OTTAWA — Czechia will head home from the nation's capital with some new hardware.
Former Barrie Colts forward Eduard Sale scored in the 14th round of the shootout to lead his country past Sweden, 3-2, and claim bronze at the world junior hockey championship Sunday.
The Czech captain beat goaltender Marcus Gidlof on his fifth attempt — and 28th between the teams — with a move to the backhand.
Sale and Jakub Stancl had the goals in regulation for Czechia. Michael Hrabal stopped 32 shots through 65 minutes of action.
David Edstrom scored twice for Sweden, which got 30 saves from Gidlof.
Sale played in 25 games for the Ontario Hockey League's Barrie Colts last season, scoring seven goals and adding 13 assists, before being traded to the Kitchener Rangers.
As a Seattle Kraken prospect, selected 20th overall in the 2023 NHL Draft, he has been playing for the American Hockey League's Coachella Valley Firebirds this season, where he had four goals and nine assists in 23 games before departing for the world junior tournament.
Czechia, which settled for silver at the 2023 tournament in Halifax when Canada captured its 20th gold medal before securing bronze last year in Sweden, has now made the podium at three consecutive tournaments for the first time since Czechoslovakia's dissolution in 1992.
The Czechs, who eliminated Canada for a second straight year in the quarterfinals, opened the scoring on the power play — and the game's first shot — at 3:47 of the first when Stancl one-timed his tournament-leading seventh goal upstairs.
Sweden, which lost to the U.S. in last year's final on home soil has just two gold medals all-time at the world juniors, replied on a man advantage of its own at 12:31 when Edstrom deposited a loose puck for his third.
Sale made it 2-1 at 9:27 of the second when he took advantage of a turnover to roof his sixth before Stancl rang a shot off the crossbar.
Eklund hit the post at the other end, but Edstrom connected on a redirection at 15:40 that found iron, hit a television camera inside Sweden's net and bounced out.
The teams played a clean third and a tepid extra period to set up the shootout.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 5, 2025.
Joshua Clipperton, The Canadian Press
