The same disaster that flirted with Canada early in the day was sniffing around Team USA on Wednesday. But like their archrivals, the Americans were able to sidestep it and move on in the Olympic tournament in heart\u2013pounding fashion in Milan, Italy.<\/p>\n
After the U.S. allowed a late equalizer in regulation, Quinn Hughes kept the Americans\u2019 gold medal hopes alive with an overtime goal at 3:27 of the extra session to lift Team USA to a thrilling 2-1 victory over Sweden in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
The crafty, sublimely skilled Minnesota Wild defenseman took a drop pass from Matt Boldy and circled out high before cutting sharply into the high slot. In front of Gabriel Landeskog, he ripped a wrist shot past goalie Jacob Markstrom (38 saves) and off the post and in.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just want to pick and wait for your spot. I felt like I had one on the backhand earlier. I feel like I\u2019m pretty good in open space, so I\u2019m just trying to create a shot for myself and I was able to do that,\u201d Hughes told NBC.<\/p>\n
Surviving the gut punch of Mika Zibanejad\u2019s tying goal with 1:31 left in regulation was no small feat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say it\u2019s devastating because you\u2019re still in the game but it\u2019s like \u2018here we go\u201d and you\u2019ve got all that stuff going on in your head. But we\u2019ve got guys who\u2019ve won Cups and gone deep, won some awards and are superstars in the league. You just have to rely on that pedigree. You\u2019re playing Sweden, who can beat anyone on any given day. Yeah, it\u2019s tough when they score with 90 (seconds) left.\u201d<\/p>\n
That ended a white-knuckle day of hockey. The U.S. now advances to the semifinal against tournament Cinderella Slovakia on Friday.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, Canada escaped what would have been a mammoth upset when they tied David Pastrnak\u2019s Czechia team late in the third period and then won it overtime on Mitch Marner\u2019s backhander, sending them to Friday\u2019s semifinal against Finland, which also advanced with an overtime win over Switzerland.<\/p>\n
While Slovakia and Finland will have something to say about it, the dream matchup of U.S.-Canada in the final is still on the board.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really special,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cYou realize how hard it is to get here and we\u2019re sending one of the best countries home, if not the best. It\u2019s going to be tough, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first period was scoreless and evenly played, with the teams each getting 10 shots on net. The U.S. had the only power play in the first 20 minutes but could neither convert nor create sustained pressure. In fact, most of their chances were one-and-done with little net-front presence in front of Markstrom.<\/p>\n
Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy was playing his first game without the bubble that he\u2019s been wearing since coming back from the broken jaw he suffered on Nov. 15. He wasn\u2019t shy in getting physical, either, as he delivered a couple of big hits in the first period and throughout the game.<\/p>\n
One of the Swede\u2019s top defensemen, Victor Hedman, dressed and was on the bench but did not play in the first period. It was announced later that he had suffered a lower body injury during warmups. That allowed Hampus Lindholm, a late injury replacement, to see his first Olympic action.<\/p>\n
As the action wore on in the second period, it was clear that the U.S. would not have an easy time against the detail-oriented Swedes. Tre Kronor got the first great chance of the game when Gabriel Landeskog made a terrific backhand pass to Lucas Raymond for what looked like a backdoor tap-in, but Connor Hellebuyck flashed the left pad for a terrific save.<\/p>\n
Every save felt huge because the prospect of trying to come back against the Swedes, always strong defensively, was not an appetizing one.<\/p>\n
![\"United](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Hockey-2.jpg\")
United States defenseman Charlie McAvoy, center, and Matthew Tkachuk (19) celebrate with Quinn Hughes, who scored the winning goal to beat Sweden in overtime in a men’s ice hockey quarterfinal game at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (AP Photo\/Hassan Ammar)<\/p>\n
And at 11:03 of the second, the Americans finally broke the ice. Dylan Larkin beat Bruin center Elias Lindholm in a faceoff to the right of Markstrom and headed to the net. From the top of the zone, the game hero\u2019s brother, Jack Hughes, blasted a shot that Markstrom could have stopped easily if it had gotten through. But Larkin was at the top of the crease to deflect it past the netminder for the 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
The Yanks then started to push the play from there the rest of the period. They outshot the Swedes, 20-8, in the second. But Markstrom stood tall to keep the Swedes within striking distance. The U.S. had a late power play on a Hampus Lindholm penalty, but Sweden managed to kill it off to get to the third period down by just a goal.<\/p>\n
The U.S. was challenged early in the third when Vincent Trocheck tripped Landeskog to give Sweden its first power play but the Americans were able to kill it.<\/p>\n
The Swedes, however, got some jump from the man advantage and, combined with the Americans\u2019 willingness to just chip out the puck most of the time, they spent much of the period inside the U.S. zone. With 2:30 left in regulation,\u00a0 Adrian Kempe nearly tied it up when he had a clean shot from the slot but he hit the post.<\/p>\n
But with 1:31 remaining in regulation, the Swedes did knot it up. With Markstrom pulled for an extra skater, Raymond sent a tremendous diagonal pass to Zibanejad, who blasted a one-timer through Hellebuyck\u2019s short side, off the near post and in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked that it got through, actually,\u201d said Hellebuyck, who made 28 saves in the win. \u201cIt took me a second to realize how it actually got through me because I thought I made a great push and beat it. I just put it behind me. That\u2019s all you can do in hockey. You\u2019re not going to have a shutout every single night. The main thing you can do is just try and win. And that\u2019s what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, the U.S. was able to shake that off, regain its composure and prevail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The same disaster that flirted with Canada early in the day was sniffing around Team USA on Wednesday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[113110,23,1785,3,385,99,42270,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-476863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-boston-bruins","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-team-usa","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476863","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=476863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}