Vaakanainen, Finland Capture Gold at World Juniors

BostonBruins.com- It was a weekend full of hardware for the Bruins' future, as three prospects took home medals at the 2019 IIHF World Junior Championship in Vancouver.
Defenseman Urho Vaakanainen helped lead Finland to gold on Saturday night with a 3-2 win against goalie Kyle Keyser and the United States. Forward Pavel Shen earned bronze with Russia.

Vaakanainen was a workhorse for the Fins in the championship game, playing a team-high 25:08. The 20-year-old averaged 23 minutes, 7 seconds of ice time during the seven games, leading the team in time on ice in five of those contests, including a whopping 29:54 in Finland's overtime win over Canada in the quarterfinals.
The 2017 first-round pick was concussed in just his second NHL game, when he took an elbow to the head from Ottawa's Mark Borowiecki on Oct. 23. Vaakanainen resumed skating with the Bruins the week before the WJC and returned to game action for the tournament's opening contest.
The 6-foot-1, 187-pound left shot also picked up four assists over the seven games.
Keyser did not play in the gold-medal game and finished the tournament 1-0-1 with a 2.95 goals against average and .872 save percentage.

Shen, Boston's seventh-round pick last June, did not factor into the scoring in Russia's 5-2 win over Switzerland in the bronze-medal game, but ended the tournament with three goals and an assist in seven games.