Ohio State men's ice hockey associate head coach Steve Miller captured a gold medal Tuesday night with Team USA's 2-0 victory over Team Canada in the 2021 IIHF World Junior Championship.
Miller, entering his fourth season with the Buckeyes has now collected two gold medals with Team USA, pairing this one with the gold he captured with Team USA in the 2017 World Junior Championship. As an assistant coach on the staff of head coach Nate Leaman – a Centerville, Ohio native, incidentally – Miller was primarily tasked with putting Team USA's penalty kill packages together. His crew performed well in the gold medal game, holding Canada to zero power play goals.
Team USA goalie Spencer Knight was the star of the night, shutting out Team Canada for the first time ever in a gold medal game and finishing with 34 saves.
Center Alex Turcotte got the party started for Team USA, scoring a little over six minutes into the first to stake his team to a 1-0 lead and scoring the first 5-on-5 goal against Canada in the tournament.
Not even a minute into the second, center Trevor Zegras scored to make it 2-0, a score that would hold. Zegras finished the night with two points and a tournament-leading 18 on the way to earning MVP honors for the entire tournament.
Miller, a native of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, has served as an assistant coach on five United States national teams at the World Junior Championship, collecting two golds, one silver, and a bronze. While at Ohio State, Miller's teams have finished in the top two of the Big Ten in each of the seasons he's served as an assistant on coach Steve Rohlik's bench.
