Canada goalie Chris Mason spent the lockout year playing in Norway. (Jacques Boissinot/Canadian Press)

Lindy Ruff caught Chris Mason heading to the Canadian dressing room out of the corner of his eye and quipped, "We'll see why he was the MVP of the Norwegian League."

Mason played in Oslo in 2004-05, the season the NHL lost because of a lockout, and he had a 1.79 goals-against average in 20 games and was the league's most valuable player.

The St. Louis Blues netminder will see a few familiar faces on Sunday in his third straight start when Canada plays Norway at the world hockey championship and goes for its fifth straight win.

On Monday, Canada plays Finland in the final game of the qualifying round and you can bet that Dwayne Roloson will be in net, with Mason on the bench as his backup.

Ruff needs to see how Roloson fares against a tougher opponent than Norway before the field left in the running for the world title is cut in half to eight teams.

Only after that will Ruff decide who will be in net for the quarter-final against an undecided opponent.

Wide open

The final two rounds of the world tournament will be played in Berne starting on Wednesday and basically the tournament is wide open. There isn't one team among the so-called contenders that is much better than the other.

Mason was brilliant in a 5-1 win over the Czech Republic on Thursday but the Norwegians won't challenge him as much. Their plan will be to frustrate the Canadian forwards, and keep them wide on the larger international ice surface, rather than attack.

That's how the Norwegians kept it close the last time they played Canada, a year ago in Halifax when Canada won 2-1.

"I think it will be a tough game. They will make it hard for us to get any easy chances," said Ruff.

"I think sometimes when you think something will be easy, it will be not. It will be an interesting game for us in that we will have to be good even strength because they will take away the inside stuff from us."

Part of Norway's strategy is devised by George Kingston, a career hockey man who coached Canada to a gold medal at the 1994 world championship and is now a consultant to Norway's hockey federation.

'Great opportunity'

Kingston has also coached the German national team, Norway's Olympic team, and was a longtime assistant coach in the NHL. He said the Norwegians hope to learn from being mismatched.

"It is a great opportunity to play against a better team and better players and that is something, when you are a second tier nation like Norway, you take advantage of," he said.

Canada has four straight wins thanks in a large part to a potent power play, which has scored 12 of its 27 goals and has converted on 12 of 24 chances.

It is the five-on-five play that has not been up to snuff. Both the Czech Republic and Slovakia outplayed Canada when the teams were at even strength.

Ruff feels that part of the problem is that Canada spent more time on the power play than at even strength, and his forward lines have suffered.

"The first 40 minutes [against the Czechs], I did not like our even-strength play. But at the same time, we spent 10 to 12 minutes on the power play," he said.

"You do not get a lot of rhythm and you do not roll your lines and sometimes it is tough to judge whether your even-strength play was any good because you do not get enough of it."

Final reinforcements

The last of the reinforcements arrived on Friday and the three late additions — Braydon Coburn, Travis Zajac and Marc-Edouard Vlasic — took part in Saturday's practice in a Zurich suburb and they will all suit up against the Norwegians.

The trio joined the team after their respective NHL teams were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs.

"I just wanted to play and this will help me forget about what happened," said Vlasic, who was a member of the San Jose Sharks, a team that was picked by many to go to the Stanley Cup finals but again fell way short of its goal.

The NHL's best regular season team was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the No. 8 seed in Western Conference, the Anaheim Ducks.

"I am just excited to get going," he said.

The going gets tougher on Monday, and continues next week with the quarter-finals, semifinal and the gold medal game, which will be held on May 10.