Finland stuns Canada 4-2, reaches world hockey final

Canada arrived with gold-medal expectations and left with another bronze medal game, undone by one collapsing period and a familiar international standard it could not meet.

Finland erased a 2-1 first-period deficit with three unanswered goals in the second and beat Canada 4-2 in the men’s world hockey championship semifinal, sending the Finns to Sunday’s final against Switzerland and dropping Canada into a match for bronze against Norway. Robert Thomas and Dylan Holloway had given Canada the lead, but the momentum shifted decisively once Finland found its structure and started playing with the lead.

Aleksander Barkov and Konsta Helenius each finished with a goal and an assist, while Patrick Puistola and Aatu Raty also scored for Finland. Justus Annunen stopped 27 of 29 shots, and Finland’s second-period surge, when it outshot Canada 10-3, proved to be the difference. Canada pushed back in the third period and outshot Finland 15-2, but the rally never fully materialized, even after Jet Greaves was pulled with 2:43 left.

The loss carried real weight for Canada beyond a single semifinal. It was the third straight year the country missed the world championship final, a run that also includes the shock quarterfinal defeat to Denmark in 2025. For a roster built around names such as Sidney Crosby, Macklin Celebrini and Mark Scheifele, the mandate was not simply to contend, but to finish. Scheifele called the result brutal because the team came here aiming for gold.

Celebrini said the damage came in the middle stretch when Canada lost its discipline. “There were a couple of mental absences and mistakes in the second [period] that cost us,” he told reporters. Crosby pointed to Finland’s ability to stay organized with a lead, saying Canada had controlled stretches of the game but lost momentum after the second-period collapse.

Finland’s return to the final is its first since 2022, when it beat Canada 4-3 in overtime on its way to the world title. Barkov, now with three goals and eight assists in the tournament, again drove the Finnish attack, with Mikael Granlund adding two assists. The same disciplined Finnish formula that denied Canada four years ago has brought Finland back to the sport’s biggest stage, while Canada is left to answer a harder question: whether bronze would represent resilience, or a standard missed again.