BUFFALO — Sweden is going to earn a medal at the 2018 world junior hockey championship.
What’s left for the hockey-proud nation is to determine the colour.
Sweden used a three-goal barrage in the third period on Thursday to bury the United States 4-2 in a tournament semifinal at the KeyBank Center, earning a berth in the gold-medal game on Friday night.
Sweden will meet the winner of the Canada-Czech Republic semi for gold. The loser will meet the U.S. in the bronze-medal game on Friday afternoon.
The Americans were hoping to go for a second consecutive gold after beating Canada in a shootout in the final last winter in Montreal.
The Swedes have won 44 consecutive preliminary-round games at the world junior, but have not turned that early success into gold medals. A gold has come just once in that time, in 2012. And Sweden has not earned a medal of any sort since 2014, when it got silver on home turf in Malmo.
Sweden has won gold at the world junior twice, in ’12 and also back in 1981.
Goaltender Filip Gustavsson, Pittsburgh Penguins prospect who signed with the club last June, stopped 29 shots in the victory.
Before a sparse crowd of 7,524, the Swedes broke the game open early in the third period, chasing U.S. goalie Joseph Woll with three goals in a span of less than three minutes.
Two of the goals — gulp — came while Sweden was shorthanded, and were scored on the during the same U.S. man advantage.
Woll was gone in favour of Jake Oettinger at 8:25 after Axel Jonsson Fjallby beat him high. That goal followed a similar one by Oskar Steen at 7:47.
Captain Lias Andersson got the outburst started at 6:17 when he finished a give-and-go with Fredrik Karlstrom.
Kieffer Bellows, with his seventh goal of the tournament, scored for the U.S. at 12:24 of the third.
At 16:59, Brady Tkachuk scored during a scramble to shorten the Sweden lead to two goals.
Sweden took a 1-0 lead at 13:30 of the second period when Elias Pettersson, the fifth pick overall by the Vancouver Canucks last June, snapped a high shot past Woll.
Casey Mittelstadt, a Buffalo Sabres prospect who one day has the potential to be an impact player for the NHL club, had several great scoring chances but failed to score.
Woll made a great pass to send Mittelstadt in alone with two U.S. teammates in the second, but Gustavsson made a pad save on Mittelstadt’s backhand.
Woll’s best save came on Alexander Nylander in the first period, as the Toronto Maple Leafs prospect came across the crease to rob William Nylander’s younger brother.
