ZURICH \u2014 The United States set up a quarterfinal showdown with fierce rival Canada at the ice hockey world championship by beating Austria 4-1 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The U.S. and Canada met in the final at the Milan Cortina Olympics in February, when the Americans prevailed 2-1 in overtime<\/a> to take the gold medal.<\/p>\n Connor Clifton, Ryan Ufko, Paul Cotter and Matthew Tkachuk scored against Austria, and Will Borgen registered two assists. Devin Cooley made 25 saves in net.<\/p>\n The victory lifted the defending world champion<\/a> Americans to fourth place in Group A. That means they next face Canada, which already had clinched the top spot in Group B before facing Czechia later Tuesday.<\/p>\n The top four teams in each group qualify for the next stage. The remaining quarterfinal pairings will be determined by the late games.<\/p>\n Clifton found the top corner of the net 5:34 into the game, and fellow defenseman Ufko doubled the advantage by one-timing a slap shot from the point 45 seconds later.<\/p>\n Cotter made it 3-0 just 67 seconds into the second period before Tkachuk buried a rebound on a power play at 31:52. It was Tkachuk\u2019s fourth goal in four games since he joined the team last week.<\/p>\n Simeon Schwinger scored for Austria, which finished sixth.<\/p>\n Sweden, Latvia advance<\/p>\n Sweden, the bronze medalist in the last two world championships, beat Slovakia 4-2 in Group B in Fribourg to advance to the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n Ivar Stenberg, a top prospect for next month\u2019s NHL draft<\/a>, scored the winning goal; Anton Frondell<\/a> and Jakob Silfverberg had a goal apiece; and Oliver Ekman-Larsson sealed the win with an empty-net score.<\/p>\n Sweden clinched fourth place and will face either Switzerland or Finland. Those two square off later Tuesday to determine the Group A winner.<\/p>\n Slovakia finished fifth and didn\u2019t advance.<\/p>\n Latvia reached the quarterfinals by routing Hungary 8-1, moving to third place in Group A. Germany dropped to fifth and is eliminated.<\/p>\n Norway, which already had qualified for the last eight for the first time since 2012, needed overtime to down Denmark 4-3 in Group B action in Fribourg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH \u2014 The United States set up a quarterfinal showdown with fierce rival Canada at the ice hockey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26706,17,26702,26703,10860,13666,16535,26705,26704],"class_list":["post-61965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-anton-frondell","tag-canada","tag-hockey-world-championship","tag-hockey-worlds","tag-iihf-world-championship","tag-ivar-stenberg","tag-matthew-tkachuk","tag-us-canada-hockey","tag-usa-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}