Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin got the ball rolling by scoring early in the game Friday and the United States went on to defeat Slovakia 6-2 in an Olympic semifinal in Milan, Italy.<\/p>\n
It sets up a gold medal matchup between Team USA and Canada on Sunday (8 a.m. ET, NBC, Peacock). Canada edged Finland 3-2 earlier in the day on a power-play goal by Nathan McKinnon in the final minute of regulation.<\/p>\n
Both teams are 5-0 and the top remaining seeds in the tournament. The U.S. is seeking its first Olympic gold medal since the 1980 Miracle on Ice. Canada\u2019s most recent gold was in 2014, the last time NHL players participated in this event before this year.<\/p>\n
Larkin took a pass in stride from Zach Werenski and raced into the zone with a full head of steam before whipping a shot past Samuel Hlavaj at 4:19 of the first period. It was his second goal in as many games.<\/p>\n
Jack Hughes scored a pair of goals in the second period when the U.S. broke it open, taking a 5-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Tage Thompson, Jack Eichel and Brady Tkachuk each had a goal and an assist. Werenski contributed three assists. Connor Hellebuyck stopped 13-of-15 shots for the U.S.<\/p>\n
Slovakia plays Finland for the bronze medal on Saturday (2:30 p.m. ET, Peacock, USA Network).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin got the ball rolling by scoring early in the game Friday and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5101],"tags":[46305,26402,599,93,5137,2675,5,15348,55018,4,5966,2602,46263,3358,5138,43,49619,25639,31286,55019],"class_list":["post-465075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-red-wings","tag-2026-milan-cortina-olympic-games","tag-2026-winter-olympic-games","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-red-wings","tag-detroitredwings","tag-events","tag-hockey","tag-milan-cortina-olympics","tag-milan-cortina-winter-olympics","tag-nhl","tag-olympic-games","tag-olympics","tag-olympics-2026","tag-red-wings","tag-redwings","tag-sports","tag-winter-games","tag-winter-olympic-games","tag-winter-olympics-2026","tag-xxv-olympiad"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116105506205916620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465075","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=465075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}