Jack Eichel scored off his personal faceoff win a minute after establishing Brady Tkachuk’s first of two objectives the identical manner, and the U.S. rode its high line to a 6-3 defeat of Denmark on Saturday evening, keeping pace with also-unbeaten Canada for the highest seed within the males’s hockey match at the Olympics.
The U.S. bounced again from goaltender Jeremy Swayman getting crushed by a shot from 95 ft away, simply inside the middle pink line, 11 minutes in. Swayman will not must 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 comfortable one from Phillip Bruggisser with 2.6 seconds left within the second interval moot.
The objectives by Tkachuk and Eichel — two-thirds of the highest line together with Brady’s brother, Matthew — halfway via the second interval tied it and gave the U.S. the lead. Defenseman Noah Hanifin added one other when his shot obtained via Mads Sogaard and trickled over the purpose line a bit later, offering some respiration room that proved obligatory.
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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 pink, white and blue crowd stuffed the sector on the opening puck drop and after all of the objectives. 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 state of affairs and the sport towards the U.S. as heavy underdogs.
After rolling over Latvia 5-1 of their opener on Thursday evening behind two objectives 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 towards 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 right down to purpose differential.
