Jack Eichel scored off his personal faceoff win a minute after establishing Brady Tkachuk’s first of two targets the identical means, and the U.S. rode its high line to a 6-3 defeat of Denmark on Saturday night time, keeping pace with also-unbeaten Canada for the highest seed within the males’s hockey event at the Olympics.
The U.S. bounced again from goaltender Jeremy Swayman getting overwhelmed by a shot from 95 ft away, simply inside the middle purple line, 11 minutes in. Swayman will not should kick himself too badly for the blunder after a few of his most gifted teammates stepped as much as make the long-distance purpose from Nicholas B. Jensen and one other smooth one from Phillip Bruggisser with 2.6 seconds left within the second interval moot.
The targets by Tkachuk and Eichel — two-thirds of the highest line together with Brady’s brother, Matthew — halfway by the second interval tied it and gave the U.S. the lead. Defenseman Noah Hanifin added one other when his shot acquired by Mads Sogaard and trickled over the purpose line a bit later, offering some respiration room that proved mandatory.
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Jake Guentzel fired a one-timer previous Sogaard with a little bit greater than 12 minutes left, and Brady Tkachuk scored his second off a feed from Jack Hughes after Sogaard exited with harm and was relieved by Frederik Dichow.
Captain Auston Matthews made the move to Guentzel, and Zach Werenski — who by chance knocked the puck into his personal web on Denmark’s first purpose credited to Nick Olesen — had the secondary help to get some retribution.
“U-S-A! U-S-A!” chants from the very purple, white and blue crowd stuffed the world on the opening puck drop and after all of the targets. Some followers within the stands had flags of Greenland, in gentle of latest rhetoric from U.S. President Donald Trump about taking management of the semiautonomous island overseen by Denmark.
Not one of the geopolitics reached the ice, and a number of Denmark gamers final week downplayed any connection between the Greenland scenario and the sport in opposition to the U.S. as heavy underdogs.
After rolling over Latvia 5-1 of their opener on Thursday night time behind two targets from Brock Nelson, the Individuals have six factors within the standings, the identical as Canada, going into the ultimate day of the preliminary spherical.
The U.S. wraps up round-robin play in opposition to Germany, Canada faces 0-2-0 France and in the event that they every win in regulation, the No. 1 spot within the single-elimination knockout spherical would come all the way down to purpose differential.
