The 2019 IIHF World Championship has come to a close as the Finns defeated Team Canada by a score of 3-1 for the gold medal Sunday. Three Vegas Golden Knights players — Mark Stone, Jonathan Marchessault and Shea Theodore — are headed home with a silver medal.
Stone, though, will be bringing home a little extra hardware.
Despite coming up short of the ultimate prize, Stone was named the MVP of the tournament. He even kind of smiled when he received the award.
Mark Stone named Most Valuable Player of the #IIHFWorlds pic.twitter.com/r28NGIxMKZ
— Shayna (@hayyyshayyy) May 26, 2019
This really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Stone was downright fantastic in 10 games for Team Canada, netting eight goals and assisting on six others.
As good as Stone was, another Golden Knights player had an even better tournament — at least in terms of point production. Nikita Gusev finished the tournament with four goals and 16 points in 10 games for Team Russia (tied with Nikita Kucherov for the team lead). That does not include his game-winning goal in the shootout to earn Russia the bronze.
Gusev wins it for @russiahockey in the shootout, and they capture the 🥉#RUSCZE #IIHFWorlds pic.twitter.com/PP22UZ4oKZ
— IIHF (@IIHFHockey) May 26, 2019
This is the last time we’ll be seeing Golden Knights players in action until development camp in late June. In the mean time, be ready for a very busy summer as the Golden Knights look to shed a significant amount of cap space in order to re-sign some of their in-house assets.