Team USA advances to Olympic men’s hockey gold-medal game

MILAN — The final 12 months have featured some unbelievable hockey video games between the United States and Canada.

How about one other?

The 2 groups who couldn’t wait to fight each other in the 4 Nations Face-Off last February will go at it once more on the 2026 Winter Olympics, this time for gold. Each groups reached Sunday’s gold medal recreation (8:10 a.m. ET) with semifinal wins at Santagiulia Area on Friday.

The US pounded Slovakia, 6-2, stopping chilly the Cinderella Slovaks’ run of beating premier hockey nations. Canada, lacking captain Sidney Crosby — no phrase but on his availability for Sunday — advanced with a comeback win over Finland, which included some controversial non-calls that had the Finns sizzling.

All that, 24 hours after the US and Canada women produced one of the most thrilling – and the one most-watched – recreation in Olympic girls’s hockey historical past.

Sunday’s ambiance, which ought to be bonkers anyway, can be much more so if President Trump makes an look. Italian media reported this week that authorities are getting ready for a doable Trump go to, for the gold medal recreation at Santagiulia Area and shutting ceremony at Verona Area, about 90 miles to the east.

There was no affirmation from the Trump administration of any such plans.

What was re-confirmed Friday: the People can rating in bunches.

Jack Hughes struck for 2 targets, and Dylan Larkin, Tage Thompson, Jack Eichel, and Brady Tkacuk added the others. Netminder Connor Hellebuyck made 22 saves, crushed solely when the sport was out of hand.

Slovakian goalie Samuel Hlavaj, who had an enormous hand in his nation incomes the No. 3 seed out of the preliminary spherical and a bye to the quarterfinals, was lifted after Eichel made it 4-0 halfway by way of the second.

Larkin acquired it began at 4:19 within the first. The People doubled the lead with 41 seconds left within the interval when triple-digit shooter Thompson squeezed a rocket between Hlavaj’s shoulder and the submit. Thompson, nonetheless, blocked a shot along with his foot, and sat out the third interval for what USA Hockey mentioned was precautionary causes.

The People had been up, 2-0, and appeared to be irritated it wasn’t 5-0. They weren’t giving up scoring possibilities, however they weren’t changing them.

Hlavaj stored making saves, booting out a pair of booming power-play bids from Auston Matthews. Jake Guentzel kicked in a centering feed. They weren’t going to beat him that manner, both.

The dam broke. Jack Hughes walked in, jumped round a Tomas Tatar verify and whipped a wrister blocker-side. After Eichel scored at 12:33 off a Slovak turnover, Hlavaj seemed like he knew it was over.

Down on his stomach after the save, he laid there for a 10-count. Teammate Stanislav Skorvanek skated in.

Hlavaj punched the glass earlier than taking his seat within the backup’s chair. An assistant coach came visiting — maybe to inform him they’d want him for Saturday, maybe to settle him down, maybe each.

Hughes scored his second of the sport early within the third, beating Skorvanek with a sharp-angle snapshot, and Brady Tkachuk deked his solution to a 6-2 lead.

The Slovaks made a run to the bronze medal recreation in opposition to Finland with seven energetic NHL gamers, the fifth-fewest of the 12 groups right here. Most of their roster performs within the Czech league.

They’d 18 NHLers in 2006, when captain Zdeno Chara carried the flag in Turin in entrance of names like Marian Hossa, Marian Gaborik, and Miroslav Devil. They’d 10 in Sochi, when Chara was 39, the remainder of that group was graying, and goalie Jaroslav Halak painfully mentioned, “We’ve got no younger gamers developing.”

Regardless of the end in Saturday’s bronze medal recreation, Slovakian hockey is again on the map. They received bronze, their first medal of any coloration, with none NHLers in 2022, when 17-year-old future No. 1 general choose Juraj Slafkovsky scored seven targets in seven video games and was named MVP. They took down Finland within the preliminaries, and Germany within the quarterfinals, behind Slafkovsky (now 21), Dalibor Dvorsky (20) and Simon Nemec (22).

Slafkovsky scored with 15:05 left, spoiling Hellebuyck’s shutout bid on the fifteenth shot of the sport. It was the Montreal Canadiens winger’s fourth aim in 5 video games in Milan. Issues acquired unfastened late within the third, with Pavol Regenda scoring on a break-in.

The pot boiled over with 1:43 left, when Slovak defenseman Erik Cernak was ejected for throwing gloves-off punches at Matthew Tkachuk, a continuation of the Lightning-Panthers rivalry. Matthew and Brady Tkachuk had been despatched off, all three gamers incomes misconducts.

“We’ve got an awesome spirit,” mentioned 35-year-old Slovak captain Tomas Tatar, the previous NHLer now taking part in in Switzerland, earlier than the sport. “I’m very proud. All people’s taking part in properly and thus far it’s been a hell of a event.”

And now, a hell of a end.