Florida Panthers forward Sam Reinhart had hand in three goals as Canada held on to defeat Finland by a 5-3 count at the 4 Nations Face-Off in Boston.
The win vaulted the Canadians into Thursday night’s final against the United States.
Reinhart drew the primary assist on Nathan MacKinnon’s goal, which made it 2-0 4:59 into the first period, and the secondary helper on MacKinnon’s second goal of the afternoon that put Canada up by four 5:03 into second.
Down 4-0, the Finns mounted a late comeback to pull within a goal after Esa Lindell put a shot off the post and in with 6:41 left in regulation and Mikael Granlund scored twice, at 18:20 and 18:43.
Aleksander Barkov collected the primary assist on Granlund’s second goal.
Reinhart picked up his third helper of the game, drawing the lone assist on Sidney Crosby’s clinching empty-netter with 56 seconds left on the clock.
Sam Bennett also saw action for the Canadians. Bennett logged 14:11 of ice time and was credited with four hits.
In addition to his assist, Barkov finished the game with a plus-two rating, two shots on goal, four blocks and one hit. He won 59.3% of the faceoffs he took.
Anton Lundell went minus-two and registered one shot on goal and a hit. Eetu Luostarinen also went minus-two and was credited with two hits. Defenseman Niko Mikkola finished with a plus-one rating, one shot and a hit.
In the night game, Sweden upset the United States, who had nothing to play for, 2-1 to finish the tournament with five points. Canada should consider itself lucky Sweden came up a goal short in its first two games.
Matthew Tkachuk did not play last night. Hopefully, we’ll see him on Thursday. Beyond that, we really want to see him back in the Panthers lineup on Saturday.
His replacement, Chris Kreider opened the scoring 35 seconds into the first period, with the assists going to Zach Werenski and Jack Eichel.
Gustav Nyquist beat Jake Oettinger at 13:39 to tie the score and Jesper Bratt got the eventual game-winner with 56 seconds left in the opening frame.
Philadelphia’s Samuel Ersson made 32 saves to backstop the Swedes to the impressive win after they suffered back-to-back overtime losses.