Canada keeps cool to 'survive and advance' against Czechia at Olympics

MILAN -- In the moment with time ticking off the clock, the third period draining away, Team Czechia dumping the puck in to kill precious seconds, an upset in the making creeping closer to reality, it was hard for even the most brazen of Team Canada’s players not to at least consider the national nightmare this could have been.

“You can’t entirely avoid it,” defenseman Drew Doughty said. “You believe. You look down the bench, you see the players we have on our team and you know no one is going to quit, and we have a great chance of coming back. But as time keeps ticking, you’re like ‘Holy (expletive), this isn’t ideal.’ But I never stopped believing and look at what happened.”

GAMECENTER SUMMARY: Czechia-Canada

Nick Suzuki made it happen.

Jordan Binnington made it happen.

Mitch Marner made it happen.

Canada made it happen.

“Survive and advance,” forward Mark Stone said.

Canada is moving on to the semifinals against Finland on Friday (10:40 a.m. ET; Peacock, USA [JIP], ICI Tele, CBC Gem, CBC [JIP], SN [JIP], RDS2) after a 3-2 come-from-behind, dramatic overtime win against Czechia at Santagiulia Arena on Wednesday.

What comes next for the top-seeded team in the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 is a story for tomorrow.

How the Canadians advanced is a story that will be told and re-told; a story filled with adversity, including the loss of captain Sidney Crosby to a lower-body injury in the second period. He didn’t return for the third or overtime.

There was no update on his status, but Crosby did address the team between the second and third periods, when the game was tied 2-2, delivering a simple message.

“Go get it, boys,” coach Jon Cooper said. “There was a lot more than that, but he’s a true leader and they don’t want this to be the end of the tournament for him.”

It was looking like it might be after Ondrej Palat scored to give Czechia a 3-2 lead with 7:42 remaining in regulation, albeit with a sixth player on the ice who went unnoticed by the officials.

Canada remained calm, the players doing their best to not get consumed by dreaded inner thoughts.

“The group is super comfortable being uncomfortable and that’s what it is,” Cooper said. “It was calm. Everybody had complete faith in whoever was going over the boards. It just felt like it was a matter of time, it was going to happen.

"We talked about it in between the periods, it was, ‘Nobody stress if it doesn’t happen in the first five, it could happen in the last five.’ That’s the whole point. Every minute counts. That was a big theme going in and sure enough it was the last five.”

It looked like Czechia wanted to bleed every second off the clock, content with dumping the puck in and sitting back, protecting the one-goal lead, avoiding making the mistake that could ruin it all.

“We were able to get through the neutral zone for a couple nice plays,” Stone said.

They made one of them count. Seth Jarvis set up Devon Toews for a point shot with Brandon Hagel providing a high screen and Suzuki in front, stick out to deflect the puck down and through goalie Lukas Dostal’s five-hole to tie it 3-3 with 3:27 left.

“When a country needed a goal Nick Suzuki answered and good for him,” Cooper said.

It all started with a solo forechecking effort by Suzuki, who in that moment said he did something Martin St. Louis, his coach with the Montreal Canadiens, has taught him to do.

“It’s something Marty always talks about, if you’re by yourself and linemates are changing maybe just try to get it in, go forecheck, buy yourself some time for the fresh guys to come out there, and I was able to do that,” Suzuki said. “ ‘Jarvy’ got in there quick for me. Get available, go up to the point and just try to get in front of the net. It was a great play by those two guys.”

There was no time to breathe, though. Just over two minutes later, Martin Necas got free on a breakaway with Toews backchecking. Necas tried to slip it under Binnington’s right pad with his backhand, but the goalie slammed the door with 1:11 remaining.

“I tried to take my ice and play it out, thankfully made the save and our guys were back there for no real second chances,” Binnington said.

Binnington’s next big moment came one minute into overtime, when he came out to challenge and came up with a point-blank save on Radim Simek’s shot from the left hash marks.

“Massive,” Marner said.

Twenty-two seconds later, Marner delivered the knockout blow, knifing down the middle and through Simek, Ondrej Kase and David Kampf so he could roof a backhanded shot into the top right corner of the net at 1:22 of overtime.

“A weight lifted off our shoulders for sure,” Macklin Celebrini said.

Marner said he thought about passing to Celebrini, but he saw two of the Czech defenders cheating that way, so he kept it himself and scored the biggest goal of his life.

“'It' factor, man,” Cooper said. “Mitch Marner has got it.”

You could almost see the relief on Cooper’s face as he talked about Marner, the goal, all of it.

Pushed nearly to the brink, to what would have been a national nightmare, the Canadians found a way.

“Hey, this is the great thing about this tournament,” Cooper said. “This is the Olympic games. The best of the best is here. This is why all the players want to come to this because they want to show who they are and they want to flex.”

Suzuki did. Binnington did. Marner did.

Canada did.