MILAN — Team USA’s inexorable march towards women’s hockey gold took another step on Friday night.
The Americans rolled past Italy in the quarterfinals, dispatching the Italians 6-0 in a match that was never competitive and never in doubt.
A lot like their four preliminary games.
As Ilia Malinin reminded the world in brutal fashion while this game was going on, there are no guarantees.
But unless Canada — which couldn’t give Team USA a game in the prelims, albeit with superstar Marie Philip-Poulin out due to injury — can somehow get on equal footing in a potential rematch, it’s hard to picture Team USA even being seriously challenged.
Indeed, the Americans might be to these Winter Games what the U.S. women’s basketball team usually is to the Summer Games.
Team USA’s semifinal on Monday will be against Sweden, barring Germany upsetting Canada on Friday.
Through five games, Team USA has outscored its opposition 26-1.
They haven’t allowed a goal in 271:23 and have four consecutive shutouts.
Team USA possessed the puck constantly on Friday night.
There wasn’t a single line or pair that didn’t dominate.
Their retrievals, their battles, their play on the walls and below the hashes were all superlative.
They gave up two shots in the first period and two in the second, after which the score was 6-0.
Then they gave up two in the third.
It was as close to a perfect game as you will ever see.
Gabriella Durante, Italy’s netminder, almost singlehandedly kept this game close through the first period.
The Yanks took a 1-0 lead on Megan Keller’s one-timer at 13:31 of the first, but it could easily have been 5-0 after 20 minutes.
That it wasn’t at least 2-0 was due only to Durante’s ridiculous stick save on Abbey Murphy in the last few seconds of the period.
That didn’t last long, though. Team USA scored a trio of goals in a four-minute span starting at 1:41 of the second, with Kendall Coyne Schofield striking twice before Laila Edwards scored on a delayed penalty.
Edwards’ goal came right after Italy coach Eric Bouchard called a timeout to calm his team down.
The timeout, obviously, did not work, and Bouchard was slamming the bench door and screaming at the referees later in the period when Britta Curl-Salemme made it 5-0 shorthanded, believing the refs had missed a penalty on the United States.
Both benches, by the end of the night, were almost as compelling as the game.
USA coach John Wroblewski jawed back and forth with an Italian assistant coach after Hannah Bilka scored the Americans’ sixth goal of the night, after which Murphy and Franziska Stocker got into a shoving match.
The competitive part of the game, by then, was long over.
The competitive part of the Olympics has yet to begin.