USA downs Canada 4-1 in second pre-world exhibition

After a rough opening exhibition for Team USA, Katey Stone rallied her troops to a 4-1 win with all of her Olympians back in the lineup. Once again the US dressed 20 skaters for the game with Hannah Brandt, Karen Thatcher, Amanda Pelkey, Caitlin Cahow, Molly Engstrom, Megan Bozek, and Brianne McLaughlin joining Alex Carpenter, Amanda Kessel, and Taylor Wasylk who sat out last night, as scratches for the game again tonight.

Monique Lamoureux-Kolls scored 45 seconds into the game to put Team USA up 1-0 early and put Canadian goalie Kim St-Pierre back on her heels. Jen Schoullis would pick up where she left off a night ago giving team USA a 2-0 lead with a gritty power play score just one second before Tara Watchorn's Body Checking penalty expired. The Canadians were out shot 15-5 in the first period.

With the USA leading 2-0 after one period the second period was much closer statistically with Canada being slightly out shot 11-7 in the frame with both teams spending a fair amount of the frame in the Penalty box culminating with Kelli Stack and Sarah Vaillancourt getting matched up for Roughing. Brianna Decker got the periods only goal With Gillian Apps in the box for Canada to give the USA a 3-0 lead. Midway through the frame each team swapped out it's netmiders as starters Jessie Vetter and Kim St-Pierre were spelled by Molly Schaus and Charline Labonte.

In the third period the Canada offense made an appearance on the power play as Meghan Mikkelson took a feed from Jen Wakefield and Caroline Ouellette for her second goal in as many games. After each team took another turn on the Power Play Gigi Marvin gave her team their fourth and final goal of the game, assisted by Kacey Bellamy. The Goal for the United States gave them their second three goal lead of the game and allowed the Americans to coast to victory over the final ten minutes. Despite the losing effort Canada finished strong, out shooting the Americans 17-7 in the final period.

As the USA makes its cut and heads to Switzerland for Worlds the question for many has to be what if any effect these games will have when Canada and the USA likely meet for Gold on April 25th in Zurich.