Second Canada-USA tilt brings the bad blood to a boil

As in, Dustin Byfuglien, the 6-5, 260-pound Team USA defenceman who came oh-so-close to ending Seguin’s World Cup experience with four minutes remaining in Canada’s 5-2 exhibition win.

Circle Sept. 20 on your calendar, when these two teams meet in the round-robin at the Air Canada Centre.

Before Saturday’s game, Team USA head coach John Tortorella was concerned his team was sloppy in the win Friday night – Canada outshoot the US 43-25 in that game – and wanted to see a more cohesive effort this time around.

The key Saturday was Canada had success around the net, with Tavares scoring twice and Logan Couture, Jay Bouwmeester and Matt Duchene chipping in with goals.

The defense includes Ryan McDonagh, John Carlson, Dustin Byfuglien and Ryan Suter.

The tone started being set as far back as June, when Team USA general manager Dean Lombardi told The Associated Press that he wanted to build a team that could beat Canada. “You want me to elaborate?” “It’s always our expectation (to win), especially when you get a great opportunity to play against one of our rivals back-to-back. That’s one way to do that, but at the same time, it’s feeling them out as well and just knowing what their strengths are and kind of getting a glimpse of what they might bring to the table at tournament time”.

“You can’t do that. you can’t play aggressive, you can’t play straight ahead and you can’t think about just your team unless you get into that mindset”.

Much of what coaches want to see in these pretournament games is special teams finding rhythm and chemistry.

The countries seem to play meaningful games at every world junior tournament now and staged huge battles on the Olympic stage.

The Scandinavian rivals meet again on Saturday in another warmup for the tournament which starts on September 17 in Toronto.

Canadian coach Mike Babcock is trying to find the right fit for everyone, so he did some lineup juggling against the Americans.

“Max is a pretty important player for us and we hope he gets going for us and does some of the things we need him to do”.

“When you read that in the paper, you say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah” …”

Canada plays its final tuneup game on Wednesday, hosting Team Russia.

Captain Sidney Crosby, who was roughed up Friday in a 4-2 loss in Columbus, sat out Saturday while winger Corey Perry played in his place. Holtby left midway through the second period after making 11 stops on 13 shots.

In their final matches ahead of the tournament that starts next weekend in Toronto, the Czechs will play Team North America while Russian Federation faces Canada on Wednesday.

Rasmus Ristolainen and captain Mikko Koivu scored 3:05 apart in the middle period for Finland to cut the Swedish lead to 3-2 after Eriksson netted his two in the opening period and Hornqvist added one in the second. Only moments after Bouwmeester gave Canada a 3-0 advantage at 15:38, Kesler got the US on the board with a shot that appeared to deflect off Shea Weber.