It’s official. The U.S. women’s hockey team is bound for the Olympic goal medal game, after they clobbered Sweden 5-0 in the semifinals on Monday.
“This is an athlete base that dreams of gold,” U.S. head coach John Wroblewski said after the win. “Now that we’re here, that’s the bullseye,” he added.
The Americans have steamrolled their way through the tournament so far, outscoring their opponents 31-1 in Olympic play.
MATCH RESULTS
Cayla Barnes scored the lone goal of a very physical and evenly matched first period between Team USA and Sweden.
However, once the puck dropped to start the second period, the U.S. was tired of the close competition. The Americans unleashed an offensive explosion and put up four goals in the second.
Taylor Heise kicked off a goal run that would completely demoralize the Swedish women. Hannah Bilka set up a hungry Heise with a backhanded cross pass to give the U.S. a two-goal lead just over nine minutes into the second period.
Then the Americans put on a scoring clinic by netting three goals in under three minutes.
A fiery Abbey Murphy ignited the show when she sniped a shot top shelf for Team USA’s third goal of the game. For the second act, Laila Edwards and Kendall Coyne Schofield connected for another goal less than one minute later.
“We’ve just been taking it game by game, period by period, shift by shift,” Coyne Schofield said after the win.
The quad goal was the dagger that forced Sweden to pull goalie Ebba Svensson Traff for Emma Soderberg. But relief in goal didn’t even last two minutes for the Swedes, as Hayley Scamurra struck gold with the fifth and final goal of the game to close out the second period. However, Soderberg did not allow a goal in the third.
U.S. goalie Aerin Frankel became the first goalie in Olympic women’s hockey history to record three shutouts in a single tournament. After Monday’s shutout, she credited her defense.
“The team is playing so well defensively they are making my job easy by making the plays in front of me so predictable so I can do my job,” Frankel said.
The U.S. will face the winner of the Canada-Switzerland semifinal (Feb. 16 at 3:10 p.m. ET on NBCOlympics.com and Peacock) in the gold medal game on Feb. 19 at 1:10 p.m. ET.
“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for and to finally achieve that is huge,” Scamurra said. “I want it so much. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. The whole team feels the same way. This has been our end goal and we’re one step from that,” she added.
Sweden will play in the bronze medal game on Feb. 19 at 8:40 a.m. ET.
“We are really pumped up for the bronze medal game. It would be Sweden’s first (women’s ice hockey) medal in a long time (since silver at Torino 2006). It has been many years,” Sweden’s Hanna Olsson said after the game.
Reuters contributed to this report.
