Team USA hockey won its second-straight gold medal at the IIHF World Junior Championship with a stunning 4-3 overtime victory against Finland.
The annual international tournament for athletes 20 years old or under, but typically played by teens, saw the American team smash Switzerland (7-2) in the quarterfinals and the Czech Republic (4-1) in the semifinals before 18-year-old Teddy Stiga scored the game winner late last night.
What stole the show, however, was video of the young athletes belting out “The Star-Spangled Banner” as their flag was raised alongside the Finnish and Czech colors.
With their hair slicked back and excitement pouring out of their bodies, the boys sang the national anthem arm-in-arm as the camera occasionally cut to patriotic fans in the stands.
The championship was Team USA’s seventh gold medal overall, winning their first in 2004. This was the first time Team USA has won back-to-back gold, as well.
Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
‘There’s no system for tired hockey players.’
As team captain, Ryan Leonard lifted the championship trophy, and some of the crowd at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa, Canada, booed and jeered at their rival opponents.
This was a particularly rough year for Team Canada, after its world junior team made history for becoming the first Canadian team since 1981 to place outside the top four teams in the tournament in consecutive years.
Canada has won 20 gold medals in total, with back-to-back titles of its own in 2022/2023 and two separate five-year championship runs between 1993-1997 and 2005-2009.
The Canadian squad was heavily criticized for not practicing enough, and as reported by Sportsnet, they didn’t practice after a loss to Latvia, a loss to the United States, and also on the day of their last game where they lost 4-3 to the Czechs.
Coach Dave Cameron said this was due to the team being “exhausted.”
“There’s no system for tired hockey players,” Cameron said.
This was truly a bizarre excuse given that all their opponents played the same amount of games and had to travel from locations like Latvia, Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Players are also mid-season in their professional or junior hockey careers.
A notable omission from the tournament was Russia, which has won gold four times since the fall of the Soviet Union (which won eight of its own), after being banned over the Russian-Ukraine War in 2022. Russia was consistently one of the top contenders in any international ice hockey tournament before it was kicked out of competitions by the International Ice Hockey Federation.
Belarus was also banned.
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Fearless, Hockey, World juniors, Team usas, Sports
