Despite holding their own, Juraj Slafkovsky’s Slovakia lost 6-3 to Canada in the quarterfinals of the Ice Hockey World Championship in Prague, Czech Republic, on Thursday.

The Maple Leaf will therefore play the semi-finals of the competition on Saturday.

• Also read: World Cup: Connor Bedard was relegated to the 13th forward role with Team Canada

• Also read: Slafkovsky and Guhle are opponents for a match

Against the Slovaks, André Tourigny’s men quickly took a 2-0 lead thanks to goals from Jared McCann and Pierre-Luc Dubois. The latter has already collected three goals and four assists for seven points in eight games since the start of the tournament.

In the third period, the Canadians struck again with lightning speed and caused the red light to flash twice within 20 seconds thanks to Dylan Guenther and Brandon Tanev.

Nick Paul scored Canada’s other two goals, including one into an empty net.

“There were moments in the game where we didn’t play so well, but they were very brief moments and we played very solid for most of the game,” Tourigny explained after the game in remarks relayed by Hockey Canada. The atmosphere in our team is quite good, but we now have two games left and we know the semifinals will be difficult. We want to make sure we play [le match pour la médaille d’or].”

On the Slovakian side, Slafkovsky received an assist in his team’s first success, the work of Peter Cehlarik. The young Montreal Canadiens player finished his competition with eight assists in as many games, but was unable to score a goal.

Milos Kelemen and Marek Hrivik also responded to the Slovaks.

Additionally, Connor Bedard was relegated to the 13th striker role on Thursday and only played for 12 minutes. However, this playing time is longer than his last appearance, as Tourigny only sent him on the ice for 8:08 minutes in the last game against the Czech Republic.

This rather short playing time against Slovakia did not prevent Bedard from getting on the scoresheet, as he was involved in Paul’s first goal in the second period.