ÖSTERSUND, Sweden — Alex Law scored twice, including the overtime winner, as Canada edged Finland 3-2 in a women’s world under-18 hockey championship semifinal Saturday.
Canada will face Sweden for the gold medal Sunday.
Law’s OT winner at 7:32 was first credited to defender Ava Murphy, although it was Law’s wrist shot that sneaked under Kerttu Kuja-Halkola.
Murphy skated the puck from the defensive to offensive zone and dished to Law in open ice. Law’s shot got underneath Finland’s goalie, who kicked the puck into her own net to end three-on-three overtime.
Law and Abby Stonehouse scored in regulation time for Canada with assistant captain Emma Pais contributing a pair of assists for the defending champions.
Canadian goaltender Hannah Clark stopped 24 shots for the victory.
Sanni Vanhanen and Paulina Salonen scored for the Finns. Kuja-Halkola made 38 saves in the loss.
“I think we came out a little flat. The Finns came out flying, had a great forecheck going that really took away our speed,” said Canadian coach Courtney Birchard-Kessel. “It took us a while to settle in and get our feet under us, but we found a way to win.
“This is such an amazing experience with your family watching back home, it is so exciting. Heading into the gold-medal game, I think it is an incredible experience; it is going to be packed playing against Sweden. It is something our players will remember for the rest of their lives.”
Canada is chasing repeat gold in the women’s under-18 tournament after beating the U.S. 3-2 in last year’s final in Madison, Wis.
The Canadians killed off a too-many-player penalty starting at 2:10 in overtime in Saturday’s semifinal. Canada took eight minor penalties in the game to Finland’s one.
Canada trailed 2-1 in the third period when Law scored an equalizer at 12:39. She drove in from the wing and slung a wrist shot over Kuja-Halkola’s right shoulder.
Salonen scored a go-ahead goal for the Finns just eight seconds into the third period.
Finland won the faceoff and pushed the puck into the offensive zone, where Salonen took advantage of a broken play to beat Clark with a low shot stick side.
The Finns trailing 1-0 after the first period, Vanhanen drew her team even at 11:56 of the second. She converted a rebound following Julia Schalin’s effort driving the net from the corner.
Stonehouse scored her second goal of the tournament tipping a Pais shot from the point by Kuja-Halkola at 9:47 of the opening period.
“As a team it was not a perfect performance, but through the 60-plus minutes we had perfect effort at least,” said Law. “We gave it our all, worked as a team, moved the puck and it ended up working out in our favour.
“We have put so much work into this, (playing for gold) is something we have all dreamed about. We need to move the puck quickly, skate hard and have positive energy on the bench and I think we can take home gold.”
Sweden doubled the U.S. 2-1 in Saturday’s earlier semifinal to advance to the championship game for just the second time in the 15-year history of the tournament.
The U.S. fell short of the final for the first time and plays Finland for bronze Sunday.
Canada topped Pool A at 3-0 to earn a bye to Saturday’s semifinal.
The Canadians had lost 4-3 to the Finns in a pre-tournament game, but thumped them 8-0 in the preliminary round.
Felicia Frank made 37 saves in Sweden’s net in the semifinal win over the U.S.
Defenders Mira Junkager and Astrid Lindeberg scored for the Swedes, and Lucia Digirolamo countered for the U.S.
Sweden reached the final in 2018 when they lost 9-3 to the Americans in Dmitrov, Russia.
Czechia doubled Slovakia 6-3 in the fifth-place game.
Slovakia’s Nela Lopusanova, who is just 14 years old, was the tournament leader in scoring with nine goals and three assists in five games.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 14, 2023.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
