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MILAN — If and when Jordan Binnington is picked for Team Canada at the 2028 World Cup of Hockey at age 34, don’t bother questioning it. Don’t bother caring about his regular-season numbers either, whatever they are.
Because one year after making all the stories questioning Canada’s goaltending look silly at 4 Nations, Binnington did exactly the same thing in his country’s Olympic opener on Thursday, a 5-0 win over Czechia that was nowhere near as easy as it looked on the scoreboard.
Actually, if it wasn’t for Binnington’s superb performance in nets, the Canadians may well have been in trouble. For chunks of this game, including much of the first period, Czechia looked like it was on even footing with the gold-medal favorites, holding up to Canada’s physicality and generating chances. Even after Macklin Celebrini scored late in the first settling Canada’s nerves, the Czechs kept on coming.
The turning point wasn’t until early in the second, when Binnington turned aside terrific look from David Pastrnak off Tomas Hertl’s rebound 3:30 into the second — one of a handful of grade-A chances Czechia’s best player couldn’t convert — and Sidney Crosby’s line promptly went down the other way. A few dominant Canada shifts later it was 2-0, Mitch Marner to Mark Stone, and the Czechs never looked like they were in the game again.
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