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2026 World Junior Hockey Championship: Canada dispatches Slovakia on the way to the semis

The Canadians exploded for five goals in the opening period and coasted to the semifinals.

Posted on by Justin Blades
Jan 2, 2026; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Slovakia goalie Ala Lendak (30) stops Canada forward Tij Iginla (11) on a breakaway during the second period in the quarterfinals of the 2026 IIHF World Junior Championship at 3M Arena. | Credit: Nick Wosika-Imagn Images

The fourth quarter-final of the 2026 World Juniors featured Canada taking on Slovakia. As Group B winners, Canada was the favourite, but the Slovaks had provided proper tests to some other gold medal contenders leading up to the match.

The Canadians had the better start to the game, registering the first four shots on net with the line of Michael Hage, Gavin McKenna, and Brady Martin working a cycle to generate a couple of scoring chances. The effort and will was there, but they couldn’t get a puck beyond Michal Pradal to take advantage.

After the first commercial break, the Slovaks settled down a bit to stop the steady stream of pucks at their goaltender. They then started getting offensive-zone time of their own, testing Canadian goaltender Jack Ivankovic on several occasions.

Another hard-working shift by Hage’s line forced Slovakia to play a long shift in its end, and Canada was able to score after that unit headed off. Cole Beaudoin deflected an attempted clear to the slot where Keaton Verhoeff collected it. The defenceman’s shot was stopped, but Cole Reschny was standing at the top of crease to fire in the rebound.

The goal may have opened the floodgates as the lead was doubled moments later. Tij Iginla entered the zone and worked his way to the faceoff dot, then snapped a shot to the far-side top corner before Pradal had a chance to react.

After Iginla created a goal with his hands, Michael Misa generated one with his feet. He worked into the zone to get Canada set up, and immediately received a return pass from Zayne Parekh along the boards, He pushed his way to the slot, and fired in the 3-0 goal.

A third goal on 11 shots was the end of Pradal’s night, as backup Alan Lendak came in. It had no impact on slowing Canada down, as Sam O’Reilly scored on the next shot.

Canada got a power play on a high-sticking call, and that allowed the Hage trio to go to work. Hage zipped the puck across the ice to McKenna, who immediately passed it diagonally up to the side of the crease, and all Martin had to do was corral it and deposit it in the empty net.

Seventeen seconds into the second period, Parekh was hooked to put the dangerous Canadian power play back on the ice. There were plenty of good setups, but the final finish was lacking to add another goal.

With the puck consistently in Slovakia’s zone and Canada with a sizable lead to work with, the players just tried to boost their offensive totals with shots and chances. There wasn’t much else the team could do with a big lead and no really pressure defensively.

Lendak did well to keep Canada off the boards for about half of the second period, but Porter Martone finally solved him at the 9:31 mark.

Beaudoin added a seventh soon afterward as O’Reilly missed his chance at the top of the crease but was then a perfect screen for O’Reilly on the rebound.

It got to the point that no Canadian player wanted to shoot, and it essentially became a game of keepaway in the offensive zone. It was just a case of both teams waiting for the clock to drain and put an end to the second period.

The Slovaks finally got something to celebrate late in the middle frame when Jan Chovan got the puck through a screen to beat Ivankovic for the first time.

On the goal, Harrison Brunicke had taken a high stick that went uncalled. On a shift soon afterward, Ivankovic was backed over in the net by Tobias Pitka and went down. Suddenly the game developed some animosity where there had been none all night, adding a different tone to proceedings heading into the intermission.

The third period began with Lukas Tomka being informed that he was done for the game with a misconduct, and that seemed to send the message that the post-whistle scrums wouldn’t be tolerated. The temperature of the game lowered from there as the two teams just wanted to play out the final 20 minutes.

A four-minute penalty on Parekh for high-sticking gave Canada something to play for late in the frame, and they killed it off with few chances of any quality for Slovakia. With that penalty killed, the final seconds played out on a 7-1 win for Canada.

The Slovaks will officially finish eighth of the 10 teams in the tournament with the loss, Canada advances to the semifinal stage on Sunday when it will play Czechia.

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