MILAN — Macklin Celebrini scored Canada’s first goal in the return of the NHL to the Olympics, and Jordan Binnington stopped all 26 shots he faced in a 5-0 defeat of Czechia on Thursday that showed the tournament favorite is already a well-oiled machine.
“Our intentions were really good with the way we played,” captain and Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby said. “I thought we were physical. We were moving our feet. The execution, sometimes that comes with time. But even other times we did some good things and executed well. Just a matter of building off of that.”
Celebrini, his country’s youngest player at 19, deflected a shot by Cale Makar past Lukas Dostal with 5.7 seconds left in the first, putting an exclamation point on a terrific, back-and-forth period. After Mitch Marner’s saucer pass to Mark Stone for his goal and Bo Horvat’s on a breakaway later in the second, Czechia never stood a chance.
“When you’re playing in the Olympics for the first time, it never gets old, and everybody’s got their jitters,” coach Jon Cooper said. “You know what I liked? I thought we got better as that game went on.”
The handful of times Binnington got tested, he was there to make the save. Before Celebrini scored, Binnington kept it 0-0 by making a left-pad stop on Michal Kempny and reaching out to smother David Kampf’s rebound attempt.
At the other end of the ice, Dostal played well but was helpless to slow down much of the onslaught. There was nothing he could do on the Crosby-to-Connor McDavid-to-Nathan MacKinnon tic-tac-toe power-play goal in the third period.
“Two of the best players ever to play passing it to me is cool,” MacKinnon said. “I didn’t do much for that one. Just blessed to be on the back side. Anyone would have put that in.”
McDavid finished with three assists, including one on Nick Suzuki’s goal that made it 5-0.
Meier scores twice for Switzerland
Timo Meier of the New Jersey Devils scored twice in the third period, 39-year-old national team goaltender Leonardo Genoni stopped all 27 shots he faced and Switzerland shut out France, 4-0.
Damien Riat scored 55 seconds in, J.J. Moser of the Tampa Bay Lightning made it a two-goal lead three minutes in and there wasn’t much to worry about the rest of the way, outshooting Switzerland 43-27.
Brignone back in style
For much of last year, it wasn’t clear if Federica Brignone of Italy could compete at her home Olympics at all, let alone contend for a medal.
She came away with gold in the women’s super-G on Thursday, following a year spent largely in rehab after breaking multiple bones in her leg. She only returned to racing last month.
Brignone shrugged off difficult, foggy conditions to win her fourth career Olympic medal and become, at 35, the oldest female gold medalist in women’s Alpine skiing.
Romane Miradoli of France took silver and Cornelia Huetter of Austria got bronze.
Brignone’s gold was one of four medals Thursday for Italy as the host nation pulled away in the medal count with 17. Norway and the U.S. have 14 apiece, and Norway leads the way in gold medals with seven.
Silver for Kim
For Chloe Kim, it was a third medal but not a three-peat. The American snowboarding star won the halfpipe in 2018 and 2022, but 17-year-old Gaon Choi ended her reign.
Kim was in first ahead of the last run but Choi snatched the lead with a score of 90.25. Kim fell on her final attempt to beat it.
Choi, a South Korean who was mentored by Kim, recovered after taking a hard fall on her first run. She is the first non-American to win the gold medal on the women’s side of snowboarding’s premier event since Torah Bright of Australia at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
13 medals but no three-peat
The most decorated short-track speedskating Olympian in history has yet another medal.
Arianna Fontana of Italy earned her 13th career medal from six Olympics with silver in the women’s 500 meters but missed out on a three-peat in the event she won in 2018 and 2022. Xandra Velzeboer of the Netherlands won and also broke her own world record in the semifinals. There was another Dutch gold minutes later for Jens van ‘t Wout in the men’s 1,000.
In a major upset, Cooper Woods of Australia won freestyle gold in men’s moguls by edging Canadian great Mikael Kingsbury — the sport’s most decorated skier — in a tiebreaker.
American Jessie Diggins overcame bruised ribs to take bronze in women’s 10-kilometer cross-country skiing. Frida Karlsson won her second gold medal of these Games, leading a 1-2 finish for Sweden.
Italian speedskater Francesca Lollobrigida, whose great aunt was movie star Gina Lollobrigida, won her second gold of the Olympics by a tenth of a second in the women’s 5,000.
Alessandro Haemmerle of Austria and Eliot Grondin of Canada repeated as gold and silver medalists, respectively, in men’s snowboardcross.
Germany won the team luge, as it has done at every Olympics since the event was added in 2014.
