Great moments are born from great opportunity, and with the chance to pull off perhaps the greatest upset in the history of the world junior hockey championship, Latvia did the unthinkable, besting Canada in a shootout on Friday night.
In nine years of playing in the tournament’s top division, Latvia has never sniffed a medal. It started 0-27 at the highest level of the world juniors, securing its first round-robin win in 2022. That victory helped the Latvians record a seventh-place finish — their best ever.
Since then, Latvia has managed just one win in the two tournaments that followed. Until it took the ice on Friday.
Linards Feldbergs was the star of the night, making 53 saves in regulation and overtime before stopping eight rounds worth of Canadian skaters in the shootout.
After Latvia erased two deficits in the third period with power-play goals, the pressure was squarely on Canada to escape with a less-than-inspiring win in extra time. But after a flurry of chances in overtime and seven-and-a-half scoreless rounds of the shootout, Washington Capitals prospect Eriks Mateiko made Latvia’s upset a reality, burying the game-winner in front of the Ottawa crowd.
It was a Miracle on Ice moment for Latvia, which had never beaten Canada at the world juniors before and lost its previous four matchups to the 20-time gold medal winners by a combined 41-4 score.
The loss doesn’t sink Canada’s chances of advancing to the quarterfinals, but it does raise many questions for a group which had already been questioned for roster construction and lost defenceman Matthew Schaefer to injury in the first period.
Once Mateiko had buried the winner, the hockey world took to social media to celebrate Latvia for its historic upset, and to sound the alarm on Canada’s chances of avenging 2024’s podium miss.
Here are some of the best reactions.
