{"id":605174,"date":"2026-02-21T06:13:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T06:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/605174\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T06:13:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T06:13:18","slug":"u-s-mens-hockey-throttles-slovakia-locks-in-gold-medal-match-with-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/605174\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. men’s hockey throttles Slovakia, locks in gold medal match with Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. men’s hockey team dismantled Slovakia 6-2 in the semifinal round of the Olympic tournament on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Team USA will face Canada in the gold medal game on Sunday, a final that’s been anticipated since it was announced that NHL players were returning to compete at the 2026 Olympics.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s what everyone wanted, this matchup in the gold medal game, and I’ve thought about it a lot,” Dylan Larkin <\/strong>said after the game.<\/p>\n

MATCH RESULTS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. narrowly escaped the quarterfinal round with a 2-1 overtime victory over Finland on Wednesday, and in Friday’s meeting with Slovakia it was clear they weren’t letting this one be decided in crunch time.<\/p>\n

Larkin got on the board for the United States<\/a> just over four minutes into the game to give the Americans a 1-0 lead for most of the first period. It was the second time in a row that the Detroit Red Wings star opened the scoring for his team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great to see us get off to a fast start and I thought that was important,\u201d U.S. head coach Mike Sullivan<\/strong> said. \u201cOur group continues to take steps forward and it’s a really fun team to coach with an awful lot of personality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tage Thompson <\/strong>added a cushion with less than a minute to go in the first on the power play, to lead the team into the locker room up 2-0 over Slovakia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. men’s hockey team dismantled Slovakia 6-2 in the semifinal round of the Olympic tournament on Friday.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":605175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[72921,108086,117231,51,8665,32158,142067,255782,50,35591,50759,1348,11215,52,67],"class_list":["post-605174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-brady-tkachuk","tag-dylan-larkin","tag-game-1","tag-headlines","tag-hockey","tag-jack-eichel","tag-jack-hughes","tag-mens-tournament","tag-news","tag-semifinals","tag-slovakia","tag-team-usa","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116107149662339972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}