Canada regained a measure of mojo in a 5-0 win over Finland in Olympic women’s hockey Thursday when captain Marie-Philip Poulin took another step toward rejoining her team.
Poulin didn’t participate in Canada’s preliminary-round finale, but skated in the morning. She hasn’t played since sustaining a lower-body injury in Monday’s 5-1 win over Czechia, and sat out a 5-0 loss to the United States the following night.
Her teammates, meanwhile, recovered both scoring touch and defensive stoutness against the Finns that was absent against the U.S. two days earlier.
“Scoring five goals feels great and shutting them out also feels great,” said Canadian forward Darryl Watts. “The game versus the U.S. didn’t go the way we wanted to, but you know we still believe and we’ll never stop believing.
“We have a special group and we have really special leaders and we have Poulin, so we’ll just keep building and keep believing.”
Emily Clark scored twice, Kristin O’Neill had a goal and assist and Jenn Gardiner and Watts each contributed a goal for Canada in a penalty-free game against the Finns. Julia Gosling and Laura Stacey each had two assists.
Ann-Renee Desbiens posted a 17-save shutout in her third start in four days.
“We showed our identity today and really the team that we want to be and how we want to play, which is hard to play against, good stick details, physical and I love how everybody contributed,” Desbiens said.
Sanni Ahola stopped 18 shots for the Finns.
Canada (3-0-0-1) finished second in Group A for a quarterfinal date with Germany on Saturday, when Finland takes on Switzerland.
Undefeated U.S. faces host Italy and Czechia meets unbeaten Sweden in Friday’s quarterfinals. All five countries in Group A and the top three in Group B advanced.
The Canadians and Finns finally played their game originally scheduled the day before the opening ceremonies Feb. 5, but was postponed a week because of norovirus among the Finns.
“We wanted to play this game a week ago, but great, we got another game later in the tournament to make some more tweaks, and I thought it was a great game for us,” Clark said.
“I’m happy that we got to play Finland while they were a bit more healthy and they played a great game.”
Emily Clark tallies twice as Canada blanks Finland in final Olympic preliminary game
Canada had a scare early in the second period when Sarah Fillier jammed her left hand sliding hard into the end boards. She headed for the dressing room for treatment, but returned within minutes and set up Watts for Canada’s third goal.
The defending champions lacked chemistry against the U.S., so their dual purpose Thursday was to win and establish some cohesion in the absence of Poulin.
The Canadians were better at generating offence down low than they were against the U.S., with passing plays behind the goal line creating chances from close range.
“You’ve got to have the mentality of no losses, just lessons,” Clark said. “We took a lot of lessons from last game.”
Canadian head coach Troy Ryan assigned his players specific numeric goals before Thursday’s game, such as Fillier’s line producing six shots from the inner slot.
“It’s just meant to give them a narrowed focus as opposed to looking at the bigger picture here,” he explained. “If you take care of some of those little details, you start to play more to your identity. After the game, it’s an easy conversation to sit down with lines and say this was our target and you reached it or didn’t reach it, and if you didn’t reach it, let’s see why you didn’t reach it.
“It’s kind of random to do it at this point, but sometimes you’ve got to distract them from some of the bigger things going on.”
The coach said he sent a video breakdown of the U.S. game to his players Wednesday and encouraged them to relax and spend time with their families. Some went shopping and “some went to the meal hall for the same old pasta they’ve been having for two weeks,” Ryan said.
“Everybody handles it different and as a coach or an organization, we’ve got to allow that. You can’t try to be like “oh we’ve got to meet.’ It’s just crazy, it’s counterproductive, you meet when you need to meet,” he continued. “I think I have an OK perspective on it and I think our players do as well because they’re experienced.”
