MacKinnon Scores 2, Canada Advances

Photo - Avalanche Twitter

The round robin of the 4 Nations Face-Off is over and former Halifax Mooseheads forward Nathan MacKinnon helped his team advance to the championship game. The NHL decided to hold this tournament, that sees the best players from Canada, Finland, Sweden and USA battle each other, instead of the annual all-star game. 

MacKinnon scored twice on Monday afternoon as the tournament moved to Boston for the final two game days. His markers helped Team Canada to a 5-3 victory over Finland which booked the red and white's ticket to the final match. The Herd alum made it 2-0 for Canada at the 4:59 minute mark of the first period and scored what turned out to be the game winning goal with under 15 minutes remaining in the middle frame. Nathan was also named the first star of the game. Fellow Nova Scotian Sidney Crosby, who is captaining the team, scored an empty net goal to seal the win and picked up an assist as well. 

Canada will play in a rematch against the USA on Thursday night in the final. 

Another forward who played for the Moose during his junior career, Brad Marchand is also suiting up for Canada. He had no points yesterday but the Halifax native did score on Wednesday in a 4-3 overtime victory. 

Photo - Bruins Twitter

Good luck to the guys wearing the maple leaf later this week.

Here are the final prelim round results (W-OTW-OTL-L)
USA             6pts  2-0-0-1
Canada         5pts  1-1-0-1
Sweden        5pts  1-0-2-0
Finland         2pts  0-1-0-2