The World Junior Championship offers one of the few stages for Team Canada and Team USA to show off their bad blood. Last night, the two faced off in the biggest non-medal game of the tournament with the USA taking home a 4-1 victory.
The game was 2-1 USA, with goals from Cole Hutson and Danny Nelson for the U.S. and Bradly Nadeau for Canada, and Easton Cowan took an incredibly undisciplined penalty which put Team USA on the powerplay.
On the ensuing powerplay, New York Islanders 2024 first-round pick Cole Eiserman buried one past Canadian netminder and LA Kings prospect Carter George.
During his celebration, he took the opportunity to mock Cowan while he was on the way to the bench making it clear that Canada was going to lose because of his penalty.
To make things worse, Cowan had a brutal turnover in the defensive zone during the empty net situation which allowed Team USA to ice the game and win 4-1.
Now, both USA and Canada will be moving on to the elimination rounds and if Canada or the U.S. were to lose, they would go home medal-less for the second year in a row.
Canada certainly needs to look in the mirror and play disciplined hockey because now anything can happen. One game like this one or the one versus Latvia, and Canada will go home empty-handed.