U.S. women upend Canada, set up rematch for title
HARBIN, China -- Meghan Duggan broke a tie on a power play midway through the third period and the United States beat Canada 4-2 on Thursday to set up a title-game rematch with the Canadians in the women's world hockey championship.
Captain Natalie Darwitz had two goals and an assist, Caitlin Cahow added a goal and Julie Chu had two assists to help the United States rebound from a 1-0 overtime loss to Finland on Wednesday in the first championship bracket round-robin game.
U.S. goalie Jessie Vetter made 14 saves, allowing only first-period goals by Jayna Hefford and Kelly Bechard. Vetter's best stop was a glove save on Hayley Wickenheiser's close-range shot with Canadian goalie Charline Labonte off for an extra attacker.
Needing a victory to advance to the title game, the United States beat Canada for the first time in world championship play since the 2005 final -- a 1-0 shootout victory. The Americans also ended the Canadians' overall winning streak that dated to a Jan. 1, 2006, game against the United States.
"We're very proud of our team's effort," U.S. coach Jackie Barto said. "We stuck to our game plan and executed extremely well. We were able to apply a lot of pressure on the forecheck and generate energy off that. The difference today was the execution of our power play and penalty kill and we came up big with key blocked shots.
"We had our backs against the wall and we were able to get the job done. We look forward to Saturday's rematch in the gold-medal game."
The United States was 3-for-10 on the power play, while Canada was 1-for-9.
The United States and Canada have met in all previous 10 championship games, with the Canadians winning nine times. Finland will face Switzerland in the third-place game. The Swiss beat Russia 2-1 on Thursday.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
