By Philip O’Connor
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Towering American forward Michael McCarron was happy to finally shrug off the underdog tag as Team USA slammed six goals past Sweden to book their berth in the final of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) world championship on Sunday, when they will meet either Switzerland or Denmark.
With many of their biggest NHL stars traditionally skipping the tournament, the United States have not won gold at the tournament since 1933 and last made the final in 1950, but McCarron said his squad showed in their 6-2 win over Sweden that they were good enough to win this time around.
“We have a really good team, we have a group of NHL players as well — they (the Swedes) might have bigger names but we’re all playing the same league,” he told Reuters following Saturday’s victory over co-hosts Sweden, who were favourites to win gold after Canada suffered a shock elimination at the hands of Denmark on Thursday.
McCarron’s huge physical presence in front of goal was indicative of how the Americans approached the game, battling the slick stick-work of the Swedes with speedy skating and relentless aggression.
“We try to play from below the goal-line and create a lot of offence that way, and I think we did that. We created a lot of offence from below the goal line, we put pucks behind their D and fore check hard and win a lot of pucks back that way,” McCarron explained.
“We had a good game, we played 55 minutes of really good hockey. We had a little bit of a wall there in the third but, you know, they were going to come out hard, and we were able to turn it around after a short little lack of puck play for us. That was really good.”
The 30-year-old from Michigan said that, with the final just over 24 hours away, there would be little time to reflect on history.
“(Making the final), that’s pretty cool. I don’t know what took so long for us to get back to a gold-medal game. I think it was 1950 for the last one, something like that, so it feels good,” he said.
“I mean, it’s a quick turnaround. We’re going to enjoy this for a quick little bit and go to sleep thinking about whoever wins tonight, get ready for those guys. So it feels great but, like I said, we still have one more step to go.”
(Reporting by Philip O’Connor; editing by Clare Fallon)
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