Frigo pumped his fist as the home crowd roared. It was the first goal Italy had scored in an Olympics involving NHL players since the Games that Frigo attended as a kid. Tony Iob had the last goal in a 3-3 tie with Team Switzerland on Feb. 21, 2006.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was incredible,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, I saw the puck bouncing in front, and the goalie lost his stick, and I was like, \u2018I got to put in.\u2019 I got lucky it went in. In front of my family, in front of my friends, in front of the Italian crowd, it was unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sweden captain Gabriel Landeskog<\/a> tied it 1-1 with a power-play goal at 9:06, and defenseman Gustav Forsling<\/a> gave the Swedes a 2-1 lead at 17:53. The shots were 27-3, Sweden.<\/p>\n One more shot, and the Swedes would have tied the record for shots on goal in a period in an Olympics involving NHL players. Team Canada had 28 in the second of a 7-2 win against Italy on Feb. 15, 2006.<\/p>\n Then 37 seconds into the second period, Italy forward Matthew Bradley tied it 2-2. Bradley was born in Vancouver and was selected in the fifth round (No. 131) by the Montreal Canadiens in the 2015 NHL Draft. But he never made the NHL, has been playing in Italy and is playing for his 95-year-old grandfather, Guido Garizitto, who grew up in Italy and lives in Canada.<\/p>\n \u201cTo score a goal for my nonno back home, a once-in-a-lifetime amazing feeling,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cOverjoyed with emotions for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Forward William Nylander<\/a> gave Sweden a 3-2 lead at 16:46 of the second, and the Swedes led in shots 43-11 after two periods.<\/p>\n But who knows what would have happened had Italy goalie Damian Clara<\/a> stayed in the game?<\/p>\n Clara, selected in the second round (No. 60) by the Anaheim Ducks in the 2023 NHL Draft, plays in Sweden and was holding the fort against it.<\/p>\n He stretched out his left pad to stop forward Elias Pettersson<\/a> on a breakaway 4:28 into the third, and he had to leave the game at 6:08 after making 46 saves.<\/p>\n Forward Mika Zibanejad<\/a> gave Sweden a 4-2 lead at 15:42 of the third, and defenseman Victor Hedman<\/a> added an empty-net goal at 17:11.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew Clara was their big talent,\u201d Hedman said. \u201cAnaheim is lucky to have a prospect like that. He played unbelievable and kept them in the game. We could have been a little bit more direct, but felt like a typical opening game. Nerves. It doesn\u2019t matter where you play.\u201d<\/p>\n Bradley said the Italians weren\u2019t expected to do much, but they used that to their advantage.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, we all lace up the skates the same way, and we went out there and kind of used that motto,\u201d he said. \u201cA big confidence game for us moving forward, and we\u2019re going to try to compete as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n Italy coach Jukka Jalonen said he didn\u2019t know Clara\u2019s status, and a lot may depend on that. But the Swedes were supposed to be the Italians\u2019 most difficult opponents in Group B. Their next game is against Slovakia at Rho Arena on Friday (6:10 a.m. ET; Peacock, ICI T\u00e9l\u00e9, CBC Gem, SN).<\/p>\n \u201cI think in our group, Sweden was — is — the best team, I think,\u201d Frigo said. \u201cWe just go out there and enjoy, have fun and play the way we know how to play, and anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frigo pumped his fist as the home crowd roared. It was the first goal Italy had scored in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-469219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}