The two Vancouver Canucks forwards at the 2025 IIHF World Championship are moving on to the semifinals.
Conor Garland and Drew O'Connor took on Finland with Team USA on Thursday, with Garland playing a starring role in driving the U.S. to victory. The Canucks winger earned his second player of the game award of the tournament with two goals in the 5-2 win.
The game was a special-teams battle, with just one of the game's seven goals coming at 5-on-5.
Garland opened the scoring on the power play with a pristine catch-and-release wrist shot.
USA defenceman Zach Werenski drove through the neutral zone and chipped the puck to Logan Cooley on the left wing. His long-distance saucer pass landed right on the tape of Garland, who smoothly whipped the puck back against the grain on Juuse Saros as the goaltender tried to cut off the angle.
Finland tied things up with a power play goal of their own from Eeli Tolvanen before the end of the first period, his tournament-leading seventh goal. Finland then appeared to take the lead on a goal early in the second period, but a coach's challenge led to the goal being overturned for goaltender interference.
A few minutes later, however, Patrik Puistola gave Finland the lead for real on the power play, with a shot from the bumper that appeared to take a slight deflection off Garland on the penalty kill.
The two goals — one disallowed and one counted — appeared to wake up the U.S., as they poured on the pressure from that point. Minnesota Wild prospect Zeev Buium tied up the game on a delayed penalty with five minutes to go, then got another power play shortly after.
That's when Garland scored the game-winning goal.
Saros lost his stick on a drive to the net by Cooley, after which Garland out-battled Finnish defenceman Nikolas Matinpalo for the loose puck. Garland played catch with Tage Thompson, then took advantage of the stickless Saros to drive to the crease with no fear of a pokecheck. At least, there was no pokecheck from Saros; defenceman Mikael Seppala swept at the puck, knocking it from Garland's stick and into his own net.
Shane Pinto scored the game's only 5-on-5 goal six minutes into the third period to extend the lead to 4-2 and the U.S. shut Finland down from there, only allowing six shots for Finland in the third period.
Eventually, Clayton Keller scored into the empty net to make it 5-2, with Garland missing the empty net on an attempt for the hat trick.
Garland finished the game with a team-high four shots on goal, and sent another three shot attempts wide. He also led all USA forwards in ice time, playing 18:41.
"This tournament's taught me a lot," said Garland on TSN in a postgame interview, pointing out that these elimination games are like a game 7 in the playoffs. "These are stressful games. It's not maybe as big over in North America, but for us, when you get here and spend a month, you want to win a gold medal, and you want to have your best in elimination games."
Garland now has 4 goals and 9 points through 8 games at the tournament, one point away from tying for the most points by a Canuck at a World Championship.
