{"id":481503,"date":"2026-02-21T07:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T07:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/481503\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T07:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T07:58:08","slug":"u-s-mens-hockey-throttles-slovakia-locks-in-gold-medal-match-with-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/481503\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. men’s hockey throttles Slovakia, locks in gold medal match with Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. men’s hockey team dismantled Slovakia 6-2 in the semifinal round of the Olympic tournament on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Team USA will face Canada in the gold medal game on Sunday, a final that’s been anticipated since it was announced that NHL players were returning to compete at the 2026 Olympics.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s what everyone wanted, this matchup in the gold medal game, and I’ve thought about it a lot,” Dylan Larkin said after the game.<\/p>\n

MATCH RESULTS<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. narrowly escaped the quarterfinal round with a 2-1 overtime victory over Finland on Wednesday, and in Friday’s meeting with Slovakia it was clear they weren’t letting this one be decided in crunch time.<\/p>\n

Larkin got on the board for the United States<\/a> just over four minutes into the game to give the Americans a 1-0 lead for most of the first period. It was the second time in a row that the Detroit Red Wings star opened the scoring for his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great to see us get off to a fast start and I thought that was important,\u201d U.S. head coach Mike Sullivan said. \u201cOur group continues to take steps forward and it’s a really fun team to coach with an awful lot of personality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tage Thompson added a cushion with less than a minute to go in the first on the power play, to lead the team into the locker room up 2-0 over Slovakia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. men’s hockey team dismantled Slovakia 6-2 in the semifinal round of the Olympic tournament on Friday.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[42373,80904,115064,6755,70862,152840,218445,3,2074,94674,99,42270,13594,21],"class_list":{"0":"post-481503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-brady-tkachuk","9":"tag-dylan-larkin","10":"tag-game-1","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-jack-eichel","13":"tag-jack-hughes","14":"tag-mens-tournament","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-semifinals","17":"tag-slovakia","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-team-usa","20":"tag-top-news","21":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481503","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=481503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}