Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin scored the first goal of the game for USA in a 6-2 win against Slovakia that gives the Americans a shot at their first Olympic men\u2019s hockey gold medal in 46 years.<\/p>\n
Larkin and the Americans will play Canada for gold on Sunday. The Canadians used a late goal by Nathan MacKinnon to down Finland in their semifinals game.<\/p>\n
The last American men\u2019s hockey gold medal was the Miracle on Ice at Lake Placid in 1980. With Canada and USA evenly matched, a miracle isn\u2019t required this time. This is a toss-up game.<\/p>\n
Playing third line center, Larkin continues to be heavily praised for his work as a key role player. The Americans took control of the game early. They led 2-0 after one period and 5-0 after two.<\/p>\n
TOI<\/p>\n
Larkin played 15:21 minutes. He spent most of his time on a line with Jack Hughes and Tage Thompson.<\/p>\n
Production<\/p>\n
Larkin\u2019s close friend Zach Werenski and Tage Thompson assisted on his goal. It came at 4:19 of the first period to give the Americans an immediate boost.<\/p>\n
Along with his goal, Larkin had four shots on goal and was\u00a0also 4-4 in the faceoff circle.\u00a0 Larkin is now 29-9 (76.3%) on faceoffs in the tournament. Coach Mike Sullivan uses Larkin on every important offensive draw. Larkin also helped kill off four USA penalties.<\/p>\n
Analysis<\/p>\n
The NBC team continues to praise Larkin for his contributions to USA\u2019s success. It\u2019s clear he is one of the glue guys on the American squad. Jack Hughes seems like a good fit to play alongside him. Hughes scored twice for the Americans. . \u2018. .\u00a0 With USA in control of the game, coach Mike Sullivan was able to spread out the minutes to his forwards and defensemen. . . Because Canada had a tighter game, Canada coach Jon Cooper had to overplay his top players against Finland.<\/p>\n
Game Notes<\/p>\n
Former Red Wings player Tomas Tatar played 16:56 minutes for Slovakia, registering no points and one shot on goal. He was minus-one for the game. . . The bronze medal game between Finland and Slovakia will be played Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ET. . . Sidney Crosby\u2019s injury status (lower body) for the gold medal game is still undetermined. He did not play in today\u2019s win against Finland.<\/p>\n
Next Game<\/p>\n
The Americans (5-0) play Canada (5-0) at 8 a.m. ET Sunday in the gold medal game. The last time the two teams played against each other in an Olympic gold medal game was 2010 in Vancouver when Crosby scored a golden goal in overtime to give Canada the win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin scored the first goal of the game for USA in a 6-2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5101],"tags":[599,93,5137,595,58,56224,5,4,2602,3358,5138,413],"class_list":{"0":"post-465185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-red-wings","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-red-wings","10":"tag-detroitredwings","11":"tag-dylan-larkin","12":"tag-featured","13":"tag-gold-medal-game","14":"tag-hockey","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-olympics","17":"tag-red-wings","18":"tag-redwings","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116105903363287559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465185","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=465185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}