3 Takeways From USA’s 6-3 Win Over Germany at 2026 World Juniors

The opening day of the 2026 World Junior Championship on Friday, Dec. 26, was full of goals, especially when USA took on Germany that evening. It was a loud arena in St. Paul, Minnesota, as the USA looked to win gold for a third consecutive year. They started out strong, and even though Germany tried to fight back, USA kept scoring. 

It looked close at the beginning of the second period, but by the end, USA had pulled back to a three-goal lead, and Germany struggled to get any scoring going. The three goal second period for USA ended the scoring for the game as USA took the win 6-3 over Germany. In this article, we’ll take a look at a few takeaways for the USA, starting with their goal scoring.

USA Goals Galore 

There was no shortage of goals for USA as they had five different goal scorers, with one player getting two goals, and that was Will Zellers. The other goal scorers were Max Plante, Chase Reid, Will Horcoff, and Cole Eiserman. The one thing these scorers had in common was the way they scored. Quite a few of the goals were rebounds that were knocked in after the initial shot was saved. 

That truly shows USA knows how to crash the net and wait for things to happen. It doesn’t hurt that they also have some snipers on their team, which is how the shots made it there in the first place, and a few of the goals were strong shots that blew past the goaltender as well. Regardless of how the goals went in, USA had scorers all throughout their lineup, and it paid off.