The Associated Press Caroline Harvey celebrates with U.S. teammates after scoring her side’s first goal on Tuesday.

MILAN — The U.S. women’s hockey team so thoroughly overwhelmed rival Canada that coach John Wroblewski issued a reminder that the 5-0 victory still left the Americans a long way from Olympic gold.

“What’s the hardest part of climbing the mountain?” the fourth-year coach asked.

“Getting home,” he said, answering his own question. “If you ever feel good about climbing Mount Everest, it’s the way down. Oh, you think you’ve done something, that’s when the mountain eats you up.”

This was just a preliminary-round meeting between the sport’s two global powers. The gold-medal game isn’t until Feb. 19.

The Americans are three wins away from a third gold medal after their lopsided victory over a Canadian team missing its captain, and clinched first place in Group A entering the quarterfinals. It was a performance that continued confirming why the U.S. entered the tournament as favorites.

“I don’t think it’s any easier than expected,” forward Tessa Janecke said of Canada’s most lopsided loss in Olympic play, and first time the team has ever been blanked.

“I think we go in with the same mindset, and I think it was just a good team win overall for us,” she added. “So I think we just went in and did it like any other game. It doesn’t matter who we’re playing.”

Team USA swept all four preliminary-round games by a combined score of 20-1, and brought back memories of how a Canadian team in its prime rolled to winning gold at the 2022 Beijing Games.

The tables have since turned, and it was evident on the scoresheet from a roster featuring seven players still in college.

The University of Wisconsin’s Caroline Harvey had a goal and two assists, with Badger teammates Laila Edwards and Kristen Simms also scoring. The goal was Edwards’ first in her Olympic debut in being the first Black woman to represent the U.S.

University of Minnesota captain Abbey Murphy set up three goals.

Canada, meantime, opened tentatively, and then ran into penalty problems minus its longtime leader, Marie-Philip Poulin, who sustained a lower-body injury in a 5-1 win over Czechia a day earlier.

The U.S. will open the quarterfinals against host nation Italy, which went 2-2 in clinching the third and final Group B playoff spot.

Malinin leads

Ilia Malinin playfully threw a couple of jabs at a TV camera while skating off the ice Tuesday night, the pressure of his first Olympics having seemingly vanished following a team gold medal and a near-perfect short program to begin the men’s competition.

The American wunderkind didn’t exactly deliver a knockout blow to the rest of the field.

He came close, though.

The self-styled “Quad God” landed a pair of quadruple jumps, another jaw-dropping backflip and his signature “raspberry twist,” piling up 108.16 points and taking a five-point lead over Yuma Kagiyama of Japan into the decisive free skate Friday night.

“In the team event, I think I had too much, I’ll call it, ‘Olympic excitement.’ It really just felt like there was so much pressure,” Malinin said. “I was so hyped up, so excited to skate out there and it really came back and beat me.”

Elsewhere:

– Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo blazed to his second victory at the Milan Cortina Games in the cross-country sprint to win his seventh Olympic gold medal. The 29-year-old Norwegian star separated from the field with a punishing late uphill run to finish in 3 minutes, 39.8 seconds, easing off in the home stretch to leave Ben Ogden of the United States 0.8 seconds behind. Linn Svahn led a Swedish sweep in the women’s competition.

– Norway’s Birk Ruud added an Olympic slopestyle skiing gold medal in Italy to the big air title he won four years ago in China. Ruud overcome bad sightlines on a gray day and landed one of the contest’s few flawless runs. Defending champion Alex Hall went only 1 for 3. His lone success was good enough for silver. It was America’s first medal in more than a week of snowboarding and freeskiing in events the country used to dominate.

– Julia Taubitz added to Germany’s Olympic luge dominance by winning gold in the women’s singles race. Ashley Farquharson earned bronze, giving USA Luge its seventh Olympic medal.

– Slovenia defended its gold medal in mixed team ski jumping. Siblings Domen and Nika Prevc become the first brother and sister to win a medal in ski jumping at the same Olympics.

– Johan-Olav Botn of Norway won the gold medal in the men’s 20-kilometer individual biathlon.