2. Crosby’s availability<\/p>\n
Arguably the biggest question in Canada right now is will Sidney Crosby<\/a> play in the gold medal game?<\/p>\n There is no definitive answer yet.<\/p>\n Crosby is nursing a lower-body injury and missed a 3-2 victory against Team Finland in the semifinals on Friday. He was injured in the second period against Team Czechia in the quarterfinals Wednesday.<\/p>\n Canada had a closed practice Saturday, but coach Jon Cooper said Crosby skated and a determination on his availability will be made Saturday night.<\/p>\n Following the game against Finland, Cooper said Crosby has “got a better chance of playing in the gold medal game than he had playing in tonight\u2019s game.\u201d<\/p>\n It’s wait-and-see when it comes to Crosby, Canada’s captain and one of two players on the team who has won the gold medal twice, along with defenseman Drew Doughty.<\/p>\n 3. Hellebuyck vs. Binnington<\/p>\n Connor Hellebuyck was asked about his confidence level after making 22 saves for the U.S. in a 6-2 win against Slovakia on Friday. He leads all goalies here in each of the major categories (4-0, 1.23 goals-against average, .947 save percentage).<\/p>\n “All-time high,” Hellebuyck said with a big smile.<\/p>\n That’s good news for the Americans, because Hellebuyck will have to do something Sunday he has never done before, something Canada goalie Jordan Binnington<\/a> has done twice.<\/p>\n Win the biggest game of his life.<\/p>\n Binnington did that in 2019 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Boston Bruins with 32 saves in a 4-1 victory at TD Garden.<\/p>\n He did it again last year in the 4 Nations championship game, when he made 31 saves, besting Hellebuyck, who gave up three goals on 27 shots.<\/p>\n Ironically, it was Binnington in goal for the Blues against Hellebuyck and the Winnipeg Jets in Game 7 of the Western Conference First Round last season. Binnington couldn’t hold a 3-1 lead, allowing two goals in the final two minutes of the third period before Winnipeg won it in double overtime.<\/p>\n But that was Game 7 of the first round. It was big, no doubt, but not the biggest game of Hellebuyck’s career. Hellebuyck also won Game 7 of the second round against the Nashville Predators in 2019.<\/p>\n Again, big, but there was no trophy or medal on the line.<\/p>\n In many respects, winning Game 7 in the first, second or third round of the playoffs is equivalent to winning against Sweden in the quarterfinals and Slovakia in the semifinals here.<\/p>\n It gave Hellebuyck a chance to win the biggest game of his life, something we already know Binnington is capable of doing.<\/p>\n 4. USA’s penalty kill vs. Canada’s power play<\/p>\n The gold medal could be won on special teams, and arguably the most important matchup in the game is the U.S.’ perfect penalty kill against Canada’s top-ranked power play.<\/p>\n Team USA is 15-for-15 on the PK in the tournament, including 5-for-5 against Slovakia on Friday.<\/p>\n Canada is 7-for-16 on the power play, 43.7 percent, best in the tournament.<\/p>\n The Canadians have scored at least one power-play goal in all five games, including going 2-for-4 against Finland, with Nathan MacKinnon<\/a>‘s game-winning goal coming on the man-advantage at 19:24 of the third.<\/p>\n However, they did give up a short-handed goal against Finland too.<\/p>\n The Americans have the second-best power play at 28.5 percent (4-for-14). Canada’s penalty kill is 72.7 percent (8-for-11), including getting burned early in each of the past two games.<\/p>\n Czechia went ahead 2-1 on a power-play goal from David Pastrnak<\/a> in the first period of the quarterfinals on Wednesday. Finland took a 1-0 lead on Mikko Rantanen<\/a>‘s power-play goal in the opening period of the semifinals Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2. Crosby’s availability Arguably the biggest question in Canada right now is will Sidney Crosby play in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-490214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}