For the second straight year, Sweden came out flying in the gold medal game to take an early two-goal lead; and for the second straight year, Canada took over in the second half of the game to claim the championship.
On the strength of goals by Jonas Hoglund, Daniel Alfredsson and Andreas Salomonsson, the Swedes had a 3-1 lead with six minutes left in the second period. That's when the momentum turned. Dany Heatley took a long pass from Scott Niedermayer and slipped behind the Swedish defensemen to beat goalie Henrik Lundqvist, exposing what had appeared a safe lead and a strong defensive effort by Sweden. Rob Niedermayer scored 52 seconds later. Canada dominated the third period, with goals by Jay Bouwmeester and Matt Cooke to seal the win.
The Canadians fell behind early in all three medal round games. But Heatley emerged as a clutch scorer in almost every situation, finishing as the tournament's leading scorer and MVP. Also key to the Canadian comebacks were excellent penalty killing, stellar goaltending by Roberto Luongo and a commitment to defense that shut down some of the world's top players.
The United States won the bronze medal with a shootout win over Slovakia. The teams played to a scoreless tie through regulation time and a ten minute overtime period before the Americans prevailed 4-2 in the shootout on goals by Chris Drury, Matt Cullen, Andy Roach, and Erik Westrum.
Team USA also won a shootout against the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals.
American goaltender Ty Conklin was named the top goalie of the competition.
Below are all the results from each round of the tournament.
Other headline from the 2004 World Hockey Championship:
Suspect Goal Sets Up Gold Medal Rematch
Canada Escapes the Quarterfinals
Shocker In Prague: USA Eliminates Czechs
Tournament Format
For the preliminary round, the 16 teams are divided into 4 groups, and play a round-robin format.The top three from each group advance to the next stage, known as the qualification round. Points from the preliminary round carry over, but not all of them: points earned against teams that did not advance to the qualification round are dropped.
Teams in the qualification round are divided into two groups of six, and play a round-robin schedule. The top four teams from each group then advance to the medal round, where they play a single-knockout format to determine a champion.
The last place finishers from the preliminary round play what is called the relegation round, with the two bottom finishers relegated to the Division 1 world tournament for next year.
The top eight teams from the 2004 World Championship automatically qualify for the 2006 Winter Olympics.
Results from the preliminary round and relegation round are listed at the bottom of the page.
Medal Round Results
Sunday, May 9
The Semifinals:
The Quarterfinals:
Qualification Round Final Standings
Group E1) Czech Republic: 10 pts
(5W - 0L - 0T)
2) Canada: 7 pts
(3W - 1L - 1T)
3) Latvia: 4 pts
(1W - 2L - 2T)
4) Switzerland: 4 pts
(1W - 2L - 2T)
5) Germany: 3 pts
(1W - 3L - 1T)
6) Austria: 2 pts
(0W - 3L - 2T)
Group F
1) Slovakia: 8 pts
(3W - 0L - 2T)
2) Sweden: 8 pts
(3W - 0L - 2T)
3) Finland: 7 pts
(3W - 1L - 1T)
4) USA: 5 pts
(2W - 2L - 1T)
5) Russia: 2 pts
(1W - 4L - 0T)
6) Denmark: 0 pts
(0W - 5L - 0T)
Qualification Round Results
Relegation Round
Preliminary Round Results
