A United States women’s hockey team already being hailed as one of the best ever assembled is right where they expected to be: playing for Olympic gold. The Americans brushed aside Sweden 5-0 in the first of Monday’s semi-finals, setting the stage for a seventh gold-medal showdown with Canada, who held on for a closer-than-expected 2-1 win over Switzerland in the nightcap.
Twenty years ago, almost to the day, the USA women absorbed one of the great Olympic shocks when Sweden stunned them at the same stage in a shootout just down the A4 autostrada in Torino, ending a streak of 25 straight losses to the Americans during which they’d been outscored 187-29. There would be no such ambush this time, even if Sweden coach Ulf Lundberg had suggested the US team were “just human beings” and might not have been overly keen on facing his team in the semi-finals.
