The Associated Press The United States’ Dylan Larkin celebrates after scoring the opening goal during Friday’s semifinal game against Slovakia.

MILAN — Zach Werenski and his U.S. teammates tried not to look ahead at a potential gold-medal game against Canada at the Olympics. After each went unbeaten in group play, there was no way the North American rivals could meet before the final, but there was work left to do.

After routing Slovakia 6-2 in the semifinals on Friday night, the much-anticipated but never guaranteed U.S.-Canada showdown for gold is on.

“It’s the matchup everyone wanted,” Werenski said after his three-assist performance against Slovakia. “Now that it’s finally here, we can kind of shift our focus to Canada.”

The two top seeds in the tournament, who went in as the favorites, will meet Sunday. It comes a year after the U.S. and Canada played two memorable games against each other at the 4 Nations Face-Off.

“It’s the final that we wanted and the team that we wanted to play,” winger Matt Boldy said. “It’s exciting for the fans and for hockey and everything like that.”

That NHL-run event ended a drought of nearly a decade without an international tournament featuring the best hockey players in the world. Three fights in the first nine seconds in the first meeting put the 4 Nations in the spotlight, and their epic final won by Canada in overtime only built the anticipation for the Olympics.

“Now that it’s all set in stone, everything happens for a reason,” said Brady Tkachuk, who along with brother Matthew and J.T. Miller were involved in the 4 Nations fisticuffs. “We’ll be looking forward to this one. You guys have been talking about it for a while. Now you get to enjoy it.”

The U.S. had no trouble against the Slovaks, who made an improbable run and were simply overmatched. They’ll face the Finns for bronze on Saturday night.

The U.S. is playing for gold after the semifinals were a much easier go than the quarterfinals against Sweden, when overtime was needed to survive a scare. Dylan Larkin, Tage Thompson, Jack Hughes and Jack Eichel scored the four goals on 23 shots that chased Samuel Hlavaj out of Slovakia’s net past the midway point of the second period.

Canada rallies

Falling behind for a second consecutive game, after never trailing throughout group play, Canada dug itself an even deeper hole in the semifinals against Finland.

Down two goals against an opponent also full of NHL players, the tournament favorite did not look the slightest bit shook.

“There wasn’t really any panic,” center Nick Suzuki said. “We were going to get our chances eventually.”

Then, the most talented roster in Milan buried those chances. Sam Reinhart deflected Cale Makar’s shot in to start the comeback, Shea Theodore tied it on a blast through traffic and Nathan MacKinnon scored the go-ahead goal with 35.2 seconds left to advance to the gold medal game with a 3-2 victory.

“You could definitely feel the sense of calm, having been through that before,” McDavid said.

Canada came back again without injured captain Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins.