SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Mike Richter held off a third-period onslaught Friday night to push the United States into the Olympic hockey championship game with a 3-2 victory over Russia.
The dramatic win, coming on the 22nd anniversary of one of the most memorable moments in all of American sports, set up a gold medal showdown against Canada.
The United States played an overwhelming two periods to take a 3-0 lead, all of the goals coming on the power play. But Alexei Kovalev scored 11 seconds into the third period and Vladimir Malakhov added a goal three minutes later.
That set up a frantic final 16 minutes, in which Russia stormed the American goal time after time. There were 19 shots fired at Richter during the final period after he had faced just 11 over the first and second periods combined.
"I'm kind of spent," said American Coach Herb Brooks, who was also behind the bench in 1980 when a youthful United States stunned the Soviet Union to win the Olympic gold medal.
"We played so well in the first two periods. And then it was a horse race. But we knew there would be moments like this. We knew it would not be our way all the time.
"I just told our guys that they needed to write their own book. That has been our theme."
Goals by Bill Guerin, Scott Young and Phil Housley gave the United States its lead and the advantage could have been much greater but for the goaltending of Nikolai Khabibulin. The Americans outshot the Russians over the first two periods, 38-11.
Those three American goals came after penalties called by NHL referee Bill McCreary -- one on Andrei Nikolishin for tripping, another on Darius Kasparaitis for roughing and yet another on Alexei Zhamnov for slashing.
"Russia didn't find their game in the first two periods," Richter said. "They didn't get a lot of rebound chances. Even after they scored, we were still up by one and we felt we were good enough to hold on. And we did."
In the first semifinal game, defenseman Eric Brewer scored the go-ahead goal with 2:35 to play in the first period and Canada coasted to a 7-1 victory over Belarus.
Canada outshot Belarus, 51-14, dominating a team it was supposed to dominate. Belarus got into the semifinals with a huge upset of Sweden.
Belarus goaltender Andrei Mezin, the key to the victory over Sweden in the quarterfinals, was pulled after allowing four goals.
"Today was not a great game for me," Mezin said. "Four goals. I should stop more. They overwhelmed us with two-on-ones and three-on-ones. I hope I play in the bronze medal game to show what I can do."
Belarus tied it at 1-1 when Rusian Salei scored on a long-range shot, but Brewer answered off a pass from Steve Yzerman to put the Canadians back in front.
Yzerman had a goal and two assists.
"Playing on the same line with Mario Lemieux and Paul Kariya has been eye opening," Yzerman said. "It is an honor to play with Mario, who is so great and is really playing hurt here. Belarus has one-on-one skills and they can score goals if you cheat and bring people forward.
"If they had scored the second goal when it was 1-1, it wouldn't have taken much to give them the momentum."
Canada won just one of its three round-robin games and a tough battle with Finland to get past the quarterfinals. But now the Canadians can finally look forward to ending their long gold medal drought.
"Not winning the gold medal for 50 years has put a lot of pressure on us," said Canadian defenseman Al MacInnis. "Some guys don't worry, but I do."
"We are not satisfied," said forward Joe Sakic. "We expected to be here. There will be relief only when we win the gold medal."
