Denmark's players celebrate beside Canada's Damon Severson, right, after winning the group A Hockey World Championship match between Canada and Denmark in Helsinki, Finland, Monday May 23 2022.Martin Meissner/The Associated Press
Denmark beat Canada in the men’s world hockey championship for the first time with a 3-2 victory Monday.
Mathias Bau’s power-play goal at 12:11 of the third period gave Denmark a 3-1 lead and stood up as the game-winner at Helsinki Ice Hall.
Ryan Graves scored at 16:09 to pull Canada to within a goal, but the Canadians couldn’t muster an equalizer with goaltender Chris Driedger pulled for an extra attacker.
Canada and Denmark, both 4-2, were tied for third in Group A behind Switzerland (6-0) and Germany (5-1).
The top four teams in each pool advance to the quarter-finals.
The Canadians close out the preliminary round against France (1-1-0-4), while the Danes finish against Slovakia (3-3) on Tuesday.
“They played a good game and were really good defensively, but we need to find ways to score goals, and battle in front of the net to give ourselves scoring chances,” said Canadian centre Nicholas Roy from Amos, Que.
“We need to regroup now. We have another game tomorrow, so we will look at the video and look at what we can do better. We need to come ready to play tomorrow because the tournament is not over.”
The closest Denmark had come to beating Canada previously was a 2-2 tie in 2003.
“It is important for us to realize that every team is going to play their best against us,” Canadian head coach Claude Julien said. “We may not have been as prepared as we should have been in the first period, and we fell behind 2-0 and had to play catch-up.