Team USA falls to Canada at worlds, but Olympic sweep keeps Americans on top of hockey

Canada got its revenge.

Sort of.

Three months after Team USA stunned Canada in overtime to win Olympic gold, the Canadians beat the Americans, 4-0, in an IIHF World Championship quarterfinal on Thursday in Fribourg, Switzerland.

Canada won this one.

But it doesn’t erase the fact that the United States took home the much bigger prize.

The Americans entered the World Championship as the defending tournament champions and fresh off their Olympic breakthrough, but this was not the same Team USA group that reached the top of the hockey world in February.

The roster included Matthew Tkachuk, one of the faces of American hockey and one of the sport’s premier big-game players, but it did not include the full best-on-best roster that won gold.

No Auston Matthews. No Jack Eichel. No Quinn Hughes. No Connor Hellebuyck. No Jack Hughes, whose overtime goal against Canada delivered the Olympic title. In fact, Tkachuk was the only player on both the gold medal-winning Olympic roster and the IIHF World Championship roster.

Canada, meanwhile, looked like a team that treated the World Championship as an opportunity to make a point.

Sidney Crosby, Macklin Celebrini, John Tavares, Mark Scheifele, Evan Bouchard, Morgan Rielly and Darnell Nurse gave Canada a roster that felt far closer to a statement team than a typical post-NHL-season World Championship group.

And they played like it.

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But before Canada broke through on the scoreboard, the game had its nastiest moment in the first period. Team USA defenseman Ryan Lindgren was ejected after an illegal check to the head or neck on Bouchard, who stayed down on the ice and had to be helped off. He did not return to the game.

Canada eventually took control late in the first period when Celebrini opened the scoring on the power play. Dylan Holloway made it 2-0 in the second, and Connor Brown and Sidney Crosby added empty-net goals in the third to finish off the Americans and advance to the semifinals.

The U.S. never found its footing, which was true for most of the tournament. Team USA lost to Switzerland, Finland and Latvia in group play, while beating Great Britain, Germany in a shootout, Hungary and Austria to claim Group A’s final quarterfinal spot.

Still, the bigger-picture reality hasn’t changed.

The United States remains atop the hockey world because the Americans won when the sport’s biggest prize was on the line. Not just in men's hockey, but in women's as well.

Canada can celebrate Thursday’s result, and it should. Beating the Americans in an elimination game always matters, especially after watching the U.S. celebrate Olympic gold at Canada’s expense.

But if the question is which country would rather trade places, there’s no debate.

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Canada got the World Championship quarterfinal.

Team USA got the Olympic gold medals.

Those are the ones that matter.