The women of USA hockey dominate Sweden to advance to the gold medal game!

Today was the semifinal match between the US and Sweden, with the winner of this game goes to the gold medal game. Needless to say, I am looking forward to a rematch of US vs. Canada, to see if the Americans can prevail this time around, since Canada took gold in Vancouver.

The fans (family members) were ready for the game.

Once again, I had a remote camera behind the far net. When the team huddled together before the game, I fired off some shots. This time around, I decided to mount a 24-105mm lens instead of the wider 16-35mm lens I had been using before. I set the camera in manual mode and set the aperture to f/5.6 to give me more of the athletes in focus during the game.

Some of the early action from the beginning of the game.

As predicted, the US dominated the game from start to finish. At one point, the U.S. had 26 shots on goal and the Swede's had none.

Any time I can get a shot with the puck in the net, I am happy.

And I had ample opportunities for the "puck in the net shot" in this game.

The women had a lot of chances to celebrate, but the big contest will be in a couple of days when they take on their arch rivals from the great white North.

Kelli Stack tries to push the puck past the Swedish goaltender.

Julie Chu facing off right in front of where I was shooting.

Someone sent me a message asking if I could see what I was shooting on the remote camera. The answer is "no", as we are shooting blind. But I am able to see the play from the other side of the ice, and if it looks promising, I just fire the Pocketwizards. It isn't until 15 minutes after the game that I see what I captured. In this case, I got the puck hitting the back of the net. Yippeee!

One of the few shots on goal from the Swedes.

Another shot from the remote camera, with a buck in the back of the net. After 4 tries experimenting with the remote camera, I finally think I have the right settings. The first attempt was a complete failure, because Mr. Brilliant here set up everything, but forgot to plug in the cable from the Pocketwizard to the camera. Duh! For the second attempt , I didn't like the way I had prefocused. The third attempt was OK, but as I mentioned yesterday, the lighting is brighter at game time, and I had set the exposure during the break. The images were all a little overexposed. Ooops. This time, I focused it on the outer red line, set the camera to f/5.6 for less depth of field, and set the camera to record a little darker assuming that the lights would be brighter. All worked out much better.

This is one of my favorite photos from today, with Jocelyn, one of the Lamoureux twins, being tripped during her shot on goal.

Yep - another goal to celebrate.

The American's kept pushing and ended up scoring 6 goals.

And with just 20 seconds left in the game, the Swedish team scored a goal to erase the shutout.

The women were very happy, knowing that they were going to the final round.

Unlike all the other games, they convened in the middle of the ice to have a pep talk.

And, after everything was done, they skated off the ice as they waved to their families.

Now comes the big rematch in a couple of days. This should be fun!