World Junior daily recap: On to the next

Throughout the World Juniors tournament, we’ll be keeping track of all the action and bringing you all of the results in one place.

Sweden vs. Finland

It\'s the semifinals folks! We kicked things off yesterday with a big rivalry matchup between the Swedes and the Finns, and this was a good one. This one began with a pretty evenly played first period, something of a feeling-out process -- the Finns did have one chance on the power play and a real opportunity to get rolling early, but found themselves instead a bit stifled by the Swedish penalty kill. No one really pulled ahead in terms of chances created, and we hit the first intermission still scoreless.

For contrast, though, the second period is when things really exploded. Otto Stenberg got the Swedes on the board under a minute and a half into the frame, and between that and pretty immediately after being able to successfully kill another penalty, it looked like they might be controlling this game. The Finns weren\'t having this, though -- they responded with a goal from Emil Hemming after the penalty expired to draw back even, and then Jesse Kiiskinen pulled them into the lead with a goal on the power play (at long last) nine minutes later. But the pendulum would swing again before the period was over (and then once more still). The Finns were called for a penalty right on the heels of that goal, and Stenberg scored again on the power play to tie things up again, but this tie was short-lived, and Arttu Alasiura responded with just 21 seconds remaining in the period to restore Finland\'s lead.

This back and forth feeling carried through the rest of the game. The Finns weren\'t able to pull away in the third, and the door remained open for the Swedes to crawl back into this, and that they did, with Wilhelm Hallquist scoring just past the midway point of the period to tie things up again. But neither side could build on their performance, which meant we were headed to overtime in the end. It was dramatic, with first the Finns taking a penalty and giving the Swedes the chance to win it on the power play, but they couldn\'t convert. The tables turned though when Tom Willander took a holding penalty and gave the Finns their own chance on the power play, and they made the most of it -- Benjamin Rautiainen scored to secure the win for Finland and send them to the gold medal game.

Final: Finland 4 – Sweden 3 (OT) Next game up (FIN): January 5, 7:30 ET vs. USA Next game up (SWE): January 5, 3:30 ET vs. Czechia

USA vs. Czechia

The second matchup of the day saw the Americans and the Czechs facing off, and while this wasn\'t a blowout to the degree that the Americans have proved able to muster through the preliminary round, it also wasn\'t nearly as even as that first game of the day.

The US kicked off the scoring pretty early in this one, with Gabe Perreault getting them on the board inside the first four minutes of play, and also settling things down a little for the Americans after a bit of a nervous start (Ryan Leonard taking an interference penalty a minute in and putting the Czechs on the power play). It was a good start to the game for them, but not quite a commanding effort. Jakub Stancl scored later in the first period to tie things up for the Czechs, and suddenly we had a game again.

And it was something of a bend but don\'t break on the whole for the Americans. The Czechs were certainly getting their chances, but the Americans had the edge in goaltending on their side, and it was more a matter of chipping away at it for them, and knowing that Trey Augustine wasn\'t going to make things easy on the Czechs. They didn\'t get frustrated, and just took their opportunities as they came. Cole Eiserman scored the lone goal of the second period, puling the Americans back into the lead, and then Leonard scored early in the third to extend that lead to two goals. The Czechs were really peppering them with chances as the period went on, but Augustine had their number. The Americans seal the win with the empty net goal late in the third, but really, they had this one locked down long before that.

Final: USA 4 – Czechia 1 Next game up (USA): January 5, 7:30 vs. Finland Next game up (CZE): January 5, 3:30 ET vs. Sweden

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