Marner's dazzling OT winner sends Canada past Czechia

Take a deep breath, Canada: The men's hockey team is moving on.

Mitch Marner scored a stunning backhand overtime winner in the Olympic quarterfinals against Czechia on Wednesday to keep Canada's gold-medal hopes alive with a 4-3 win.

Canada trailed 2-1 after the first period and 3-2 midway through the third but stormed back. Nick Suzuki sent the matchup to overtime with a deflection at the 16:33 mark of the final frame. Marner then dangled through three Czech skaters before roofing a backhand top corner 1:22 into OT.

Canada's semifinal opponent will be determined following Wednesday's last two quarterfinal games.

Macklin Celebrini opened the scoring for Canada with his tournament-leading fifth goal off a superb pass off the rush from Connor McDavid. Lukas Sedlak responded for Czechia, finishing off a pretty passing play with Roman Cervenka and Radko Gudas after a Canadian turnover.

David Pastrnak gave Czechia a lead late in the opening frame off a one-time blast on the power play. It was the first time Canada had trailed the entire tournament. It was also the first time Canada had trailed in a best-on-best Olympic tournament game since 2010.

Nathan MacKinnon evened the score with a power-play snipe of his own that went off the post and in during a second period dominated by Canada. McDavid notched an assist to record his 12th point of the tournament, the most ever in an Olympics featuring NHLers.

Ondrej Palat gave Czechia its second lead of the game in the third period, beating Jordan Binnington blocker side on an odd-man rush.

Binnington stopped 21 of 24 shots in the victory, including a game-saving denial of Martin Necas on a breakaway in the waning minutes of regulation.

Lukas Dostal made 37 saves for Czechia.

Sidney Crosby left the game midway through the second period favoring his right leg after a hard hit by Gudas and did not return.