Dany Heatley scored the game winner with only 47 seconds remaining as Canada dodged a bullet at the World Ice Hockey Championships by edging the United States 5-4 on Tuesday.
With the win, defending champion Canada earned first place in preliminary round Group B standings with a perfect 3-0 record while the United States (2-1) finished in second.
"We did a great job to battle back like that," Heatley said. "We took a couple of penalties, made a couple of mistakes. We know we have got to get better and we will."
It was the second goal of the game and sixth of the tournament for Heatley, who leads all scorers with 10 points in three games.
In other preliminary round games Tuesday, Russia beat Denmark 4-1, the Czechs rolled over Italy 7-2 and Latvia blanked Slovenia 3-0.
Heatley's game winner broke a 4-4 deadlock in front of a sold out crowd of 9,192 at the Halifax Metro Centre and came off a pass from linemate Rick Nash, who is also having a strong tournament.
Heatley positioned himself for the one-timer and while the pass from Nash wasn't perfect, the 27-year-old Ottawa Senator managed to get just enough of it to send it over the glove hand of American goalie Craig Anderson.
"It was a good three-on-two break," Heatley said. "Getz (Ryan Getzlaf) kicked it out to (Rick) Nash and then drove to net. Nash made a great play to me. The puck was a pretty far ahead of me so I had to get the one-timer off."
Heatley became Canada's all-time leading scorer in the worlds earlier in the tournament, surpassing current Team Canada general manager Steve Yzerman.
Brent Burns, Jonathan Toews and Derek Roy also scored for Canada, who are hosting the event for the first time in the 100 years of the International Ice Hockey Federation.
Los Angeles Kings teammates Patrick O'Sullivan and Dustin Brown scored for the US team. Jason Pominville and Zach Parise also had goals for the Americans, who are seeking their first medal at the Worlds since earning bronze in 2004.
"It was a close game the whole time," O'Sullivan said. "There were good chances both ways and good goaltending both ways.
"Any time these two countries meet it is going to be a battle. We are looking forward to playing them again."
Canada wore throwback jerseys Tuesday, replicas of the 1976 Canada Cup team which featured some of the country's greatest players. Canada Cup team members Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull and Bobby Clarke were on hand to watch the game against the USA and were featured in a ceremony between the first and second periods.
Despite the loss, the Americans took several positives from the game as they rallied to tie it 4-4 and outskated the heavily favoured Canadians much of the game.
If not for the top line of Heatley, Nash and Ryan Getzlaf, the Canadians could have easily found themselves in a tie atop the standings with the US squad heading into the qualification round which begins on Thursday.
American forward Brown said this game was a confidence booster for his team.
"I felt we had chances to score on every shift," Brown said. "You always want to upset Canada.
"If we play like that against other teams down the stretch and we are able to do some damage and maybe (we will) see them again."
The US swapped goalies to start the third period, replacing starter Tim Thomas with backup Anderson, who plays for the Florida Panthers.
Burns said Canada struggled at times Tuesday but it is nothing that can't be fixed.
"This little bit of adversity was a wakeup call for us," said Burns of the Minnesota Wild. "Everything is still new to us. We haven't played with each other before. We can do a better job of talking and communicating on the ice.
Slovenia was knocked down to the relegation round after losing to Latvia in the late game at the Halifax Metro Centre.
The Italians will join the Slovenians in the relegation round after losing to the Czechs and going winless in the preliminaries.
