Canada tops Finland again to claim world junior bronze

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ST. PAUL, Minn. — It’s not the medal it came here for, but it saved Canada from matching an unfortunate record in its world junior hockey history book.

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Skating to a 6-3 win over Finland in the bronze-medal game on Monday, Canada avoided its first three-year medal drought since 1981.

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It was the second three-goal victory by Canada over Finland in the tournament. Canada also defeated Finland 7-4 on Dec. 31 to clinch first place in Group B.

Forward Gavin McKenna had a goal and three assists, and Michael Hage finished with three assists. McKenna and Hage were two of Canada’s best forwards throughout the tournament. Defenceman Zayne Parekh finished the event with 13 points, besting Alex Pietrangelo’s Canadian world junior single-tournament record for blueliners, set in 2010.

Coming off a heartbreaking 6-4 loss to Czechia in the semifinal, captain Porter Martone said the bronze-medal match was “the toughest game that you can play, probably in the whole world.”

“It’s a heartbreaking loss the day before, and you got to regroup and come back and do it for your country, and I thought we did a good job of that,” Cole Reschny added. “It wasn’t the prettiest, but we got it done.”

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The bulk of the Canadians’ work came early, as they took a 3-2 lead into the intermission after a back-and-forth opening frame.

The Canadians opened the scoring when Hage set up O’Reilly on a 2-on-1, threading a backhand pass through a defender’s skates before O’Reilly went forehand to backhand and beat Finland goaltender Petteri Rimpinen.

Finland pulled even moments later as Arttu Valila snapped a blocker-side shot off the post and in from between the circles, but Canada answered quickly. Keaton Verhoeff found Braeden Cootes alone in the slot, where he finished low blocker side to restore the lead.

The teams traded special-teams goals late in the period. Julius Miettinen tied the game 2-2 on a Finnish power play, beating goaltender Carter George with a one-timer from the right circle, before Parekh responded on Canada’s first man advantage, ripping a glove-side shot from the top of the circle to make it 3-2.

“We’d played against him a lot, so I knew how good he was, but he’s really smart,” said coach Dale Hunter, who saw three seasons of Parekh in the OHL as the bench boss of the London Knights. “He always has his head up, hitting passes, and you see how he shot this tournament. I never thought he had a shot like that. I knew he had a good shot, but it was a dangerous shot.”

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Less than two minutes into the second period, Canada doubled its lead, as Tij Iginla fed Martone in the slot for a one-timer over Rimpinen’s blocker. Parekh picked up an assist on the goal to set the Canadian record for most points by a blueliner in a world junior tournament.

“Special player,” said Reschny, a fellow Calgary Flames prospect. “Lucky enough, we’re with the same organization, the Flames, so hopefully I’ll see a lot more of that in the future.”

Parekh stole the spotlight for more than his on-ice play. He was also a newsmaker in front of the cameras and microphones, making his loud personality known throughout the tournament.

“He’s always making the room smile and laugh,” Martone said. “We were lucky to have him and he had a phenomenal tournament.”

Canada kept the pedal to the floor on a power-play chance soon after, with McKenna firing a perfect slap-pass to the waiting stick of O’Reilly to make it 5-2.

But Heikki Ruohonen pulled the Finns back to within two after he picked up a pass through the neutral zone and beat George under the arm on the blocker side.

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Late in the third period, Canada got some insurance as McKenna played catch with Hage around the Finnish net, with McKenna finishing the play on a wide-open net.

Hage, a University of Michigan sophomore, led all Canadian scorers in the tournament with 15 points.

“He’s played college for a year-and-a-half now, he’s learned to play hard against older guys and … he showed up,” Reschny said. “He’s a dialed guy.”

“Michael is a dynamic offensive player,” added general manager Alan Millar. “He played real well for us, and give him credit in terms of the offensive production, what he did on the power play. Good kid, good player.”

George, replacing Jack Ivankovic from the semifinal, was shaky to start, allowing two goals in the first 12 minutes, but settled in as the game progressed. The Los Angeles Kings prospect stopped 32 of 35 shots in his fourth start of the tournament, all wins.

“Finland put a big push on, which I figured, and he had to make some big saves,” Hunter said.

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Canadian players pose for a photo with their third-place trophy after defeating Finland 6-3 in the bronze-medal game at the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship on Jan. 5, 2026 in St Paul, Minn. Photo by David Berding /Getty ImagesGM gives his postmortem

Millar met with the media after the game and offered his immediate thoughts on what went wrong for Canada in its semifinal loss to Czechia.

“Sometimes you just have to admit that you lost to a team that played better than you,” Millar said. “Are they a better team than us? I don’t know. But last night, they were better than us, and all the credit in the world to Czechia.”

While Millar praised his club’s power play and ability to score throughout the tournament, he acknowledged that Czechia’s big blueline was tough to get around. Defenders Adam Jiricek, Radim Mrtka, Max Psenicka, and Matyas Man average 6-foot-5 in height, and they’re a skilled bunch, too.

“I thought that their back end was a real difference in the game and in the tournament in terms of their depth, their size, their mobility,” he said.

As for his defence corps, Millar said it was lacking someone like 19-year-old Sam Dickinson, a San Jose Sharks defenceman who was still eligible for the world juniors.

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“I think we were really missing that No. 1 guy that you could throw on the ice for a PK, or at the end of the game, that just kind of led you out of trouble,” he said. “We had some guys do it in spurts, we had some young guys in the mix, but I’m not sure we had that true No. 1 guy that we could rely on in certain situations.”

Parekh was the perfect power-play quarterback, but was prone to high-risk turnovers in his own end, as were many of Canada’s top defencemen.

Millar said poor defending in the third period was Canada’s undoing.

“I’m not sure that we got to our best,” he said. “I thought we needed to defend a little bit harder in certain situations, particularly when we made it 3-3, and then again when we made it 4-4. I liked our chances if we got to overtime, but we didn’t get there.”

Millar said he and the rest of the management group would consider making changes to its summer and winter training camps ahead of the next  tournament, scheduled to begin in December in Edmonton and Red Deer, but that it’s too early to say at this point.

“We’ll evaluate everything and make changes, or stay status quo, and do whatever we think is best to get ready for Edmonton a year from now.”

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