Americans win gold, Czechs earn bronze

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This article was published 06/01/2025 (255 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The United States is golden again.

Teddy Stiga scored at 8:04 of overtime as the Americans battled back from a 3-1 deficit late in the second period to defeat Finland 4-3 and win the country’s second straight world junior hockey championship Sunday.

Cole Hutson, with a goal and an assist, James Hagens and Brandon Svoboda provided the rest of the offence in regulation for the U.S., which secured consecutive men’s under-20 titles for the first time in the program’s history.

Trey Augustine made 20 saves for the Americans, who took gold for a seventh time and will host the 2026 tournament in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. Ryan Leonard had two assists.

Jesse Kiiskinen, Tuomas Uronen and Emil Pieniniemi replied for Finland, which last won the event in 2019 in Vancouver. Petteri Rimpinen stopped 36 shots for the Finns, who suffered their only other defeat on Boxing Day against Canada. Emil Hemming had two assists.

Czechia beat Sweden 3-2 in a 14-round shootout to take bronze. Canada finished a disappointing fifth for the second straight year after being ousted by the Czechs in the quarterfinals.

Rimpinen made huge stops on Zeev Buium, Leonard and Hagens in extra period before Augustine made a nice save on Benjamin Rautainen, who scored the OT winner for the Finns against Sweden in the semifinal, to set the stage for Stiga’s five-hole winner off the rush — his first goal of the tournament — after starting the event as a scratch.

Despite the loss, the Finns won their first medal since grabbing silver at the pandemic-delayed 2022 event when the Canadians secured world junior overtime glory in Edmonton.

Finland beat the U.S., which had nine returnees from last year’s championship roster, 4-3 in overtime in the preliminary round and went ahead on a power play at 7:37 of Sunday’s opening period when Kiiskinen scored his sixth.

Expected to be one of the first names off the board at June’s NHL draft, Hagens made it 1-1 at 12:04 when he scored his fifth off a rebound.

The Finns went up 2-1 when Uronen fired past Augustine’s blocker for his second just 59 seconds later. Pieniniemi added his second at 4:52 of the middle period for a 3-1 lead.

The Americans, who topped hosts Sweden in the final of last year’s event in Gothenburg and have three gold medals since 2021, didn’t have a lot going on, but caught a break when Svoboda’s point shot hit a Finn in front of Rimpinen for his third at 17:38.

Hutson then fired home after cutting into the slot for his third with 28.7 seconds left in the period to tie things through 40 minutes.

Rimpinen stopped Leonard on a breakaway five minutes into the third. The American captain, seemingly in the middle of the action all night, then fanned on a tap-in moments later as the teams played an even period to set up the OT heroics.

Czechia 3, Sweden 2 (SO)

Earlier in the day, Brandon Wheat Kings forward Dominik Petr and Czechia will head home from the nation’s capital with some new hardware.

Eduard Sale scored in the 14th round of the shootout to lead his country past Sweden 3-2 and claim bronze at the world junior hockey championship Sunday.

The Czech captain beat goaltender Marcus Gidlof on his fifth attempt — and 28th between the teams — with a move to the backhand.

Sale also tied the longest shootout in International Ice Hockey Federation history in the 13th round after Otto Stenberg put Sweden ahead.

“He’s the player you want to have on your team, not against,” Czech netminder Michael Hrabal said. “He’s a born goal-scorer. The whole tournament he showed how good he is.”

Sale and Jakub Stancl scored in regulation for Czechia. Hrabal stopped 32 shots through 65 minutes of action.

David Edstrom replied for Sweden, which got 30 saves from Gidlof.

“It’s tough,” Edstrom said. “It’s small margins. They took the furthest step, which sucks because we wanted that medal.”

Czechia, which settled for silver at the 2023 tournament in Halifax when Canada captured its 20th gold medal before securing bronze last year in Sweden, has now made the podium at three consecutive tournaments for the first time since Czechoslovakia’s dissolution in 1992.

“It’s definitely big,” Hrabal said. “Great players coming up, but just still need to work hard. There’s a brighter future.”

The Czechs, who eliminated Canada for a second straight year in the quarterfinals, opened Sunday’s scoring on the power play — on the game’s first shot — at 3:47 of the first when Stancl one-timed his tournament-leading seventh goal upstairs.

Sweden, which lost to the U.S. in last year’s final on home soil and has just two gold medals all-time at the world juniors, replied on a man advantage at 12:31 when Edstrom deposited a loose puck for his third.

Sale made it 2-1 at 9:27 of the second when he took advantage of a turnover to roof his sixth before Stancl rang a shot off the crossbar.

Victor Eklund hit the post at the other end, but Edstrom connected on a redirection at 15:40 that found iron, hit a television camera inside Sweden’s net and bounced out.

The teams played a clean third and a tepid extra period to set up Sale shootout heroics.

“It’s a great dot on his young career,” Hrabal said of the Seattle Kraken prospect. “Three medals out of three world juniors is incredible. The NHL is waiting for him.”

» The Canadian Press