World Junior 2015: Canada outlasts Russia 5-4 for gold, ending five-year drought

TORONTO — Team Canada frayed even more than the nation's nerves, yet emerged from a roller-coaster Russian ride with its first world junior gold medal in six years.

Bad memories of Buffalo in 2011 resurfaced during a second-period collapse that saw Canada give up three goals in fewer than 3½ minutes as Russia got within a goal of equalizing. The young men in red settled down in the final 20, prevailing 5-4 to end their five-year drought. One goal and two assists from Max Domi plus singles from Anthony Duclair, Connor McDavid, Nick Paul and Sam Reinhart gave Canada just enough of a margin. Goalie Zach Fucale made 26 saves.

In front of red-clad, raucous crowd at Air Canada Centre, Duclair and Paul scored on Canada's first two shots of the game to chase goalie Igor Shestyorkin to the bench. That staked Canada to a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes.

Defenceman Josh Morrissey, who was named to the tournament all-star team, sprung McDavid for a breakaway that the 17-year-old phenom converted against Ilya Sorokin 5:08 into the second period. That put an emotional charge into Canada and briefly deflated Russia. Domi scored off a wrist shot at 7:22. Five minutes later, Reinhart subtly redirected a Domi shot to open a four-goal lead.

Junior hockey is a game of emotional swings and Russia is a team that Canadians know, from bitter experience, to not count out until the final buzzer. After Canada ran into penalty problems, Ivan Barbashev jammed in a power-play goal off a scramble. Thirty-two seconds later, off a Canadian defensive breakdown, Sergey Tolchinsky completed a 2-on-1 rush to further pare pare the lead. Another penalty to Sam Morin presaged a goal from San Jose Sharks prospect Nikolay Goldobin that made it a 5-4 game with 2:23 left in the period.

The rally evoked Russia's five-goal comeback to stun Canada in the 2011 final in Buffalo. This edition managed to refocus and keep the foe at bay with the likes of Morrissey, McDavid and defencemen Dillon Heatherington and Joe Hicketts helping to limit the quality of Russia's third-period chances. Reinhart also won several faceoffs during the final 90 seconds.

Canada also survived being short-handed at the start of the third period while Reinhart, one of their penalty-killing centres, was in the box.

The Canadian way was not synonymous with the easy way on Monday, but a win is a win when it has been so long since the last one.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.