HERNING Jordan Nolan Jersey Womens , Denmark (AP) Captain Connor McDavid scored a hat trick to lead Canada to a 5-0 win over Norway on Thursday at the ice hockey world championship, while the Czech Republic beat Russia 4-3 in overtime.Earlier Thursday, Cam Atkinson scored in overtime to give the United States a 3-2 win over Latvia, its fourth straight victory at the tournament.In another tight game, Slovakia kept its hopes alive for a quarterfinal spot by topping France 3-1, with Michal Cajkovsky scoring the final goal into an empty net.Bo Horvat scored the other two goals for Canada while goaltender Curtis McElhinney only needed to make nine saves for the shutout.”We came out and did what we had to again,” McDavid said. ”I think we’ve got a lot better as the tournament’s going on here. We understand what this tournament is about. We have to win all games.”After clinching his second consecutive Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s leading scorer with 108 points, McDavid has four goals and six assists from four games at the championship.Boston Bruins forwards David Pastrnak and David Krejci only joined the Czech team only on Thursday morning after being knocked out of the NHL playoffs by the Tampa Bay Lightning and immediately made their presence felt.Pastrnak scored two goals, including the winner with 1:37 left in overtime, and added one assist while Krejci finished with a goal and three assists.Nikita Nesterov, Mikhail Grigorenko and Alexander Barabanov scored a goal each for Russia, which had shut out its previous three opponents.The Americans also won after Atkinson scored his third goal in the tournament 1:23 into overtime on a power play”It’s obviously nice to get that goal Zack Smith Jersey ,” Atkinson said. ”It wasn’t our prettiest by no means, got to give credit to them. They fought from the start all over to the end,” he said. ”We took the points but we need to be a lot of better.”Chris Kreider gave the U.S. a 1-0 lead when he knocked in a loose puck on a power play, but Latvia defenseman Uvis Balinskis ended goalie Keith Kinkaid’s bid for a third straight shutout with a deflected shot with 2:03 remaining in the first period.Latvia then went ahead in the middle period through Andris Dzerins, but Colin White tied it for the U.S. with a slap shot that went between the pads of goalie Elvis Merzlikins.Captain Patrick Kane and forward Alex DeBrincat finished with two assists.Kinkaid made several key stops in the third period and finished with 17 saves in the game.”I was just trying to keep my team even at 2-2 and they did the rest,” Kinkaid said. ”It took the overtime period to do it but we’ve got the win.”The U.S. and Canada top Group B in Herning with 10 points followed by Finland on nine. Latvia has six points and Norway three.In Copenhagen, Sweden dominates Group A with 12 points while Russia is second with 10. Switzerland is one point back while Slovakia has seven, one more than the Czechs. Peter Chiarelli didn’t feel like he could wait another day.The Edmonton general manager didn’t sleep well after another tough loss, put the wheels in motion to replace coach Todd McLellan with Ken Hitchcock and made the move on Tuesday — a game day. After no in-season coaching changes around the NHL last season, there have now been four in less than three weeks.The standings are still so close and volatile that it’s almost never too soon to decide to fire an NHL coach.“Unfortunately as it is, that’s the way it’s trending,” Chiarelli said. “The margins are thin and you look for edges and that’s one of them.”Los Angeles fired John Stevens on Nov. 4 Ryan O'Reilly Jersey Womens , Chicago fired three-time Stanley Cup winner Joel Quenneville two days later, St. Louis dismissed Mike Yeo late Monday and Edmonton followed suit with McLellan on Tuesday morning. The Kings had played 13 games, the Blackhawks 15, the Blues 19 and the Oilers 20, but it is no longer surprising to see such a drastic move before the quarter mark of the season.Hall of Fame defenseman Scott Stevens, now an NHL Network analyst, won the Stanley Cup as a player after a late-season coaching change and took over as co-head coach with New Jersey during the 2014-15 season. He said he was only caught off-guard by Quenneville’s firing and understands why so many GMs are pulling the trigger so early.“I think a lot of times the GM has the pulse of everything that’s going on and knows when the time’s right to make that move,” Stevens said. “I believe every team thinks they have a chance to win the Stanley Cup. … Everyone feels they have a chance to win, and sometimes you just need a little luck.”Or at least a big change.“You can’t trade every player, so they fire the coach to try to get everybody’s attention,” NBC Sports analyst Pierre McGuire said.The calendar got Chiarelli’s attention because Thanksgiving typically serves as a barometer of which teams will make the playoffs. It’s an uphill climb for Hitchcock, the Kings’ Willie Desjardins Brian Elliott Jersey , Blackhawks’ Jeremy Colliton and Blues’ Craig Berube to try to lift their teams out of rough starts and make it.Sometimes, interim or replacement coaches are wildly successful after arriving during the season. The Penguins in 2009 with Dan Bylsma and 2016 with Mike Sullivan and the Kings in 2012 with Darryl Sutter won the Cup. The Flyers in 2010 with Peter Laviolette reached the final.McGuire, himself a midseason replacement with the Hartford Whalers in the 1990s, said he believes this recent run of firings has something to do with the Vegas Golden Knights reaching the final last season as an expansion team, causing frustration around the league about quick results. Still, early-season coach firings are a time-tested part of the NHL.“Coaching changes right around this time made huge differences,” McGuire said. “People look at this over history and they say this can happen. Pittsburgh and L.A. are good examples of that.”UPPER HAND SHORTHANDEDThe Arizona Coyotes have killed off a league-best 91.7 percent of power plays, and their 10 short-handed goals are six more than the next-closest team. Michael Grabner has four, Brad Richardson three and Arizona has only allowed five power-play goals through its first 19 games.Coach Rick Tocchet said Grabner, Richardson and his other penalty killers have done an excellent job of applying pressure with three players and the fourth making smart reads to take it the other way.“Especially for PK guys, they really have a good hockey IQ on knowing when to attack pressure,” Tocchet said. “The guys have done a nice job http://www.officialflyersproshop.com/authentic-adidas-claude-giroux-jersey , like Richardson and Grabner especially, of making really good reads on when there’s a time to pressure and where that read is going to be. Sometimes you guess wrong but I think this year we’ve done a nice job guessing right.”GAME OF THE WEEKThe defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals on Saturday visit the New York Rangers, who have been among the league’s biggest surprises under first-year coach David Quinn.LEADERSGoals: David Pastrnak (Boston), 17; Assists: Mikko Rantanen (Colorado), 24; Points: Rantanen, 32; Ice time: Drew Doughty (Los Angeles), 26:53; Save percentage: Pekka Rinne (Nashville), .942; Goals-against average: Rinne, 1.69.