MILAN \u2014 Sweden pulled off a stunning upset over the Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, on Friday in the Olympic women\u2019s hockey tournament quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
The 2-0 win by the Swedes eliminates the Czechia, the No. 3 seed after the four-game preliminary round. The Czech team came into the 2026 Olympics as bronze medal favorites, with eight players from the Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League, including No. 1 pick \u2014 and leading goal scorer \u2014 Krist\u00fdna Kaltounkov\u00e1.<\/p>\n
But Swedish netminder Ebba Svensson Tr\u00e4ff proved difficult to beat, making 29 saves on 29 shots for her second shutout of the tournament. Svensson Tr\u00e4ff had never played in a major international tournament for Sweden before the Milan Cortina Olympics, but with such strong play in the Swedish Women\u2019s Hockey League \u2014 she ranks third in the league with a .933 save percentage \u2014 the 21-year-old nabbed the starting role from Emma S\u00f6derberg.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s amazing,\u201d said forward Sara Hjalmarsson, who is tied for the all-time Swedish record in scoring at the Olympics with 19 career points. \u201cShe saves us time and time again out there. \u2026 It\u2019s huge to have her back there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forward Hanna Olsson scored the opening goal on the power play 4:47 minutes into the second period, which ended up being the game winner. Nineteen-year-old Hilda Svensson scored on the empty net to seal the deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so happy,\u201d Svensson said after the game. \u201cI couldn\u2019t even think about it when the game ended, I was like, did this just happen?\u201d<\/p>\n
Though it\u2019s a massive upset on paper \u2014 Sweden entered the quarterfinal as the top-ranked team from Group B and sixth tournament-wide \u2014 it shouldn\u2019t be all that surprising.<\/p>\n
Sweden has a highly skilled roster with exciting young players, including five graduates from the 2023 under-18 team that upset Team USA in the semifinals at the U18 Women\u2019s World Championship.<\/p>\n
Only the Americans (20) scored more goals than Sweden (18) in the preliminary round of the Olympic tournament. NCAA stars Thea Johansson (University of Minnesota-Duluth) and Svensson (Ohio State) paced the offense alongside Olsson, Friday\u2019s quarterfinals hero.<\/p>\n
The upset punctuates a long-awaited turnaround from Sweden, which historically had one of the best women\u2019s teams in the world and became the first team outside of the U.S. and Canada to make an Olympic gold medal game in 2006.<\/p>\n
A downward slide for the team culminated with Sweden being relegated to the lower division of the women\u2019s world championship after a disastrous 2019 tournament. Shortly after, Swedish players boycotted the national team over compensation and working conditions.<\/p>\n
Head coach Ulf Lundberg was hired in May 2020 to help right the ship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big challenge,\u201d he said after the game. \u201cIt takes a long time to build something up. It was really fast to erase it. But we built it (back up) and I think it\u2019s strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sweden qualified for the 2022 Beijing Olympics \u2013 where they lost 11-0 to Canada in the quarterfinals \u2013 and returned to the top flight of the women\u2019s world championship tournament. The team remained in Group B, where the bottom five teams in the world compete, and had failed to pull off a quarterfinal upset \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a long few years,\u201d said Hjalmarsson. \u201cBut it\u2019s great to finally be able to win this game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barring any upsets in Saturday\u2019s quarterfinal matchups, Sweden will most likely play top-ranked Team USA in the semifinals on Feb. 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 Sweden pulled off a stunning upset over the Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[1471,5,1765,2337,1766,4,2602,3105,44123,1472,44372,1581,54279],"class_list":{"0":"post-457142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-boston-fleet","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-minnesota-frost","11":"tag-montreal-victoire","12":"tag-new-york-sirens","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-olympics","15":"tag-ottawa-charge","16":"tag-seattle-torrent","17":"tag-toronto-sceptres","18":"tag-vancouver-goldeneyes","19":"tag-womens-hockey","20":"tag-womens-olympic-ice-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116065221341854399","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}