Heatley-Led Canadians Win World Hockey Championship
May 11, 2004 | Men's Hockey
Former Badger Dany Heatley led all scorers with eight goals and 11 points, earned Most Valuable Player honors and helped Team Canada to the gold medal at the 2004 IIHF Men 's World Hockey Championship, which wrapped up last Sunday. Heatley and the Canadians took a 5-3 contest from Sweden in the title game to earn the country back-to-back world championships.
In the gold-medal game, Canada fell behind 2-0 and 3-1, but Heatley scored to get Canada within a goal at 14:44 of the second period. A goal credited to Rob Niedermeyer, but put into the Swedish net by Swedish forward Michael Nylander tied the game less than a minute later. Heatley then set up Jay Bouwmeester just 20 seconds into the final period for what turned out to be the game-winning score.
His final-game performance was just a piece of Heatley's magic during the two-week long tournament. Named Canada's player of the game twice during the event, his two-goal performance against Finland in the quarterfinals, including the game-winning overtime goal had even hockey's greatest player of all-time, Wayne Gretzky, buzzing.
Heatley also scored the game-tying goal in the 2-2, tournament-opening contest against Austria, a game Canada trailed 2-0. He scored two goals in Canada's 3-1 win over Switzerland and two goals including the game-winning tally in a 6-1 win over Germany.
For the tourney, Canada finished 7-1-1 on the way to gold.
