Canada rallies past stubborn Sweden in OT to reach semis at women's hockey worlds

By the skin of its teeth, Canada is into the semifinals at the women's hockey world championship.

The two-time defending champions survived a determined Sweden squad with a 3-2 overtime win on Thursday in Brampton, Ont. They'll play Switzerland in the semifinals on Saturday after the team's 5-1 win over Japan in Thursday's late game. Medal games are slated for Sunday.

Sarah Nurse sent the CAA Centre crowd into a frenzy with her OT winner, taking a cross-ice pass from linemate Sarah Fillier and burying it from the top of the circle past Sweden goalie Emma Soderberg, who made 51 saves in a losing effort.

Nurse played the part of 'Captain Clutch' Marie-Philip Poulin, though the three-time Olympic gold medal-winning scorer certainly had her chances in the extra frame.

"I almost jumped over the boards like three different times when Pou had the puck, but it was one of those things where it felt like it was going to come. Some days you feel like you don't have it, but today wasn't one of those days," Nurse said.

Sweden, which hadn't scored against Canada since 2004, evened things with 9.2 seconds remaining in regulation, the second straight game in which Canada surrendered a late lead in the dying seconds.

A mad scramble in front of the net saw the puck filter to Sweden's Hilda Svensson in the slot, and she made no mistakes.

WATCH | Nurse's OT winner sends Canada past Sweden, into semis:

Svensson, 16, is part of a promising young Swedish core that also includes Soderberg, 25, and fellow forwards Lina Ljungblom, 21, and Hanna Olsson, 24. Svensson, Ljungblom and Olsson were the tournament's leading scorers entering play on Thursday.

Canada beat Sweden 11-0 at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, then 3-0 at worlds last August.

"It's the beauty of women's hockey. It's what we want is to push to get better and every country is getting better, that's what we want," Poulin said. "Hockey is hard, every country is getting better and that's fun. And that's why we tried so hard."

Still, Svensson's goal was just Sweden's third shot of a period that was otherwise a Canadian clinic in playing with the lead, having spent nearly the entire frame in the Swedish zone.

Canada outshot Sweden 48-14 in regulation, and 6-0 in overtime. It was largely Soderberg that kept Sweden close enough to send the game to OT in the first place.

"She was great. She made unbelievable saves. She stepped up for her team. The whole team played well," Poulin said.

Soderberg, 25, said she knew she had to be ready for a game against Canada.

"I'm pretty happy with how I played. I think I got into a nice flow. I think I could have made a save on one of those goals but there's nothing you can do about that now," she said.

No easy games

Canada also blew a late lead on Monday against the U.S., giving up two goals in the final 40 seconds to allow the Americans to force the extra frame and eventually a shootout.

Nurse and Poulin both pointed to Canada's starts, which on Thursday featured a sleepy 10 or so minutes before Blayre Turnbull scored the icebreaker, as something that needs to improve. But both commended the team's fortitude.

"It'd be easy to maybe break down and be stressed there in front of the home crowd but we didn't and we take that as a challenge, that resiliency. It's not easy, at the world championship there's not one game that's gonna be easy," Poulin said.

Head coach Troy Ryan said there was no need for a speech at the end of regulation.

"The work that they do as a group day in and day out and how they are as teammates, that surfaces in those difficult times. A lot of people talk about the messaging or what was being said on the bench, nothing needs to be said on the bench," he said.

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Turnbull opened the scoring with a beauty, dashing down the right side and putting moves on both a Swedish defender and Soderberg before finishing through the five-hole.

Nurse doubled Canada's lead on a second-period power play, firing a snapshot above Soderberg's blocker.

Ljungblom cut the lead to one by second intermission with her tournament-leading seventh marker.

Despite its best efforts, Canada could not beat Soderberg for an insurance marker, continuing a surprising trend of having a tough time finding the back of the net for a team that set the Olympic scoring record in 2022.

"Teams are getting better, teams' goalies are getting better and every tournament is different so I don't think there's one thing to pinpoint, but we definitely have to find ways to generate goals," said defender Jocelyne Larocque. "We're definitely generating offence but we're not able to make that final touch a lot of times."

Finally, in overtime, Canada broke through for its third and decisive goal.

"Once you're in that moment, you're on the ice, you trust your instincts, you've been playing hockey for 20 years," Nurse said.

Saturday's other semifinal will pit the U.S., which beat Germany 3-0, against the Czech Republic, who took down Finland 2-1.

The latter result provided another slight upset, with Finland having won silver as recently as 2019. But it's the second straight tournament in which the Czech Republic, who won bronze in 2022, have had the upper hand.

"It's funny because a lot of times we'll talk that it's not as close as people would like it to be, but when it gets closer everybody complains that the people at the top are not doing their job, so I think we should celebrate that the games are close and everybody's battling," Ryan said.