"We did what we needed to. Now it's just full focus on tomorrow," says national team captain Sam Hallam to SVT.
It was the extra match no one wanted - brought on by Slovakia's late goal with 39 seconds left in Saturday's group final (Sweden's 5-3 victory).
For a while the round of 16 at the Santagiulia Arena in Milan looked like it could be a fairly easy match for the Swedes - but that was not the case.
Two goals within 41 seconds midway through the first period gave Sam Hallam's team a 2-0 lead.
Kempe opened
First, Adrian Kempe, the sharpshooter from Los Angeles, opened the scoring with his skate after Joel Eriksson Ek's pass.
Then team captain Gabriel Landeskog made it 2-0 from close range past Latvian NHL goalie Elvis Merzlikins.
Filip Forsberg then made it 3-0 after Erik Karlsson, following a tour of the Latvian defensive zone, found him at the far post, and things looked calm.
By then 7:36 of the middle period had been played.
But the feeling of blue-yellow calm would disappear.
When the clock passed halfway through the game, Eduards Tralmaks reduced the deficit on a fairly simple rebound from Jacob Markström, who was guarding the Swedish net for the second game in a row.
Ride out the storm
It gave the Latvians a lot of energy and they came close to reducing the deficit several times, especially when Latvia got a late power play in the middle period.
But the Swedes weathered the storm, and when Mika Zibanejad made it 4-1 just under six minutes into the third period, Latvia were a beaten team.
William Nylander then lifted a backhand into the net on the power play to make it 5-1.
"I think we did very well in some parts. It's nice to be in the driver's seat and be able to play on it," says Sam Hallam.
Sweden had five different goal scorers, but Lucas Raymond stood out with three assists. Detroit's high-scoring forward has scored eight points (1 goal + 7 assists) in four games.
"The USA is a good team and so are we," says Lucas Raymond to SVT, and continues:
"We have found our game more and more every match. It is important for us to do the same against the USA. Come out fast and hard and match their speed."
Tre Kronor defeated the USA in last year's Four Nations in Boston 2-1, in a match in which the USA had already secured a place in the final. The USA then won convincingly in the World Cup semi-final at the Globen in May, 6-2. The USA eventually took the gold, their first in a World Cup context since 1933.
