Team USA Lights Up Finland in Preliminary Round of the Women’s World Championship

Photo courtesy of Lubos Pavlicek (AP)

The U.S. took the early lead in this matchup with a goal from Hayley Scamurra off the rebound at 2:44 in the first period. At 5:39, from the blue line, Scamurra doubled the U.S. lead with her second goal of the game.

“I felt great,” “I always like to contribute on the board when I can, but I know that I contribute in other ways as well. So I was really focusing on that today, and the goals just happened to come along as well.”

Hayley Scamurra

Abbey Murphy connected with Kelly Pannek at 12:58 to make this a 3-0 game.

Just 55 seconds into the second period, Lee Stecklein tucked a backhander between Finland’s goaltender Sanni Ahola to put this one out of reach for Team Finland.

Petra Nieminen blew a power play one-timer past Aerin Frankel from the faceoff circle at 8:03 to show some sign of life from Finland.

U.S. Captain Hilary Knight answered back 16 seconds later off a feed from Alex Carpenter to regain their five-goal lead.

Early in the third period, Taylor Heise and Pannek tallied goals 22 seconds apart to end this game with a final score of 7-1. This was Pannek’s second goal of the game.