The U.S. sled hockey team, bidding for a Paralympic three-peat, finished pool play with an 8-0 rout of host South Korea on Tuesday and won its three games by a combined 28-0.
Declan Farmer, a 20-year-old Princeton student, netted a hat trick Tuesday, while Brody Roybal tallied five points. Steve Cash faced just four shots en route to his fourth straight Paralympic shutout dating to 2014.
The U.S. gets Italy in the semifinals Thursday (7 a.m. ET, NBCSports.com/live and the NBC Sports app) and, potentially, rival Canada in the final Saturday (11 p.m. ET, NBCSN and streaming).
The Canadians went undefeated in the other group, outscoring foes 35-0.
In 2014, the U.S. blanked Canada 3-0 in the semifinals en route to gold. Its final opponent in Sochi, Russia, doesn’t have a hockey team in PyeongChang as it was unable to qualify while banned from competition due to the country’s poor anti-doping record.
Canada won the most recent world title, topping the U.S. 4-1 in the gold-medal game last April. Then the U.S. returned the favor with a 3-2 win in Prince Edward Island on Dec. 9. The teams then split a home-and-home series in February.
The U.S. is the only nation to win multiple Paralympic hockey titles. It is dedicating its tournament to its 2014 Paralympic coach, Jeff Sauer, who died of pancreatic cancer in February 2017.
OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!
MORE: Paralympics TV, streaming schedule
[twitter-follow screen_name='nzaccardi’ show_count='yes’ text_color='00ccff]
