Cole Knuble has assist record as USA dominates Latvia, meets Sweden next in World Junior A semifinals – The Rink Live
CORNWALL, Ontario — With a 9-0 victory over winless Latvia on Friday, the U.S. team wrapped up preliminary play in the World Junior A Challenge and left head coach Eric Rud pleased with the all-around effort.
– Today’s match was very well played. We’ve had a game plan throughout this tournament about how we want to play,” Rud told USA Hockey after the game, “and I thought we stuck with it today. We played winning hockey from start to finish and were rewarded as the game went on. Latvia played really well defensively, but I thought our guys did a good job of keeping it simple and sticking to the game plan.”
(Fargo Force) had a goal and a tournament-high four assists in the win. He has tallied a team-high eight points in the tournament, second only to Canada West’s Aiden Finks’ 10 total.
The U.S. is coming off a third-place finish in the 2019 tournament (2020 and 2021 were canceled) after winning it eight times since 2008. It will face Sweden (a 4-1 winner over Canada East on Friday) in a semifinal game on Saturday. The Americans beat Sweden 3-0 earlier this week.
(Chicago Steel) stopped 12 shots and the Americans cleaned up their game defensively and went penalty-free after being tagged nine times in 24 minutes in Wednesday’s win against Canada East.
(Cedar Rapids Rough Riders), who started the scoring at 13:56 of the first period, scored two more goals in the second period. The US capitalized on its only power play opportunity when
(Fargo Force) made it 6-0 at the 7:03 mark of the third period. Swanson also recorded three assists.
(Fargo Force),
(Muskegon Lumberjacks),
(Youngstown Phantoms) and
(Muskegon Lumberjacks) were the other American scorers.
In total, 11 different players had points for the USA
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