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View Winners → Sports Feb 05, 2022
Defender Cayla Barnes, who was raised in Riverside County, had a goal and an assist against Finland on Monday, as the U.S. women's hockey team advanced to the gold medal game at the Beijing Olympics. | Photo courtesy of BDZ Sports/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Savannah Harmon had a goal and two assists and Nicole Hensley made 12 saves as the United States women’s hockey team defeated ROC, 5-0, Saturday at the Beijing Olympics, improving to 2-0-0-0 in preliminary round play.
Harmon opened the scoring with a power-play goal 12 minutes, 29 seconds into the first period, and assisted on Hillary Knight’s second-period goal and Amanda Carpenter’s third-period goal. Grace Zumwinkle and Jesse Compher also scored in the third period.
Defender Cayla Barnes, who was raised in Eastvale in northwestern Riverside County, played a game-high 22 minutes, 42 seconds.
The U.S. led 62-12 in shots. The U.S. scored on one of six power-play opportunities and killed off both short-handed situations.
“I felt that we played really well it just looked differently than when we played two days ago,” U.S. coach Joel Johnson said, referring to Thursday’s 5-2 victory over Finland. “We generated a lot of possession and generated a lot of shot opportunities, but a combination of good goaltending for Russia and their defensive style that they played limited our quality chances.
“We had to continue to make adjustments and we saw the difference it made in the third period.”
The U.S. played without center Brianna Decker, who will be sidelined for the rest of the tournament after breaking her left leg when she went down awkwardly after getting tangled up with Finnish defender Ronja Savolainen behind the U.S. goal midway through the first period Thursday.
Knight’s assist on Harmon’s goal moved her into fourth place in points and second in assists in U.S. Olympic women’s hockey history. Knight has 19 points and 13 assists in four Olympics. Jenny Potter holds the record for points, 32, and assists, 21, in four Olympics.
Hensley shut out the team known as Olympic Athletes from Russia in her only appearance in the 2018 Olympics.
As part of the penalty against Russia for the Russian government tampering with lab data that it provided to the World Anti-Doping Agency as a condition of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency being reinstated, Russia is competing under the acronym “ROC” in the Olympics after the name of the Russian Olympic Committee although the name of the committee itself in full cannot be used to refer to the delegation.
The U.S., ROC (1-0-0-1) and the three other Group A teams will all advance to the quarterfinals along with the top three teams in the five-team Group B.
The U.S. will play the third of four preliminary round games Sunday against Switzerland (0-0-0-2), a 5-2 loser to Russia Friday. The game is set to begin at 5:10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time and will be televised by USA Network.
