HALIFAX -- This tournament turned ugly over the weekend.
An ugly win for Canada over Germany on Saturday.
An ugly end to the Finland-U.S game yesterday.
All of which serves to make today's matchup between rolling Team Canada and spunky Finland one to watch. Whoever wins will lock up first place and get the fourth-place team in the beginning of the elimination matches leading toward next weekend's medal matches.
After today's games decide the standings, it's one bad game and you go home.
Yesterday's battle between Finland and the United States featured a remarkable rally by the Finns, triggered by a goal that never went in, a game-ending brawl, 180 minutes in penalties and three players, including Finnish star Olli Jokinen, suspended for the next game.
Advantage Canada: They will play a Finnish team minus Jokinen and Anssi Salmela, who ended the game with a broken nose courtesy of American David Backes. Backes will miss the U.S. game against Norway, which will also be key to the standings.
The three are all automatically suspended because they received match penalties - Jokinen for hitting from behind in the first period, and the two others for fighting at game's end - and it is possible further action may be taken on other players on review.
"What happened at the end was unnecessary," said 37-year-old Teemu Selanne, a usually mild-mannered player who found himself in an angry scrum at the buzzer.
"There was some blood, there was some battles - I loved it," said Finnish coach Doug Shedden, a Canadian.
Despite the game's ugly ending, it was a fast, hard-fought match featuring the speed of both the veteran Finns and the young Americans. The Americans had gone ahead 2-0 on goals by Tom Gilbert and Phil Kessel, and the Finns seemed out of it until the third period, when they seemed to transform their play and outshot the Americans 25-7 and 45-22 overall.
Had it not been for the remarkable play of American goaltender Robert Esche, filling in for injured Tim Thomas, the Finns would have run away with it in the third period.
They began their rally with a controversial goal by defenceman Ville Koistinen that the Americans claimed broke through the netting on the side. The officials appeared to review the shot and ruled a goal, but subsequent replays showed the Americans were right. The goal judge has also been suspended for the remainder of the tournament.
"What goal?" American coach John Tortorella demanded. "What goal?"
"You know it didn't go in," Shedden admitted, "but we'll take it. Sometimes you have to get a little luck."
"I've heard about these horror shows involving international refereeing," Tortorella said. "Now I've lived through it."
Tortorella did concede, however, that "We deserved our fate." In the third period, he said, "We didn't have the puck."
Koistinen's phantom goal was followed by a goal by Selanne on a tip, and the winning goal came when the Finns crashed Esche's net and Mikko Koivu hammered the puck in under the American goaltender.
When time ran out on the Americans, they ran the Finns, leading to a long list of penalties and arena workers scraping blood off the ice.
It was not pretty.
Nor was Canada's 10-1 victory over Germany on Saturday - but this was "ugly" in a very different fashion. That was merely a terrible game.
You've got to know you're having a bad day when the scoreboard says your opposition has scored more goals than you have shots.
But there it was early in the third period on Saturday: Canada 10, Germany 0 - with nine German shots on the Canadian goal.
It seemed only appropriate that when Germany finally got a goal up on the board, it, too, was scored by a Canadian - defenceman Dan Hamhuis deflecting a German pass into his own net.
"Too big, too strong, too good," was how Germany's Marco Sturm summed up his team's pounding.
"Right from the first minute to the last, they were just too strong for us."
It was such a dominating show by Team Canada - led this time by the line of Eric Staal, Martin St. Louis and Derek Roy - that it was reminiscent of lopsided Canadian wins in the distant past, though not quite the 47-0 victory over little Denmark back in 1949.
Staal called his night a "breakthrough" for his line, and it included a five-point performance by him (four goals and one assist) as well as by St. Louis (five assists). Roy had a goal and an assist and easily his best game of the world championship.
The five-point performances by the two linemates were one point shy of Eric Lindros's modern record for Canadian teams in international hockey.
"We were outmatched in every aspect," German coach Uwe Krupp said. "It was a sobering experience."
Canadian coach Ken Hitchcock, on the other hand, was delighted with what he saw, particularly in the spreading out of the scoring. All four lines contributed, with other Canadian goals going to Jason Spezza, Dany Heatley, Patrick Sharp, Jamal Mayers and Mike Green.
"We're starting to kick in on more cylinders now," Hitchcock said. "Hopefully, [it's] the start of putting together the complete package - we're going to need it."
Pascal Leclaire will get the start in the Canadian net.
"It's going to be our toughest game yet," he predicted.
Finnish captain Ville Peltonen agreed.
"You can see we don't shy away," he said.
Everyone here last night saw that.
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