Canada defeated Germany tonight by a 7-0 score to advance to the semi-finals on Monday. They will play either Switzerland or Czech Republic, depending on the outcome of the final game tonight. With the loss, Germany will head to the 5th-8th placement games grouping which begins tomorrow.

"I think the biggest thing fro us was that games like that can get away from you a little bit, and players can get individual," offered coach Troy Ryan. "I thought for the most part we tried to keep doing what we've been doing all event long. I think we continued to play with some structure, which was one of the positives."

Canada was led by Natalie Spooner, with two goals and an assist, and linemate Melodie Daoust, who had a goal and two assists.

Daoust now leads all scorers in the tournament with 10 poitns while Spooner is second with 9 and teammate Brianne Jenner with 7.

Canada outshot the understaffed Germans by a whopping 52-3 margin, giving Canadian goalie Emerance Maxchmeyer the easiest shutout of her career. Those 3 shots were one off the record for fewest shots in a game, but were not a relfection of the heart and determination the Germans poured into the game, despite the astonomical odds against them.

Hockey is not generally a game about feeling sorry for anyone, but Germany had to play Canada tonight without four key players injured in their previous game, thus reducing their forward contingent to only nine players. And so Sonja Weidenfelder, Laura Kluge, Nina Christof, and Carina Strobel watched from the stands as their teammates tried in vain to beat the top team in the tournament. And, to make matters worse, Germany was 0-5 with an 0-56 goal differential in all-time meetings with the hosts.

"I'm beyond proud of my team right now," sais assistant captain Anna Reich. "We have the biggest heart, and we left it all out on the ice. Everybody was blocking shots, playing their best game. I'm very proud. Those players who couldn't play today, we just wanted to play for them."

"I'm really proud of them," echoed coach Thomas Schadler. "They battled really hard in the defence. We knew the Canadians would be dominant with their skating. Our penalty kill was also excellent, even though we weren't happy to give up the one goal."

Compounding the problems, Schadler will not get any of his injured players back this tournament, meaning he'll have 16 skaters again tomorrow.

"They won't return, but we have 16 skaters. We have to make the best out of the situation. We can't change it, so we'll concentrate our energy on what we can do. We'll stick together, and we will do this tomorrow again."

Canada did what it had to do early on—score a goal and take any German hope away. Daoust controlled the puck in the German end, waited patiently, and then fired a perfect pass to Ashton Bell, who had a tap-in at 1:29 to open the scoring. 

Two and a half minutes later, Canada doubled its lead thanks to a great pass from Sarah Fillier onto the stick of Spooner. She had a close-in chance and didn’t miss, beating Franzisksa Albl with the shot to make it 2-0.

Then, late in the period, Brianne Jenner made it 3-0 when she got to a rebound in front shortly after a Canada power play had expired. 

The exhausted Germans went downhill in the second, failing to record a shot in the period and doing precious little with two power-play opportunities. The Canadians, meanwhile, fired one high-octane line after another over the boards and continued to pepper Albl with great chances, but the goalie was sensational all the same.

Still, Canada made it 4-0 at 8:01 when the Germans failed to clear their zone and Spooner’s long shot eluded Albl.

Then, captain Marie-Philip Poulin, back in the lineup after missing a game from injury, converted a pass in front from Victoria Bach to make it 5-0. 

Early in the third the Germans put themselves in a deeper hole when defender Lena Dusterhoft took a five-minute major and automatic game misconduct for checking from behind. Poulin and Daoust teamed up on a great give-and-go to score the team's first power-play goal of the tournament after going 0-15. Daoust finished the play after taking a great pass from Poulin in the slot. The goal was surrendered by Sandra Abstreiter, who replaced Albl to start the third and was making her Team Germany debut.

"It's huge for us to get momentum on the power play," said Spooner. "We've had lots of chances, and we've been working on it, but we've also not been allowing goals on our penalty kill, so hopefully the floodgates kind of open now for our PP."

Fillier made it 7-0 at 13:34 of the third, swiping a loose puck into the empty side of the goal.