Team USA stomps Germany, advances to face Canada in gold medal game

WELP.

I don’t think there was anyone who expected Germany to win against the United State in their semifinal game, but the absolute beating that Germany took was painful to watch (After the fifth goal, you just start cringing every time they scored).

But USA was relentless in a 11-0 win over Germany. Nicole Hensley needed to make just eight saves in the win.

USA’s win means that the expected matchup between USA and Canada will indeed take place tomorrow at 7 pm ET for the gold medal. Canada topped Finland 4-0 in the semifinal earlier this afternoon.

Hilary Knight got the scoring started on a goal by a sick dish from Kendall Coyne.

Hilary Knight gets USA on the board first #2017WWC pic.twitter.com/MkPIXmKT7t

— Women's Hockey Gifs (@CWHLHighlights) April 6, 2017

The first period wasn’t actually that bad, considering that Germany had just four shots on goal in the first 20 minutes. After Knight’s tally, Kelli Stack had a gorgeous tally to make it 2-0, and that was all the scoring USA would do in the first period.

But it became clear fairly quickly in the second period that this was going to be a blowout.

Within the first four minutes of the second period, Coyne, Emily Pfalzer, and Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson all scored to put the US up 5-0. Coyne’s goal was a power play tally.

Within the next three minutes, Coyne scored again, as did Megan Keller, and Germany mercifully pulled goaltender Jennifer Harss and replaced her with Invonne Schroder.

She didn’t fair much better- though the second period ended 7-0, USA quickly made it 8-0 in the third period with a rebound shoveled in by Amanda Pelkey. At the tail end of a power play (which was really more like two, considering Team USA had around two minutes of a six-on-five when they pulled Hensley on the delayed call), Monique Lamoureux-Morando got Goal #9, and then Haley Skarupa made it ten with just over five minutes remaining.

Germany never had a chance. Their Cinderella run had to end somewhere, and they got stonewalled by the US. They’ll have a chance to redeem themselves in tomorrow’s bronze-medal game against Finland at 3 pm ET, but if the Finns play like they did today, they might not have a prayer against them, either.