U.S. Women Will Face Sweden in Semifinal

The American women, gold-medal winners in the Nagano hockey tournament, are easily on pace to repeat in Salt Lake City. But to do so, they have to get past 2-1 Sweden, the second-place team in the other group, in the semifinals. That probably would set up a gold-medal match against U.S. archrival Canada, which faces Finland in the other semifinal.

The United States outshot three opponents in 10-0, 12-1 and 5-0 victories in the preliminaries by the amazing total of 175-39. The most glaring loss in U.S. women’s hockey history came at the hands of Canada in last year’s world championships in the gold-medal game.