Winter Olympics Women's Hockey Tournament – Page 3

There was never any doubt. Canada scored five first-period goals and kept on rolling in a 10-3 semi-final rout of Switzerland. The reigning World Champions outshot the Swiss 61-13. Canada faces the winner of the U.S.-Finland semi-final in Thursday’s gold medal game.

Canada has reached all seven Olympic finals since the inaugural 1998 women’s tournament in Nagano. The Canadians won four straight Olympic gold medals from 2002 to 2014. They lost the 2018 final to the U.S. in a 3-2 shootout heartbreaker and are clearly ravenous to regain their title.

Coach Troy Ryan’s team kept up its balanced attack. Captain Marie-Philip Poulin stepped up with two goals and Sarah Nurse totalled four assists. Thompson also starred with a goal and two assists. Her D-partner Erin Ambrose added a goal and an assist, as did assistant captain Blayre Turnbull.

Jamie Lee Rattray, Renata Fast, Emma Maltais, and Brianne Jenner scored a goal apiece, while Rebecca Johnston had three helpers.

This semi-final impacted the record books. Nurse now leads the Olympics with 16 points (4+12=16), two ahead of Poulin (4+10=14). Nurse also tied Hayley Wickenheiser’s single-tournament assists record (12) from 2006. And Thompson’s Olympic scoring record for defenders stands at 12 points.

Jenner tied the single-tournament record of nine goals set in 2010 by Canada’s Meghan Agosta and Switzerland’s Stefanie Marty. Wickenheiser’s points record (17) from 2006 could fall in the final.

Swiss captain Lara Stalder scored twice and added an assist. Alina Muller had a goal and a helper. It’s the first time Switzerland has ever gotten more than one goal against Canada in Olympic or Women’s Worlds play.

The Swiss will take on the U.S.-Finland loser in Wednesday’s bronze medal game.

Canada’s Melodie Daoust, the MVP of the 2018 Olympics and 2021 Women’s Worlds, made her long-awaited return to the lineup. Daoust played just 6:53 in the opening 12-1 romp over Switzerland before getting injured on an illegal hit from Sarah Forster. Here, she slotted back in between Spooner and Sarah Fillier.

No non-North American team has ever gone further than Sweden’s surprising 2006 silver medal, and advancing just wasn’t in the cards for Switzerland. The Canadians dominated as expected, entering this game with the tournament’s top seven scorers after demolishing Sweden 11-0 in the quarter-finals.

Swiss starting goalie Andrea Braendli faced a slew of high danger scoring chances early on. Thompson’s lightning wrister ricocheted in off her blocker-side post to open the scoring at 7:16. Thompson, an Olympic rookie and former Princeton captain, had her third goal of these Olympics, and the effervescent Canadian bench was buzzing.

Rattray made it 2-0 at 8:28, going to the net picking up a deflection off a Swiss skate, and roofing it home.

It was 3-0 just 36 seconds later. Thompson dipsy-doodled past Swiss forward Noemi Rhyner and sent a slick pass through Nadine Hofstetter’s skates to Turnbull, who backhanded the puck into the gaping cage.

Swiss coach Colin Muller called his timeout to try to halt Canada’s momentum, but the Canadians still scored again 17 seconds later. Nurse fired a shot from the half wall that a pinching Fast tipped home right in front.

Muller tried changing his goalie, inserting Saskia Maurer after Braendli had allowed four goals on 18 shots. Yet the onslaught continued. Ambrose scored Canada’s fifth goal through traffic at 10:40, with Daoust registering her first point of these Olympics with the assist.

On a late first-period Swiss power play, Maurer made a fantastic glove grab on Fast’s shorthanded attempt off the rush. The Swiss finally got something to cheer about when Stalder zipped a high shot from the left faceoff circle to spoil Canadian netminder Ann-Renee Desbien’s shutout bid at 18:37.

In the second period, the Canadians besiged Maurer’s net early, but she held her ground. Stalder found Muller rushing to the net and she beat Desbiens high to the stick side to cut the deficit to 5-2 at 4:59.

Canada promptly killed the faint dream of a Swiss comeback. At 7:52, Poulin one-timed home Nurse’s set-up from the top of the faceoff circle. Just 11 seconds later, Johnston circled the Swiss net and located Clark out front for a 7-2 lead.

Showing no quit, the Swiss made it 7-3 when Stalder capitalized on a Canadian defensive zone turnover and popped it through Desbiens’ pads at 9:44. It marked the first time Canada has allowed more than two goals in Beijing.

On Poulin’s second goal, the Canadian superstar stripped blueliner Nicole Vallario of the puck in the neutral zone, cut in from the left stickhandling, and elevated a backhand over Maurer at 13:27.

At 3:13 of the third period, Maltais hopped up and down with old-school Mike Foligno-like glee after notching her first Olympic goal. Jenner blew a slap shot off the rush paset Maura for her record-tying goal at 18:11 to round out the scoring at 10-3.

Canada has now scored 54 goals in six games, surpassing the Olympic peak (48 in five games) set in Vancouver in 2010.

Realistically, the Swiss only had so much left in their gas tank after their dramatic 4-2 quarter-final win over the ROC team, keyed by Muller’s two late goals. Muller, 23, also led the 2018 Olympics with seven goals and 10 points and was named Best Forward and an all-star.

Right now, it’s hard to believe Canada slumped to an IIHF Women’s World Championship bronze medal for the first time in history in 2019. The Canadians have been even more spectacular in Beijing than they were en route to their first Women’s Worlds gold medal in nine years in Calgary in 2021.

The Americans and Finns both pose different challenges as potential gold-medal opponents. The U.S., of course, is Canada’s greatest rival and nemesis, and every showdown is a must-see. Finland, however, beat Canada 4-2 in the 2019 semi-final, making it the only European nation ever to register an IIHF playoff win over the motherland of hockey.

Meanwhile, the Swiss will be overjoyed if they can achieve their second Olympic bronze medal. In 2014, they made history with a 4-3 win over Sweden to earn bronze in Sochi. The only other two Olympic medals in Swiss hockey history were won by the men long ago and were also bronze (1928, 1948).

Source: iihf.com

Canada’s players huddle prior a women’s quarterfinal hockey game between Canada and Sweden at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 11, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By JOHN WAWROW

BEIJING (AP) — The Canadians just finished making brisk work of Sweden in the quarterfinal round of the women’s Olympic hockey tournament, and yet coach Troy Ryan wasn’t prepared to assess just how dominant his team can be.

A better time to ask might be Thursday, when the gold medal is awarded.

The Canadians are now considered the favorites, having raised the bar of the women’s game with a dynamic and relentless, four-line transition attack that has outscored opponents by a combined 44-5 at the Beijing Games.

It’ll take a little more to impress Ryan.

“Honestly, we keep things pretty simple in our minds,” said Ryan on Friday, following an 11-0 win over Sweden in which Canada scored five times on six shots during a second-period span of 7:25. “I don’t think we’re reinventing the wheel at all.”

Perhaps not.

But the Canadians, in three-plus years under Ryan, are reinventing themselves following the lowest points in their proud history.

The downturn began with a gold-medal loss to arch-rival United States at the 2018 Winter Games, which ended Canada’s run of four Olympic championships. The following year, the Canadians settled for bronze in failing to reach the world championship final for the first time in tournament history.

The losses led to Ryan and his staff transforming what had been both a stale team culture and style of play.

They made the game fun again by placing a focus on speed and transition to increase offense and complement the strengths of the ultra-talented pool Canada draws from. And with that, came an emphasis on not being afraid of making mistakes.

“We’ve got to be OK with the mistakes, because one of the things we talked about was how do you improve your game if you don’t leave a little room for error?” he said.

The change paid off at the world championships in August, when Canada’s 3-2 overtime win over the U.S. in the title game ended the Americans’ run of five tournament titles.

Ryan’s strategy centers on using Canada’s play-making defenders to exit the zone as quickly as possible — accepting the risk of turnovers to keep opponents on their heels.

“I think we had become a little robotic in the way we played,” said Natalie Spooner, who leads the tournament with 13 points (three goals, 10 assists). “The quicker we play on defense, the quicker we get the puck out, let’s us play offense and let’s us do our thing.”

Canada will face Switzerland, and the U.S, coming off a 4-1 quarterfinal win over the Czech Republic, will play Finland in the semifinals on Monday. Both games are preliminary round rematches after Canada defeated the Swiss 12-1, and the Americans beat Finland 5-2.

Finland advanced with a 7-1 win over Japan on Saturday, with Petra Nieminen scoring three goals and adding two assists. In Switzerland’s 4-2 win over the Russian Olympic Committee, Alina Muller converted Lara Stalder’s pass on a 2-on-1 break to score the go-ahead goal with 2:37 remaining in regulation and then added an empty-netter.

Swiss coach Colin Muller sees a significant jump in Canada’s game since the world championships.

“It’s ridiculous. I think Canadians and the U.S. have stepped up their game, but for me at the moment, Canada, maybe more,” Muller said. “It’s a different animal than what I even saw in August. And when I compare back two years ago and three years ago and that 2019 worlds, it’s a different team.”

The Canadians have dialed it up a notch after a four-month leadup of practices and games that allowed them to polish their chemistry.

Canada leads the tournament in scoring efficiency with 44 goals on just 250 shots, and power-play efficiency in converting 10 of 20 chances. Canada’s 4-2 win over the U.S. last week matched the most the team has ever scored against its cross-border foes in Olympic play.

Meanwhile, Canadians Brianne Jenner and newcomer Sarah Fillier are tied for the tournament lead with eight goals each, one short of matching an Olympic record set by Canada’s Meghan Agosta and Switzerland’s Stephanie Marty at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

“Being able to score as many goals as we have, and scored in so many different ways really gives us confidence,” forward Blayre Turnbull said. “Some of us definitely played a bit more of an uptight game where we were gripping our stick and just thinking about mistakes. We’ve done a big 180 as a program.”

The change is night and day for goalie Ann-Renee Desbiens, who actually quit playing hockey after 2018 because she no longer enjoyed it. She attended Wisconsin to get her master’s degree in accounting, where Desbiens doubled as a goalie coach for the Badgers women’s team.

Coaching and the change in Canada’s culture lured her back.

“I think you see the fruits by seeing all the smiles on the ice,” said Desbiens, who has allowed four goals on 97 shots in three games. “Troy’s done a good job of creating a safe environment and making sure that all the players can play to their best ability and not have to hold on to their sticks too tight.”

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