After playing games on Wednesday, three of the four Vancouver Canucks representatives enjoyed well-deserved day-offs, leaving only Aatu Räty and Team Finland on the schedule on Thursday (Day 6) at the 2026 IIHF World Championship.

As expected, Finland improved to a perfect 4-0 at the tournament with a dominant 7-1 victory over Latvia.

Surprisingly, Latvia came out flying, opening the scoring just 10 seconds after puck drop courtesy of former NHL forward Rudolfs Balcers.

But as the script expected, Finland settled in quickly. The Finns responded with three first-period goals in the opening frame and never looked back en route to the eventual 7-1 victory.

As for Aatu Räty, he centred Finland’s third line alongside Eemil Erholtz and Patrik Puistola once again. Räty eventually found the scoresheet in the third period, scoring his third goal of the tournament and recording his fourth point in as many games.

Following a long stretch pass, Finland entered the zone with speed. Hovering as the late trailer, Räty collected the puck near the top of the circles and fired a shot high to the shoulder. Although the Latvian netminder got a piece of it, the puck fluttered into the air before Räty appeared to tap home Finland’s seventh goal of the game.

Räty finished the contest with a goal, three shots, and a plus-1 rating in just 12:49 of ice time.

The 23-year-old has quietly been one of Finland’s more productive forwards despite being the team’s fourth-least utilized skater. Averaging just 12:36 per game, Räty has now recorded points in all four World Championship games while winning 18 of 28 face-offs, good for a strong 73.68 percent to sit atop the entire tournament.

Finland returns to action Friday against a winless Great Britain. Linus Karlsson and Team Sweden will also play on Friday when they take on Italy and goaltender Damian Clara.

Meanwhile, Filip Hronek and Max Sasson return to action Saturday as Czechia faces rival Slovakia and the United States takes on Latvia.

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