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St. Louis Blues 2025 World Junior Championship Semifinal Roundup: USA Has Chance To Repeat; Sweden Falls In OT To Finland

lou korac
·3 min read

The St. Louis Blues entered Saturday's semifinals of the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship with seven remaining prospects of the nine that participated with a chance at playing for a gold medal.

Only one remains.

Colin Ralph and Team USA will get the chance to repeat as gold medal winners after USA downed Czechia, 4-1, which boasts Blues prospects Jakub Stancl, Adam Jiricek, Adam Jecho and Ondrej Kos.

And in the first semifinal, despite two goals from Otto Stenberg, Sweden will not get the chance at a repeat gold medal game after it was downed 4-3 in overtime by upstart Finland, despite 46 Sweden shots.

* Finland 4, Sweden 3 -- Stenberg (2023, first round, No. 25 overall) scored twice to give him eight points (three goals, five assists) in six games, and Lindstein (2023, first round, No. 29 overall) had one assist, but Finland would get a overtime goal from Benjamin Rautiainen with 38 seconds remaining in OT to cap Finland's win.

Stenberg opened the scoring early in the second period with this beauty from the left circle 1:22 into the second period:

He would tie the game 2-2 at 18:07 of the second with a fortuitous bounce on a one-timer from the top of the right circle off a feed from Lindstein:

Stenberg tied for a team-high six shots on goal and was a plus-1 in 23:59, while Lindstein was a minus-1 in 27:04.

* USA 4, Czechia 1 -- Ralph didn't factor in the scoring for USA but he was even on plus-minus in 13:31.

Down 1-0, Stancl scored his tournament-leading sixth goal with this beauty at 9:28 of the first period to tie the game 1-1, from the left circle:

Stancl, who had three shots on goal and was even in 19:21, now is tied for the tournament lead with nine points (six goals, three assists) with fellow Blues prospect Dalibor Dvorsky of Slovakia (five goals, four assists) and Axel Sandin-Pellikka.

Jiricek was also even in 20:36; Jecho led all Czech's with four shots on goal and was a minus-1 in 15:37, and Kos was a minus-1 in 7:34.

USA will be looking to duplicate last year's 6-2 win against Sweden in the gold medal game.

* Looking ahead -- So on Sunday, the games are set: Sweden vs. Czechia in the bronze medal game at 2:30 p.m. and for the gold, USA and Finland will drop the puck at 6:30 p.m. Each game will be on NHL Network (US) and on TSN (Canada).