Canada Wins Olympic Quarterfinal OT Nailbiter Over Czechs – But Loses Captain Sidney Crosby
Adedokun Waliyu
3 min read
MILAN — Lost all your hair yet? Hockey is a game of bounces, you’ll be shocked to know. It’s all a heart-pounding thrill ride.
And there’s just something about Canadian male hockey players taking on the Czechs that makes for non-stop tension.
Often that’s meant a loss for Canada, but not on this night. Canada walked a narrow path, had to come back twice, but managed to best Czechia 4-3 in the quarterfinals of the Olympic men’s hockey tournament.
How else to explain this run of losses in the world juniors and at the Olympics, too?
After a nervy first period, one they actually ended up coming out of trailing 2-1, the Canadians found a new gear and ended up pummeling Czechs into submission.
The Canadians were always going to need their best players at their best and they got that from Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Macklin Celebrini.
They also got an unexpected tally from Nick Suzuki, promoted up the lineup after Sidney Crosby left the game with an apparent leg injury in the second.
They also got a huge effort from goalie Jordan Binnington and then a thrilling winner in overtime from Mitch Marner, who obviously just needed to get out of Toronto to be a big-game player.
Has there ever been a worse image than seeing Crosby hobbling to the dressing room in obvious pain?
The Canadians could easily have sagged because of the loss, but they took charge in the period.
Celebrini got the call to replace Crosby on the power play and, while the unit took a couple opportunities to get sorted, it did eventually strike through Nathan MacKinnon.
It was Celebrini’s seventh point in just four games, which passed Evgeni Malkin — who had six points in seven games in 2006 — for the most points by a teenager in a single Olympic tournament with NHL players.
There is no doubt about MacKinnon’s will to win. We all suspect he’s a little battered and bruised here, but he’s playing the like the bull he always is: Put the puck on his stick and he just goes.
And the second period was very much in that vein.
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Czechia’s Radko Gudas hits Canada’s Sidney Crosby during the men’s play-off quarterfinal at the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena during the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
Because Canada took a pair of penalties in the first, MacKinnon played just 6:11. In the second he was over eight minutes.
It was a similar story for McDavid, by the way. He was about 5.5 minutes in the first, then over eight minutes in the second as well.
It’s not surprise that Canada badly outshot the Czechs in the second: Canada had 16 shots to just five for the Czechs.
MacKinnon’s goal was a thing of beauty, too, as he re-set himself before shooting, then threaded the needle past two Czech defenders and just finding the net inside the post to the left of Lukas Dostal.
