Sabres prospect Rasmus Ristolainen scores a doozy of a "golden goal," follows in the footsteps of another prospect

The 2014 World Juniors is in the books and once again a Sabres defensive prospect had a huge hand in their team bringing home the gold medal.

Going back to last year's 2013 WJC, Sabres defensive prospect Jake McCabe, a 2012 second round pick (#44 overall,) captained the USA hockey team to gold at the 2013 WJC in Ufa, Russia. In the semi-final against a favored Canada squad, McCabe had two goals and an assist as the Americans bombed the Canadians 5-1 to send the US to the finals.

Thanks to our good friend Kris Baker of sabresprospects.com, you can watch those two goals here:







The USA squad would end up beating the defending champs, Sweden, in the finals and McCabe made the 2013 all-tourney team.

One year later, another Sabres d-prospect, Rasmus Ristolainen (#8 overall, 2013,) one-upped McCabe by scoring the gold medal clinching goal in OT as Finland defeated Sweden 3-2 on the Swedes home ice.

Thanks to NHLUniverse (via Baker's twitter account,) those who did not see the goal can watch it here:

Just an awesome effort and beautiful goal by Ristolainen.

The hulking 6'4" 220 lb. defenseman was awarded the Directorate Award for best defenseman and was named to the all-tourney team.

Those two tournament heroes were joined in honors by yet another Sabres d-prospect.

Nikita Zadorov (#16, 2013) lead all defenseman with 4 goals and was a plus-4 and helped lead Russia to a second consecutive bronze medal. He joined Ristolainen on the all-tourney team.

For a full recap of the prospects, including Mikhail Grigorenko, visit Bakers piece for sabres.com, here.