MILAN, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Sweden bowed to the somewhat inevitable when falling to tournament favourites the United States in the women's Olympic ice hockey semi-final on Monday, but their ambition of winning a first medal in 20 years is still on track.
The Swedes had no answer to a U.S. team dominating at the Milano Cortina Games, and lost to the same 5-0 scoreline as defending champions Canada when they met the Americans in the group stage. Sweden will meet the loser between Canada and Switzerland in Thursday's bronze medal game.
Sweden are the only country to ever break the Canada-U.S. stranglehold on the Olympic final when they beat the Americans in the 2006 semi-final and took silver, having won bronze in the previous Games.
Since then, however, they have slipped down the rankings, and have had to qualify for the last two Games. They proved too strong for Group B, winning all four games before putting out the highly fancied Czech Republic in the quarter-finals.
"We've been on a journey here for almost six years, and we always talk about this group and how we've been improving as a group," Sweden captain Anna Kjellbin said.
"We haven't really seen the results you know the first couple of years, but now we start to see them and as well during the Olympics here.
"So I'm super excited for Thursday and to see what our group can accomplish because I really believe in everyone in this team."
Kjellbin's teammate Hilda Svensson agreed with her captain's sentiments, but had some regrets over how the game went.
"I think we have done a really good tournament and our goal was to take a medal and we still have that chance," Svensson said.
"But I'm just a little bit pissed after this game. We knew it was going to be such a hard game that they almost were going to win, but I don't know, I'm just mad that they scored like five goals and we scored zero."
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes, Giulio Piovaccari and Janina Nuno Rios in MilanEditing by Christian Radnedge)
