right leg injury<\/a> leaves her availability in doubt. The 35-year-old, playing in her record-tying fifth Games, missed an Olympic contest for the first time since her 2010 debut. <\/p>\nThe absence of Captain Canada was a Canadian crisis, but it was not the only factor at play.<\/p>\n
The US keeps proving itself as the fastest, most skilled group in women\u2019s hockey. From Harvey\u2019s dancing with the puck to Murphy\u2019s spin-o-rama assist to Bilka\u2019s precise finishing, they are being carried by their young stars. They chased Canadian netminder Ann-Renee Desbiens, who allowed all five goals before ceding the net to Emerance Maschmeyer with seven minutes left.<\/p>\n
The Americans, who have outscored (15-1) and outshot (169-66) their opponents by huge margins for four games, landed their first regulation Olympic win over the Canadians since 1998, when they did it twice. <\/p>\n
Aerin Frankel made 20 saves and recorded the first shutout of Canada by an American goalie at the Olympics. The Northeastern grad and Boston Fleet ace has given up one goal in her three starts (3-0). <\/p>\n
Hilary Knight (assist), whose next goal will set the US women\u2019s record at the Olympics, tied Jenny Potter\u2019s points record with her 32d. She is also playing in her US-record fifth Games. <\/p>\n
This was the seventh time in a row the US has beaten Canada, dating back to the World Championships last April. It has outscored them, 35-11, in that run. <\/p>\n
In 2002, the Americans took eight in a row from their northern rivals before losing the gold medal game in Salt Lake City. <\/p>\n
The US clinched Group A and will play Italy in the quarterfinals. The Italians, who are ranked 17th in the world by the IIHF, finished third in Group B and made the playoffs for the first time. They finished in last place in Turin 2006, their only other appearance at the tournament. <\/p>\n
Canada will face Germany, which finished second in Group B after beating Italy on a late goal by Laura Kluge, who plays for the Fleet. <\/p>\n
Sweden won Group B, which unlike the men\u2019s tournament is intentionally unbalanced to encourage competition. The five teams in Group A \u2014 the US, Canada, Czechia, Finland, and Switzerland \u2014 are the top five in the world rankings and automatically advance to the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Matt Porter can be reached at matthew.porter@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him on BlueSky at mattyports.bsky.social.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hannah Bilka scored twice. Caroline Harvey had a goal and two assists, and Abbey Murphy had three assists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[54639,214763,17340,23,21393,103,293,215086,215085,308,215083,1612,214759,6801,658,3,30285,688,215084,1079,67335,34541,7245,214757,21,48253,19,215087,22,20,25,24,45569,214756,214761,1764,212922],"class_list":["post-461012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-54639","tag-2026-winter-olympics-milan-cortina","tag-adult","tag-america","tag-athlete","tag-canada","tag-color-image","tag-day-4","tag-group-a","tag-horizontal","tag-huddling","tag-ice-hockey","tag-international-ice-hockey","tag-italy","tag-milan","tag-news","tag-olympic-team","tag-photography","tag-qualification-round","tag-sport","tag-sports-team","tag-stadium","tag-success","tag-the-olympic-games","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-national-team","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-united-states-olympic-team","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-winter-olympic-games","tag-winter-sport","tag-winter-sports-event","tag-women","tag-womens-ice-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}