OTTAWA — Three words that we didn’t expect after the completion of Friday’s world junior hockey championship nightcap: Latvia beats Canada.
A 3-2 shootout defeat demonstrated how close the rest of the hockey world has come to catching up to Canada.
“Unbelievable,” said Latvian coach Artis Abols.
It will go down as one of the biggest upsets in tournament history, but Latvia deserved to win. The Latvians competed, had the skill to contain the Canadians and never lost their optimism despite trailing most of the game.
All that persistence showed. Canada beat Latvia 10-0 at last year’s event and had outscored Latvia 41-4 in their previous four meetings at the event, but the visitors had other ideas this time.