Canada will return from the Olympics without a medal in men’s hockey for the first time in 16 years.
Lucas Wallmark scored midway through the third period and Sweden beat Canada 2-0 in the quarterfinals of the Beijing Games on Wednesday.
Lars Johanssen made 22 saves in front of the net for the Swedes, who will face the representatives of the Russian Olympic Committee on Friday in the semi-finals. Anton Lander added the insurance goal into an empty net.
Matt Tomkins, solid in net for Canada, stopped 24 shots.
Wallmark scored the winning goal when Andrew McBain and Eric O’Dell were unable to get the puck out of their defensive zone. Wallmark recovered the puck, his shot deflected off Tyler Wotherspoon’s stick and beat Tomkins with 9:45 left in the third period.
Canada then tried to put pressure on, but Lander ended the suspense as Tomkins was taken off in favor of an extra forward with less than two minutes to go.
The goal sees Wallmark join Slovakia’s Juraj Slavkovsky as the tournament’s top scorer with five.
The game marked the first meeting for the two countries at the Olympics since the gold medal final in 2014 in Sochi, when Canada shut out Sweden 3-0.
It was also the last appearance of NHL players at the Games.
The league decided to skip the event in 2018 for financial reasons before pulling out this year due to COVID-19 challenges that caused dozens of games to be postponed to December.
Sweden advanced to the quarter-finals in Beijing as the fourth seed, while Canada had to play an extra game — a 7-2 win over China — in the qualifying round on Tuesday. , after finishing fifth out of 12 teams in the tournament rotation.
Canada won Olympic gold with its NHL players in 2010 and 2014 before winning bronze four years ago with a roster of professional players based mostly in Europe.