U.S. shows resilience in win against Canada at World Juniors

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Much like the bus that carried them to New Era Field on Friday, it would have been easy for Joey Anderson and his United States national junior team to skid off course.
Less than 10 hours after the Americans suffered a heartbreaking 3-2 loss to underdog Slovakia at the 2018 IIHF World Junior Championship on Thursday, the bus carrying them to the first outdoor game in tournament history got stuck on the driveway leading to the stadium parking lot.

Puck drop was still three hours away and already adversity had struck.
But on this day, nothing was going to stop this resilient bunch of American kids.
Not a bus that backed into a snowbank and got wedged in.
Not the snowy game conditions that at times, Anderson said, left players not being able to see the puck.
RECAP: [United States defeats Canada at World Juniors | 5 Things Learned From Day 4 of World Juniors]
And certainly not trailing by two goals against rival Canada on a winter wonderland stage in front of a tournament-record crowd of 44,592.
"We don't let things like that get us down," Anderson, the U.S. captain, said with a chuckle after a dramatic 4-3 shootout win. "We thrive on it."
With the Slovakia loss still festering in their minds, U.S. players easily could have felt that the odds were stacked against them when the bus incident occurred before they'd even had a chance to walk into the stadium.

Instead, their spirits were lifted when a group of American supporters grouped together to push the bus back on course.
"That was pretty crazy," said forward Kieffer Bellows, who had a goal in the second period and scored the dramatic winner in the shootout. "Thanks to those USA fans that helped our bus get unstuck coming into the game."
"A lot of credit goes to them showing up on time because of that. Great people here in Buffalo. It had to be 15-20 people, it was all USA jerseys and all just excited. Some had Mighty Ducks names on the backs of those jerseys.
"It was pretty cool."
One disaster averted.
After two periods, another potential one loomed.
As they sat in their dressing room in the second intermission, there could have been panic. The U.S. trailed 3-1. Conditions had deteriorated to the point where workers had to shovel snow off the ice into wheelbarrows and garbage cans during breaks in play in the second period.
"You could have built a snow fort with all the snow they were removing," Canada captain Dillon Dube said.
And yet, there was a sense of calm within the Americans.
"We knew we just needed to stick to the process and the plan," Anderson said. "It had worked before."

Anderson was referring to the gold-medal game in January in the 2017 tournament. On that particular frosty evening at Bell Centre in Montreal, the U.S. came back from two goals down to tie the score at 4-4 before winning the title in a shootout.
On a snowy Friday in western New York 51 weeks later, they followed that same script.
Scott Perunovich and Brady Tkachuk scored in the third period to the game 3-3. Then, in the shootout, goals by Bellows and Tkachuk sealed the victory.
As his teammates gleefully celebrated the historic win, Bellows looked around the stadium and soaked in the atmosphere as the frost-bitten crowd, refusing to be deterred by the weather, chanted "USA, USA."
It did, in fact, remind him of a similar event that had occurred almost a decade earlier on this chunk of frozen real estate.
On Jan. 1, 2008, the first NHL Winter Classic saw the Pittsburgh Penguins defeat the Buffalo Sabres 2-1 in front of 71,217 fans in this venue. That game was also decided in a shootout, with Penguins captain Sidney Crosby scoring the winner.
"It's hard to compare but [yes], the snow was falling and it went to a shootout like '08," Bellows said.
"Today was something that I know those 40,000 fans won't ever forget, and both teams won't forget."

Believe it or not, neither will Canada goalie Carter Hart.
Hart was the losing goalie in Canada's gold-medal game shootout defeat to the Americans in January. And he was saddled with the loss this time, too.
Still, he wouldn't have traded this experience for anything.
OK, maybe a win. But that's it.
"Obviously I wish the outcome would have been different," he said. "But to play in something like this was a thrill. And to have my family here, it's something I'll never forget.
"The gold-medal game is behind us. This year is this year. This is just the preliminary round. Everything is still ahead of us."
Indeed, a win in any fashion against Denmark on Saturday will guarantee Canada finishes atop Group A, giving them a favorable matchup to start the medal round.
But on this particular Friday, the story of the day was the U.S.
This was a team that got up each time it was knocked down, whether in the parking lot or on the ice.
"We never gave up," Anderson said. "That's just not us."