Team Canada claimed a wildly entertaining 7-4 victory over Team Finland as group pool play came to a close on Wednesday night at 3M Arena at Mariucci. Brady Martin (Nashville Predators) and Cole Beaudoin (Utah Mammoth) each scored twice in the Canadian victory.
Team Canada wins Group A with a 3-0-1 record and 11 points in the table. Finland places third (behind Czechia) with a 2-0-1 record and seven standings points. With the preliminary round completed, the knockout stage of the tournament will get underway on Jan. 2.
Game Recap
If you weren’t seated for the opening puck drop for this one, you missed a lot! Six goals were scored in the opening 20 minutes, including four goals in the opening six minutes of the contest. Canada’s Zayne Parekh (Calgary Flames) opened the scoring at 1:13 of the first period, scoring off a feed from Porter Martone for a 1-0 lead. Finland’s Julius Miettinen (Seattle Kraken) tied the game less than two minutes later on a shot that beat Carter George (Los Angeles Kings) high above the shoulder to even up the game.
Martin scored his first goal 30 seconds later, sniping a shot past Finland’s Petteri Rimpinen (L.A. Kings) to reclaim the lead for Canada at 2-1. The see-saw swung the other way a minute later, with Oliver Suvanto (2026 NHL Draft eligible) notching Finland’s second goal of the evening to tie the game once again.
Five minutes later, Martin found the back of the net again after stuffing home a loose rebound on the power play for a 3-2 Canada lead. Since leads weren’t safe in this first frame, Finland responded two minutes later on Lasse Boelius’s (Anaheim Ducks) goal for a 3-3 contest with seven minutes remaining in the opening period.
As wide open as the first period was, the second period might as well have been gridlock, highway traffic over the first 10 minutes of the middle period. Tij Iginla (Utah) provided a new lead for Canada at 4-3 with his goal at 9:35 of the second period, while Beaudoin added some additional insurance near the end of the period for a 5-3 advantage. The Finns would not go away easily as Roope Vesterinen scored 35 seconds after Beaudoin’s tally to make the game 5-4.
Beaudoin struck again at 8:20 of the third period for a 6-4 Canadian lead, and Sam O’Reilly (Tampa Bay Lightning) capped off the scoring with a little more than a minute remaining in regulation for a 7-4 final score in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Up Next
The 2026 World Junior Championship rolls into the playoff round now that the seedings are set following preliminary round play. In the quarterfinals round, Canada plays Slovakia, the United States faces Finland, Czechia meets Switzerland, and Sweden faces Latvia. The last-place finishers in each grouping, Germany and Latvia, will face off in a one-game relegation battle on Jan. 2.
