Jason La Rose
GAME NOTES: CANADA VS. CZECHIA (NOV. 13)
It’s on to the playoff round for Canada’s National Women’s Team, which takes on Czechia in the first of four quarterfinals Friday at the 2026 IIHF Women’s World Championship.
Last Game
Canada closed out a perfect preliminary round Wednesday by blanking Finland 2-0. Ann-Renée Desbiens was terrific in the Canadian goal, making 25 saves to post her team’s third-consecutive shutout—by three different goaltenders. Caitlin Kraemer started the scoring with the eventual game-winner less than four minutes into the first period and Sarah Fillier added insurance in the third.
The Czechs put a bow on their prelims with an 8-1 loss to the United States on Wednesday, their third defeat in four round-robin games. Natalie Mlynkova scored a consolation goal with less than four minutes to go after the Americans had scored the game’s first eight. Aneta Senkova and Daniela Novakova split the goalending duties almost right down the middle, both allowing four goals.
Last Meeting
The Canadians and Czechs clashed in the preliminary round at Milano Cortina 2026, with Canada scoring four times in the first period of a 5-1 win. Julia Gosling led the offence with a pair of goals, while Kristin O’Neill, Fillier and Laura Stacey added singles. Gosling’s goals came on the same two-player advantage---with 1:03 left in the first period and 17 seconds into the second.
At Women’s Worlds, the teams most recently met in the prelims of the last Women’s Worlds, on Czech ice in Ceske Budejovice in 2025. What was a close game after two periods turned into a Canadian runaway in the third as Canada scored five unanswered goals to finish a 7-1 win. O’Neill and Marie-Philip Poulin scored two goals apiece, while Erin Ambrose and Jocelyne Larocque contributed two assists each.
What to Watch
Fillier has returned to the lineup without missing a beat, scoring in both her appearances in the preliminary round after missing the first two games with an upper-body injury suffered in the pre-tournament finale in Plymouth on Oct. 30. No player on the Canadian roster has been more productive at Women’s Worlds—her goal against the Finns gives her 22 goals and 38 points in 37 career games at the tournament, leaving her just three points outside of the top 10 in all-time Canadian scoring at the world championship (she’s coming for you, Vicky Sunohara and Nancy Drolet). She also reached the 50-goal mark with Canada’s National Women’s Team on Wednesday, making her just the 15th player in Team Canada history to get to a half-century. All the Georgetown product does is produce; she finished her NCAA career at Princeton with the fourth-most points in program history, was the first pick in the 2024 PWHL Draft by the New York Sirens, co-led the PWHL in scoring as a rookie and finished tied for fifth last season—her career totals include 52 points (22-30—52) in 59 games played as a pro.
The story for the Czechs going into the tournament focused more on who wasn’t on the roster. The veteran trio of Denisa Krizova, Dominika Laskova and Tereza Vanisova—who have combined for 96 points in 29 Women’s Worlds appearances across all divisions---are absent for a variety of reasons, and head coach Carla MacLeod, who led Czechia to its first-ever world championship medals in 2022 and 2023, has given way to Brian Idalski, the former bench boss of the Vancouver Goldeneyes. The Czechs were goal-starved in the preliminary round, scoring only seven goals in four games—four of them in a tournament-opening victory over Austria. And those seven have come from just four players: Mlynkova, Katerina Mrazova and Linda Vocetkova have two apiece, and Klara Hymlarova has the other. Among players Czechia needs to get going is standout forward Kristyna Kaltounkova; the No. 1 pick in the 2025 PWHL Draft, who had a rookie-best 11 goals in 21 games last season, is without a point in four games and has taken six minor penalties, twice as many as any other player.
A Look Back
The Canadians and Czechs will meet for just the sixth time ever—Canada has won all of the previous five, outscoring Czechia 28-3—and the second in a win-or-go-home matchup.
At the 2024 Women’s Worlds, the Canadians got goals from Larocque, Fillier, Blayre Turnbull and Emily Clark, and held the Czechs to just nine shots on goal in a 4-0 semifinal victory in Utica.
All-time record: Canada leads 5-0 Canada goals: 26 Czechia goals: 3