(Brampton) Despite unequivocally dominating, it wasn’t necessarily the easiest game for a team of Canada’s caliber.
Sarah Fillier scored two goals and added an assist as Canada overcame Japan 5-0 on Saturday at the World Women’s Hockey Championship. Canada had 60 shots on goal, making it almost impossible for Japan to get out of their own zone for most of the night.
“These games can be tough to play,” said Canada coach Troy Ryan. They can sometimes lead to individual play, but that hasn’t happened.
PHOTO COLE BURSTON, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Jamie Lee Rattray (47) reaches out to her teammates after the win.
“I think there were little moments where we made that mistake, and I think what stopped us was that every time we played individually, we ended up losing the puck. and take a penalty. That’s what we needed to prevent it from happening again. »
Brianne Jenner, Sarah Nurse, with a goal and an assist, and Natalie Spooner also scored for Canada in front of an announced crowd of 3,755 at the CAA Centre. Emerance Maschmeyer made 11 saves in his first start of the tournament.
I thought our habits were great and sometimes it’s hard to play a full 60 minutes with good habits when you spend so much time on offense, but I thought our team did it really well.
Troy Ryan, Canada coach
It was only the second time the two teams had met since 2000, the last time being a 9-0 victory for Canada at the World Championship last year.
Canada improved to 8-0 against Japan. The Canadians have beaten Japan 96-0 since the inaugural Women’s World Championship in 1990.
Miyuu Masuhara stopped 31 shots for Japan, while Riko Kawaguchi saved 24 shots in relief. The Japanese were down 9-2 in their back-to-back defeats – to the United States and Czechia – ahead of Saturday’s game.
United States Monday
Canada will face arch-rivals USA on Monday in Group A. The two teams have met in the gold medal final at the last two World Championships and the 2022 Beijing Olympics, and Canada walked away with gold each time.
With Canada missing a number of scoring opportunities around the net on Saturday, Nurse pointed to the execution in front of the net – or lack thereof – as an area for improvement on Monday.
“I think it’s our game in front of the net that needs to be improved,” Nurse said. We’ve been pretty good with our presence in net, hurting the goaltender, but when the pucks are there, we have to find ways to get them into the back of the net.
“We have some of the best players in the world in goal, so I’m sure we’ll get there. »