Maple Leafs prospect William Nylander out for Sweden at world juniors

In the last five minutes of each period, Team Canada lost their patience, took bad penalties, and proved that they weren’t ready to move on in the tournament.

But Canada fell behind 2-0 to Switzerland and had to battle for a shootout win. “I think it’s a learning experience”.

Never mind if Canada actually was good enough to win a gold medal, that was the expectation heading into the event.

The third day of the year will, without doubt, be an unofficial day of mourning across Canada.

Host Finland will face Sweden in the semifinal.

“It can’t not be exciting”, said Virtanen, when asked why he thought the daunting task was exciting.

“I felt really sad today”. The back and forth continued when Marner netted his second powerplay goal of the period making it 5-5. What if Mackenzie Blackwood lived up to the hype?

Just seconds later, however, Thomas Chabot took a delay of game penalty as the puck went over the glass in the Canadians’ zone.

The wheels came off a bit then for Canada, as Ducks prospect Julius Nattinen scored his first of the tournament, and a furious Dylan Strome took a crosschecking penalty behind the Finnish net.

Linus Soderstom led Sweden, stopping 17 shots for his second shutout of the tournament. Felix Sandstrom was in the Swedish net for the final three minutes of the game and turned aside the only shot he faced. “We try to forget those games that we’ve lost”. “We get a different outcome from this game and it’s just another one-game elimination which is the tough part of this tournament”.

For Wilson, watching Canada flame out of a tournament in which it was hyped as a favourite was not particularly surprising.

HELSINKI-As they packed their bags and started to make their way back home unexpectedly early, Team Canada rallied around the notion the rest of the world has caught up to them.

Canadians head home after losing to Finland 6-5 in a close match on Saturday, January 02, 2016. Adrian Kempe, with Sweden’s third power-play goal of the game, and Anton Karlsson made it 4-1 before Mitch Marner gave Canada a glimmer of hope with 5:50 remaining in regulation. But one foot is out the door, and the other foot seems stuck in cement some of the time as teams beat him to pucks that last season he would have swallowed up and got moving in the other direction.

“We know we have a chance if we play well”.

“It’s going to be about getting our game in order and making sure that we come prepared to play 60 minutes”. There’s always guys on bad teams who are great, guys on team not playing well who are better than their numbers and guys who got the WJC flu in the hotel and can barely skate. We’re going to play our game, which is a speed game fortunately and a puck possession game.

Swedish star William Nylander, the older brother of Alexander, did not play.

Hartwall Arena presented new challenges Saturday for Canada, which had played all four of its preliminary round games at Helsinki Ice Hall.

Nylander was the best player in the AHL before his departure for this tournament, but that may be jeopardy if he’s out for long.