Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
A final 4 years in making
After overtime loss in Sochi, U.S. primed to face Canada in contest for gold medal
GANGNEUNG, South Korea — The drill looked monotonous. Over and over, the U.S. women’s hockey team worked on crashing the net in search of scoring opportunities in practice Sunday.
“Now we’ve got to execute and get the puck across the goal line,” coach Robb Stauber said. Just like that, their practice paid off. Less than three minutes into the first period of the women’s Olympic semifinal Tuesday, Gigi Marvin parked in front of the goal, took a pass from Meghan Duggan from behind the net and buried it to give Team USA a 1-0 lead over Finland.
The barrage didn’t let up. The Americans rolled over Finland 5-0 to punch their ticket to the gold-medal game.
“We put our attention on scoring,” Stauber said. “When you’re outshooting teams 2-1 and you’re barely winning or not scoring as much as you’d like, what else are you going to repeat?”
Speaking of repeating, the gold-medal game will look awfully familiar. The Americans will meet archrival Canada for gold for the third consecutive Olympics.
Canada shut out the Olympic Athletes from Russia 5-0 in the other semifinal. The Canadians have won four consecutive gold medals and own a 24-game Olympic winning streak.
The Americans are trying to win gold for the first time since the 1998 Nagano Games.
“This team is ready,” Duggan said. “This team is full of passion and energy and excitement. We’ve worked really hard this tournament, the last four years and our whole entire lives to put ourselves in position to go after a gold medal.”
Led by Dani Cameranesi’s two goals, they had little trouble in the semifinals, improving to 8-0 against Finland in the Olympics. The Americans held a commanding 38-14 advantage in shots and were relentless in their attack. Their formula looked exactly like what they had worked on in practice.
“Hey, here are the facts: Canada has watched us practice four days in a row, and they’ve watched what we’ve been doing,” Stauber said. “And we’ve been going to the net hard, and we’ve been putting pucks to the net. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to score.”
Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson smoked a slap shot for a 3-0 lead during a two-man advantage in the second period. Hilary Knight scored 34 seconds later on a redirect from in front of the net.
“We’re clicking,” Knight said. “We’re humming.”
In analyzing video of the preliminary games, the coaching staff noticed teams collapsing their defense to prevent prime scoring chances.
“Teams respect our speed and our skill,” Stauber said. “They pack it in. They make it very hard to make clean plays through those tight areas, which is a good game plan on their part. I would too.”
Stauber said opponents sometimes “turn their heels to the net and guard us like a football receiver” when the U.S. has speed rushes down the wing.
“That won’t change,” he said. “We have to drive even harder than we have. Period.”
That’s why Stauber devoted so much time to scoring goals in traffic from close range. They scored a lot of them from that area in the semifinals, and now they have a shot at gold again — against some very familiar faces.
It’s part of the routine now, as much a staple of the Winter Games as the medal ceremonies, the doping scandals and the sequins on the figure skaters: the U.S. facing Canada for the women’s hockey gold medal.
Jennifer Wakefield scored twice and Shannon Szabados stopped 14 shots for the four-time defending champions.
This will be the fifth time in six Winter Games since women’s hockey was added to the program that the North American neighbors have met in the final. No one else has ever skated away with an Olympic gold medal.
Canada outshot Russia 47-14 but struggled to pull away, scoring just once in each of the first two periods before Wakefield bounced one in off goalie Valeria Tarakanova’s right arm just two minutes into the third.
The Americans won the Four Nations Cup, third only to the Olympics and world championships in importance, beating Canada in three of the first four games in a Pyeongchang tuneup tour. But Canada has won the last four, with a 2-1 victory in the pool-play finale Thursday.
None of it matters, really. The gold-medal match is the game these two have been looking forward to since Canada rallied from a two-goal deficit and beat the Americans in overtime four years ago in Sochi.
And a victory is the only thing that can help the 10 American holdovers from that team ease the pain of their 2014 collapse.