IIHF World Championship: Crosby, Team Canada Take First Two Games Of Preliminary Round Play

Team Canada got a nice boost for the IIHF World Championship when Pittsburgh Penguins ' captain Sidney Crosby decided to take a plane to Switzerland and join the team as another one of the alternate captains . And, even without much contribution from Crosby up to this point, they're off to a good start in preliminary round play. On Friday, Canada beat Sweden, 5-3, and on Saturday, they ousted Italy, 6-0.

After being held pointless against Sweden, Crosby did register a secondary assist in the win over Italy, which came on a second-period goal by captain Macklin Celebrini, which was his second tally of the game. Penguins' defenseman Parker Wotherspoon didn't register any points but had two penalty minutes in the first game. In Canada's tournament opener, the scoring was opened by John Tavares less than two and a half minutes into the game.

Ryan O'Reilly also added a tally before the end of the first to make it 2-0 heading into first intermission. Sweden responded in the second with subsequent from Jacob Larsson and Lucas Raymond (PPG) to tie the game at 2-2. Dylan Holloway responded four minutes after Raymond's goal to briefly restore Canada's lead, but Mattias Ekhlom lit the lamp just over a minute later to knot things at 3-3 heading into the third period.

And that's when Canada finished things off with goals from Connor Brown and Dylan Cozens for the 5-3 victory. Team Canada Keeps Celebrini Captain Over Crosby Macklin Celebrini will remain Team Canada's captain for the World Championships. In Game 2, things got off to a pretty fast start for Canada.