COLOGNE, Germany — The Lightning's Victor Hedman scored in regulation and Sweden won the world championship with a 2-1 shootout victory over two-time defending champion Canada on Sunday.
Sweden and Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist stopped all four of Canada's shootout attempts — one of them by the Lightning's Brayden Point — and the Capitals' Nicklas Backstrom and the Coyotes' Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored for the Swedes, who won their first title since 2013.
Lundqvist and Canadian counterpart Calvin Pickard of the Avalanche were outstanding in a game in which the Canadians — coached by the Lightning's Jon Cooper and also with Tampa Bay forward Alex Killorn — narrowly outshot the Swedes 43-42.
Sweden scored first when, with Backstrom penalized for slashing, Hedman got a short-handed goal on a weird play with 20.8 seconds left in the second period. Hedman backhanded the puck on goal from the blue line trying to get it deep on the penalty kill, and it bounced, floated and dribbled between Pickard's pads.
"I got a fortunate bounce," Hedman said. "I wasn't really friends with the puck there in the second period, so I just threw it at the net. … I don't think (Pickard) really saw it. I got a lucky bounce, and the puck had eyes. It was good."
The Sabres' Ryan O'Reilly tied it early in the third.
The Lightning's Anton Stralman also won gold with Sweden.
"I want to congratulate Sweden. They were an exceptional team, it was a lot of fun to play them," Cooper said.
"If we were going to lose to somebody, I'm glad those guys won."
In the bronze-medal game, the Lightning's Nikita Kucherov sealed a 5-3 win for Russia against Finland with his team's final goal midway through the third after the Finns had cut a 4-0 deficit to 4-3. Tampa Bay forward Vladislav Namestnikov had an assist, and Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy got his seventh win of the tournament and was named the event's top goalie.
"For two periods we were fine, then we gave our opponent a chance, and they scored three goals," Kucherov said. "We could have got nervous because there was still a lot of time remaining, but we stayed calm. We stayed confident, Vasilevskiy did great and we didn't take too many penalties."