USA vs Sweden Women’s Hockey: USA Advances to Gold Medal Game with 6-1 Victory

Photo Courtesy of US Olympic Team

Six different Americans scored in the United State's 6-1 rout of Sweden in the semifinals of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games on Monday. The dominating performance from start to finish helped advance the U.S. to their fourth gold-medal game in the last five Olympics, with the final to be played on Thursday against either Canada or Switzerland.

Alex Carpenter, Kacey Bellamy, Amanda Kessel, Monique Lamoureux, Megan Bozek, and Brianna Decker led the way in scoring for the Americans but the big story was the shot count, in which the United States rolled over the Swedes 70-9 through three periods.

Sweden's starting goaltender Valentina Lizana-Wallner was pulled, through no fault of her own, from the game after the fifth U.S. goal with a remarkable 42 saves in the game for Veteran Kim Martin-Hasson past the halfway point in the second period.

United States' goaltender Jessie Vetter made eight stops on nine Sweden attempts, with the lone goal coming off a pretty deflection in front by Swede Anna Borgqvist in the third that bounced past Vetter's right skate and just inside the left post.

Two goals in the first seven minutes of the game, on Carpenter's power play goal and Bellamy's blast through traffic, gave the American's a comfortable 2-0 lead to start the first period. Kessel added her third goal of the tournament 11:19 in after pouncing on a rebound to put it up and over Wallner to put the U.S. up 3-0 at the end of the opening frame.

Lamoureux and Bozek extended the American lead to 5-0 in the middle period. A power play tally from the left circle by Lamoureux for the team's second extra-skater goal of the game put the United States up 4-0 just 5:41 into the second period and Bozek's five-hole slapshot that chased Wallner seven minutes later kept the U.S. ahead of the Swedes going into the third period.

Borgqvist broke the shutout against Vetter with 6:56 left to play in the game but Decker responded and capped off the scoring for the Americans on a blast that hit the right crossbar behind Hasson but knocked off a Swede skate and into the net at 16:56.

The United States will have to wait to find out their opponents of the gold-medal game until later in the day when Canada and Switzerland face off in their semifinal. The winner of that matchup will face the U.S. in the final Thursday afternoon at noon ET on NBC.