ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) \u2014 Boston College forward James Hagens scored in a 1:03 span late in the second period and early in the third and the United States overcame a two-goal deficit to beat Slovakia 6-5 on Monday night in the world junior hockey championship.<\/p>\n
Hagens tied it at 4 with 45 seconds left in the second, then gave the Americans the lead 18 seconds into the third. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll take them whenever they come,\u201d said Hagens, from Hauppauge, New York. \u201cIt was cool that they came back-to-back like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The United States matched Sweden at 3-0 in Group A play ahead of their New Year\u2019s Eve showdown. In the early game, Sweden had four power-play goals in an 8-1 romp over Germany.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be careful with some things like taking too long shifts or getting stuck on the blue lines,” Swedish captain Jack Berglund said. “Stuff like that can punish us against the U.S. If we have a bad change, bad turnover, they will come with speed. We need to be ready for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caleb Heil backstopped the U.S. in goal, making 26 saves. He’s from Victoria, Minnesota, and plays for Madison in the USHL. Fellow Minnesotans Brendan McMorrow and Will Zellers scored. McMorrow is from Lakeville and plays at Denver. Zellers, from Maple Grove, plays for North Dakota.<\/p>\n
Lee Ryker of Michigan State and AJ Spellacy of Windsor of the OHL added goals. The U.S. played without defenseman Cole Hutson. The Boston University star was injured when he struck in the back of the head by a shot in a victory over Switzerland on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s like lightning in a bottle,\u201c McMorrow said. \u201cHe can make something out of nothing, and in a game like that, too, we could have used him. But you know, we\u2019re battling through it and hopefully we\u2019ll get him back soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tomas Chrenko scored twice for Slovakia.<\/p>\n
In the opener, Swedish captain Jack Berglund, Anton Frondell and Viggo Bjorck each scored twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had, from the start, good energy,\u201d Berglund said. \u201cWe came at them hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Group B at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Adam Jiricek scored at 3:39 of overtime to give Czechia a 2-1 victory over pool leader Finland. Czechia and Canada \u2014 which faced Denmark in the late game \u2014 are tied for second with five points, two behind the Finns. <\/p>\n
Czechia won after Emil Hemming tied it for Finland with 19.3 seconds left in regulation.<\/p>\n
Finland\u2019s Veeti Vaisanen received a major penalty and game misconduct for cross-checking at 1:06 of the first period. Matej Kubiesa scored 46 seconds later on the power play, snapping a shot past Petteri Rimpinen. The Finns spent seven of the first 10 minutes short-handed.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP sports: https:\/\/apnews.com\/sports<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) \u2014 Boston College forward James Hagens scored in a 1:03 span late in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,99,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-377085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}