Stars’ Thomas Harley records pair of assists as Canada blanks Czechia in group play

The Dallas Stars have scored in Italy.

After his NHL teammates from Finland were unable to find the score sheet in their opening 4-1 loss against Slovakia, defenseman Thomas Harley recorded a pair of assists in Canada’s 5-0 win over Czechia (and Stars forward Radek Faksa) on Thursday.

Macklin Celebrini scored Canada’s first goal in the return of the NHL to the Olympics and Jordan Binnington stopped all 26 shots he faced on Thursday in a victory that showed the tournament favorite is already a well-oiled machine.

Celebrini, his country’s youngest player at 19, deflected a shot by Cale Makar past Lukas Dostal with 5.7 seconds left in the first, putting an exclamation point on a terrific, back-and-forth period. After Mitch Marner’s saucer pass to Mark Stone for his goal and Bo Horvat’s on a breakaway later in the second, Czechia never stood a chance.

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The handful of times Binnington got tested, he was there to make the save. Before Celebrini scored, Binnington kept it 0-0 by making a left-pad stop on Michal Kempny and reaching out to smother David Kampf’s rebound attempt.

At the other end of the ice, Dostal played well but was helpless to slow down much of the onslaught. There was nothing he could do on the Sidney Crosby to Connor McDavid to Nathan MacKinnon tic-tac-toe power-play goal in the third period.

The same trio combined for almost the same goal in opening game of the 4 Nations Face-Off a year ago. Canada won that Olympic appetizer by beating the U.S. — which opens Thursday against Latvia — in overtime.

McDavid had three assists, including one on Nick Suzuki’s goal that made it 5-0.

The Associated Press contributed to this post.

Thursday’s TV/Radio listings (Feb. 11)