#canada-national-team

#canada-national-team

Barzal is set to represent Canada at the 2026 IIHF World Championship in Switzerland from May 15 through May 31, marking his third appearance at the tournament and his first since 2022. While he was never viewed as a likely lock for Canada's loaded Olympic roster, the World Championship still gives him an opportunity to showcase his game in a best-on-best style environment and continue his strong history in international competition.

The sport was sent into turmoil last week when Oskar Eriksson of Sweden accused Canada's Marc Kennedy of breaking the rules by touching the rock again after initially releasing it down the sheet of ice. Kennedy responded with an outburst full of expletives. Several other accusations of double-touching followed, and Canada lost its next match against Switzerland before steadying itself to reach the semifinals.

MONTRÉAL, Canada -- Back when he was Melbourne Victory coach, Tony Popovic once described the chance to play the role of villain and ruin an opponent's fairytale as beautiful. If he still feels the same way as Socceroos boss, then Friday evening's 1-0 win over Canada might have been one of the most magnificent victories that he's been a part of. Canada's meeting with Australia at Montréal's Stade Saputo was supposed to be a homecoming and a celebration.

"Everything was leading to this. She was born for this," her former Penn State University head coach Erica Dambach told BBC Sport. "Yes, it's happened young, but it hasn't happened without years of preparation to get into this environment. "Sometimes when it happens to young players, it comes on quickly and maybe they've got six months to deal with the emotions and the media training. Liv has been experiencing this stuff since she was 15 years old."

Despite both Canada and Puerto Rico having already clinched a 2025 AmeriCup quarterfinals berth, there was still plenty of incentive for the SMNT to win their final Group B contest. With the way the rest of the tournament was shaking out (including the USA suffering an upset loss to Uruguay), Canada had a chance to clinch the top seed heading to the knockout stages, and all but guarantee a quarterfinals matchup against the lowest seeded, Colombia.