Canada defeats Slovakia, sets up rematch with U.S.

Bodies and sticks and skates flew at Roberto Luongo while an entire nation tensed, praying there would be no deflection or bounce that would knock the puck into the net and wrest Team Canada’s ticket to the Olympic gold-medal game out of its sweaty grasp.

Slovakia, cautious for too long Friday in its semifinal game against the host nation, had charged within a hair’s breadth of a titanic upset. “It was the most fun I’ve ever had,” Luongo said, smiling.

His enjoyment was soon shared by all of Canada, which watched him get his glove on a point-blank shot by his Canucks teammate Pavol Demitra in the dying seconds to preserve a 3-2 victory and set up a championship match between Canada and the U.S. at noon Sunday.

The last time the neighbors met for the gold medal was in 2002, when Canada prevailed at Salt Lake City.

Canada started this tournament slowly, losing to the U.S. and needing a shootout to beat Switzerland in the preliminary round. That forced the Canadians to play an extra qualifying-round game, a journey that has been longer than the route taken by the U.S. (5-0). But all they care about is that they are now where they feel they were meant to be.

“We were able to get it done tonight -- that’s the bottom line,” said Ducks center Ryan Getzlaf, whose power-play backhander at 16:54 of the second period stood up as the winner. “They can get two goals as long as we get three. We took a different route than the U.S. to get there, but bottom line is we’re both in and we’re both excited to be there.”

Canada built a 3-0 lead on Patrick Marleau’s redirection of a Shea Weber shot at 13:30 of the first period, Brenden Morrow’s tip of a Chris Pronger shot and Getzlaf’s second goal in two games.

Fans at Canada Hockey Place who were spoiled when Canada scored seven goals in its quarterfinal triumph against Russia were expecting another scoring spree Friday, but Canada didn’t get another shot past Jaroslav Halak.

In the meantime, Slovakia -- making its first final four appearance -- awoke in the third period and outshot Canada, 12-7. Lubomir Visnovsky got his team back in the game at 11:35 when he slipped a shot off Luongo’s pad and inside the post, and Kings center Michal Handzus made it a one-goal game at 15:07 when he converted the rebound of a shot by Richard Zednik, who eluded Drew Doughty to take a point-blank shot at Luongo.

“It’s disappointing,” said Handzus, whose team will play Finland on Saturday for the bronze medal.

“They control the game for 50 minutes, but we knew we couldn’t open the game against them. We knew that we had to play our game. If we had opened the game in the second, I think they would do what they did to Russia.”

helene.elliott@latimes.com