Rebounding from Wednesday’s disappointing tie with Latvia, the U.S. men’s Olympic team scored a 4-1 win over Kazakhstan Thursday to raise its preliminary-round record to 1-0-1. The contest was a must-win for the Americans, who have yet to face their toughest competition in preliminary group play.<\/p>\n
U.S. goaltender Rick DiPietro (Boston University) made 11 saves in his Olympic debut as the U.S. outshot Kazakhstan, 36-12, including a 17-5 margin in the opening period.<\/p>\n
Four different U.S. players — including two former collegians — scored in the game at the Torino Esposizioni, which saw the team open up a 3-0 first-period lead. <\/p>\n
“I think we came out much better and much stronger tonight,” said head coach Peter Laviolette. “We had more urgency on the puck. We played with a spark that we didn’t have against Latvia.”<\/p>\n
Team USA got on the board at 1:34 of the first period when former Hobey Baker Memorial Award winner Chris Drury (Boston University) sent a centering pass to Bill Guerin, who fought off a check and ripped a one-timer into the top left corner of the net.<\/p>\n
A pair of former Lake Superior State standouts got the U.S. its next goal. Brian Rolston made it 2-0 with a power-play goal at 8:31 when he took a Doug Weight pass at the point, backpedaled to the center of the ice and fired a shot past Kazakhstan goaltender Vitaliy Kolesnik.<\/p>\n
Brian Gionta (Boston College) completed the three-goal first for the Americans when he scored his second goal of the young tournament by tipping in a John-Michael Liles (Michigan State) shot for a power-play goal. <\/p>\n
After a scoreless second period, Kazakhstan got on the board with a power-play goal at 11:02 of the third. Yevgeniy Koreshkov picked up a pass from Alexey Vassilchenko and deked around DiPietro.<\/p>\n
But Team USA responded with a goal less than a minute later as Mike Modano and Erik Cole (Clarkson) teamed up on a give-and-go play, with Modano finishing it off for his first goal of the tournament. <\/p>\n
The U.S. returns to action on Saturday, facing off against Slovakia at Torino Esposizioni at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. EST). The game will be carried live by NBC. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rebounding from Wednesday’s disappointing tie with Latvia, the U.S. men’s Olympic team scored a 4-1 win over Kazakhstan Thursday to raise its preliminary-round record to 1-0-1. The contest was a must-win for the Americans, who have yet to face their toughest competition in preliminary group play. U.S. goaltender Rick DiPietro (Boston University) made 11 saves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n