WJC day 4 recap: Poehling (once again) rules the day

MONTREAL - It was 12:30 a.m. in Montreal, and Sweden seemed headed for a quick and easy 4-0 win over the United States.

With just over 10 minutes to go in the final frame, Ryan Poehling kickstarted an American counterattack that seemed destined for failure like all the others that came in the first 50 minutes of play.
But that's where the near-impossible happened: Mikey Anderson got on the board with a solid one-timer, with Poehling earning an assist on the play, but Team USA's fate appeared to already be sealed.
After all, how often do you see a four-goal comeback with only 10 minutes left in the game?
Well, Poehling certainly wanted to make that slightly more statistically viable.
He started by reducing Sweden's lead to two when he redirected an Oliver Wahlstrom pass into the opposing net.

He didn't stop there, adding not one, but two more goals to his name - in a span of 13 seconds, no less - in the final minute of regulation.
Not only did Poehling get himself a natural hat trick, but he helped the United States score four unanswered goals in 10:02, with three of them coming in just 6:11 to bring everything back to square one.

Unfortunately, the celebrations didn't last long for the American players, who fell to Sweden in overtime.
Excluding Canada's 14-0 win over Denmark, Poehling is just the second player to record four points in this year's tournament and is now tied with Morgan Frost of Canada with seven points.

His sparkling performance might have almost made us overlook another Habs prospect on the other end of the ice: Jacob Olfosson, who played 15:41, registered a plus-1 differential along with three shots on net.
For his part, Cayden Primeau backed up goalie Kyle Keyser after minding the net the day before against Kazakhstan.
Canada 5 - Czech Republic 1
In Vancouver, Team Canada was playing its second-last game of the preliminary round against the Czech Republic. The first minutes of play were action-packed: after Canada took the lead, the Czech Republic evened things up just 37 seconds later.
The rest of the game went in favour of the host country, who scored four goals en route to a 5-1 victory.
Canadiens hopefuls Nick Suzuki and Josh Brook both had their say in the matter.
Brook earned an assist on Canada's third goal after sending a pass to Jack Studnicka who in turn directed the puck to Alexis Lafreniere, who doubled his team's lead.
For his part, Suzuki got himself involved on the final goal of the game. The 19-year-old may have already gotten us used to seeing beautiful passes throughout the tournament, but he set the bar even higher with a cross-ice feed on which Morgan Frost capitalized to cap the win.
Brook finished with 16:17 of ice time to Suzuki's 14:51, and while the former recorded a plus-1 differential and one shot on goal, Suzuki was even on the plus-minus side and did not register any shots.
Slovakia 1 - Finland 5
Earlier in the afternoon, the Slovakia-Finland game finished by the same score as the Canada one: 5-1.
Jesse Ylonen did not match the offensive output of his potential future teammates, as he was held off the scoresheet for the first time in the tournament.
The winger saw 14:38 of ice time - in large part because Finland got caught with some penalty trouble - and recorded a plus-1 differential after he was on the ice for the game-winner late in the first period. He averaged just under a minute of ice time per shift (15 shifts, 0:58 per).
What's on tap for Sunday
After another busy day for Canadiens prospects, Sunday will be a bit quieter. In fact, only Alexander Romanov will be in action with Russia squaring off against Switzerland.
Schedule of the day
Switzerland - Russia - 8:00 p.m. ET (TSN 2 and RDS 2)