SCORE BOARD

Team Canada Head Coach Brent Sutter held a Sunday news conference at a downtown hotel in Vancouver, where he discussed the upcoming semi-final round.

“This is a close group of kids and they have come together very well,” said Sutter, alluding to Canada’s perfect record in Round Robin play. “We’ve climbed a lot of mountains in a short amount of time and we still have two more to climb.”

After scoring a 3-2 win over the USA on Saturday, Canada now has a bye into the semi-finals.

The team’s level of intensity, which was noticeably higher than in the two previous games versus Switzerland and Norway, came as no surprise to Sutter.

“The way I’ve felt about this team since Day One, I knew our level of play would get up to where it needed to be,” said Sutter.

But if Sutter and his team are already looking forward to the opportunity to play in the gold medal game, he wasn’t sharing that with the media on Sunday.

“The only thing we are focusing on right now is the semi-final and what we have to do to prepare ourselves for that game,” said Sutter.

Sutter was also asked about what it was going to take to generate goals from five-on-five play. Canada is ranked fifth in goals in the tournament with 16 goals for, and seven of the goals have come from the team’s power play.

“The most important thing is for us to win,” said Sutter. “We have to play a simple game to do that. All that matters is winning.”

Team Canada does not play on Monday, but will take on the winner of Sweden-Finland Tuesday at 4 pm PAC (live on TSN/RDS). The two Scandinavian rivals face each other in quarter-finals action Monday at Vancouver’s GM Place at 4 PM PAC (live on TSN/RDS).