By Trevor Stynes
MILAN, Feb 8 (Reuters) – Canada’s defence of their Olympic women’s ice hockey title took longer than expected to get underway, and they also took a while to get the goals flowing before finishing off Switzerland on Saturday, but the team are happy to have put so many shots on target.
The Canadians’ original opening game on Thursday was postponed after four Finland players tested positive for norovirus, and when they finally hit the ice they made it count in a 4-0 win over the Swiss.
“Obviously a delayed start from what we thought we were going to have,” forward Blayre Turnbull told reporters. “But yeah, it felt great to get that first game out of the way.”
Switzerland had opened with a 4-3 shootout win over the Czech Republic, and the United States won their first two games against the Czechs and Finland before Canada made their entrance.
“There was a sigh of relief finally, because obviously the tournament had started without us almost, and so it was nice to get out on the ice,” 31-year-old forward Sarah Nurse said.
“Obviously, these guys have already played a game, so it was good to kind of get that rust out in the first period,” Nurse said. “We’ve only practiced two or three times since we’ve been together, named as an Olympic team. So there was some chemistry that needed to kind of be formed and shape up. And I thought we did a great job building into the second and third periods.”
Canada outshot Switzerland 17-2 in the opening period, but failed to score, and after finding the breakthrough in the second period, they went on to rack up another three goals in the final period.
“We had 55 shots, so it’s a lot of shots for us to get,” Turnbull said. “I think we played a really good game.”
Nurse was asked if there was some frustration within the team after failing to convert more.
“It’s not frustration, I think if we didn’t have a lot of shots, there would be some problems,” Nurse added. “I really like that they weren’t perimeter shots. I really like we had a lot of Grade A chances and those will find the back of the net.”
The Swiss had goaltender Saskia Maurer to thank for keeping the scoreline down, stopping 51 of the Canadians’ shots.
“I am so happy for her as she had a great game. We had huge belief out there. For two periods we were right there,” her teammate Alina Muller said. “The shot count doesn’t reflect the score, but with a good goalie and a detailed system you can beat anybody on a good night.”
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes; Editing by Will Dunham)
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