Team Europe upsets Sweden in World Cup semifinal, will face Canada in final

TORONTO – Team Europe’s players said they relished the opportunity to go further in an international tournament than they’ve ever gone before.

All are made of up of countries that never have played deep in a ‘best-on-best’ event, which made their World Cup semifinal game against Sweden a new experience for them.

They made the most of it in a 3-2 overtime win over the favored Swedes.

Team Europe, which is made up of players not from Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic or Russia have come together quickly in this tournament. This teamwork showed Sunday against the structured Swedes.

“This group hasn’t needed any magic,” coach Ralph Krueger said the day before the game. “There’s a lot of magic just happening naturally.”

Tomas Tatar scored the overtime winner 3:43 into the overtime after the took a feed from Mats Zuccarello in front of Henrik Lundqvist and put the puck past the Swedish netminder. After Tatar scored, the European players mobbed him int he corner and jumped up and down with one another.

They will now face Team Canada in the World Cup best-of-three final series, which starts Tuesday.

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Against Canada, Europe will be a heavy underdog. The Canadians haven’t been challenged much this tournament and have outscored their opponent 19-6. This included a 4-1 win over Europe in the last group round game.

Overall, the game was back and forth with Sweden and Europe trading chances while also trying to stay true to their defensive identities.

With 4:32 left in the third period, Swedish defenseman Erik Karlsson fired a shot on that beat Team Europe netminder Jaroslav Halak from the blueline. Europe defenseman Roman Josi deflected the puck on the way toward Halak. This tied the game at 2-2 and eventually sent it to overtime.

Just 12 seconds into the third period, Tatar followed up his own rebound and beat Lundqvist to put the game at 2-1 in favor of Europe.

In the first period of the game, Sweden pushed hard for an early advantage shooting early and often. They fired 10 shots on goal, but Halak was up to task. Meanwhile Sweden’s defense limited Europe to five shots on goal.

Then in the second period, the game opened up.

Just 2:31 into the frame Sweden struck first. Forward Nicklas Backstrom put a rebound past Halak off a shot by Anton Stralman to give Sweden the 1-0 lead. Team Europe used their coach’s challenge saying that Sweden interfered with Halak, but the goal stood.

With 3:33 left in the second period on a 4-on-4, Christian Ehrhoff found Marian Gaborik in front of Henrik Lundqvist to tie the game at 1-1.

The two teams played one another once before, thought it was in their final exhibition games before the World Cup. Europe defeated Sweden 6-2 in that contest.

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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