first point of the tournament for a 4-2 U.S. advantage.
Sweden refused to go away, however. Jakob His-Wozniak trimmed the U.S. lead back to one at 6:59. Then, Ivar Stenberg knotted the game 4-4 at 11:25, and it appeared Sweden had captured the momentum.
Defenseman Finn McLaughlin (Fargo Force) didn’t allow that to happen, cutting toward the net 1:21 later and beating Harenstam to regain the U.S. advantage 5-4.
Team USA held the Swedes scoreless and picked up a couple of late empty-net goals from Capitols blueliner John Stout and Phantoms defenseman Luke Osburn to seal the 7-4 victory and earn the title.
The U.S. outshot Sweden in the game 24-21 and capitalized on two of their four power-play opportunities. Sweden went 1-for-4 on the man advantage.
Zellers was named Team USA’s Player of the Game. The U.S. finished the tournament with a 5-0-0-1 record. The team has captured medals in all 16 of its appearances in the Junior A Challenge including 10 gold medals, one silver and five bronze. The U.S. has now won gold in four out of the last seven events.