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Women’s Hockey: USA Defeats Finland

The American women were very impressive in their first game of the preliminary round pool on Saturday morning. Team USA defeated Team Finland by a score of 3-1. American goalie Jessie Vetter had a shutout until late in the third period when a lovely pass from Michelle Karvinen and a rare defensive lapse for the Americans led to a power play goal for Team Finland by Susanna Tapani.

Hillary Knight started the scoring less than a minute into the game when she intercepted a pass at center ice and skated in alone on Finnish goalie Noora Raty snapping a wicked wrister home. Raty played a terrific game for Team Finland, but the porous defense in front of her left her hanging out to dry repeatedly. The Americans were simply too fast and too skilled for the Finnish team.

The boards in Sochi are very lively with a lot of surprising bounces. Team USA used this to their advantage on the next two goals by shooting the puck back behind the net to get it to rebound out in front. Kelli Stack capitalized on just such a play. The puck bounced out from behind the net, hit Stack and popped up in the air. Stack batted the puck out of mid-air to score. The goal was reviewed to make sure it was not scored with a high stick. Both live and on replay, her stick was very clearly not above the crossbar and the goal call was upheld.

Those lively boards provided another juicy rebound that Alex Carpenter was able to tap in for the third goal for Team USA. Goaltender Jessie Vetter did not see much work until the third period when Team Finland, gripped by the prospect of being shutout, pressed harder and eventually drew the penalty that led to the power play goal scored by Tapani.

Below are the raw Corsi numbers and percentages for each team by period and situation. These measurements are based upon my manual tracking during the game.

Team/Situation

Period 1

Period 2

Period 3

Totals

Corsi For

CF%

Corsi For

CF%

Corsi For

CF%

Corsi For

CF%

USA/5v5

17

60.71%

26

78.79%

26

66.67%

69

69.0%

FIN/5v5

11

39.29%

7

21.21%

13

33.33%

31

31.0%

USA/5v4

17

94.44%

13

86.67%

N/A

N/A

30

90.9%

FIN/5v4

N/A

N/A

2

66.67%

2

100%

4

80.0%

USA/4v5

N/A

N/A

1

33.33%

0

0.0%

1

20.0%

FIN/4v5

1

5.55%

2

13.33%

N/A

N/A

3

9.1%

*all data tracked by JenLC

USA will play Switzerland on Monday, February 10, 2014 at 5 a.m. Eastern. The game will be aired live on NBCSN.

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