Slovakia stun USA and progress to semi-final after penalty shootout thriller at Beijing 2022 Olympics

Slovakia men's ice hockey team are into the semi-finals of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games after eliminating Team USA in the quarterfinals on Wednesday 16 February.

After a tight and tense 2-2 in regular time and a deadlocked overtime period, Slovakia won in the penalty shootout.

The heroes for Slovakia were goalkeeper Patrik Rybar who stopped four of the USA's penalty shots and Peter Cehlarik who scored his for a historic victory for the Slovaks.

The USA are out and Slovakia will play the winner of ROC-Denmark in the semi-final.

It's an incredible moment for Slovakia who started the tournament poorly with two defeats in their first two games - a 6-2 loss to Finland and a 4-2 loss to Sweden.

But they managed to tighten things up and stunned reigning Olympic silver medallists from PyeongChang 2018 Germany 4-0 in their qualification playoff on Tuesday.

USA were tagged as favourites when they beat Canada in the prelims but Slovakia made life very difficult for a talented, youthful USA team, withstanding an early American onslaught to score first in the 12th minute.

Revelation Juraj Slafkovsky found space in front of the U.S. net and beat Strauss Mann with another precise wrist shot into the top corner for his fifth goal of the tournament.

At 17 years of age, Slafkovsky is one of the breakout stars of the Games, and his goal gave the Slovaks the confidence to begin dominating the U.S.

But just when it looked like the underdogs might head into the locker room with a goal advantage, up popped Nick Abruzzese to find Rybar's five-hole less than a minute before the end of the first period to tie things up.

Abruzzese finished off a fine team goal after a great assist by Steven Kampfer and an even better pass from Matty