The U.S. dressed only 17 skaters, with defenseman Charlie McAvoy (upper body) and forwards Matthew Tkachuk (lower body) and Auston Matthews (upper body) missing the game because of injury.
Forward Brady Tkachuk then left at the start of the second period for the Americans. He appeared to sustain a lower-body injury at 5:12 of the first period when he lost an edge and crashed into Ersson and the right post.
“Charlie, right now he's out with an upper-body injury. Auston was more banged up, or nicked up I should say," U.S. coach Mike Sullivan said. "We'll probably have more information tomorrow with those guys.
“Brady had a lower-body injury and we kept him out more for precautionary reasons. I haven’t gotten an update to this point after the game yet, so we’ll see how he responds, but I don’t anticipate there being an issue.
"It’s not easy when we lose a guy that early in the game when we’re already down one. We tried to spread the minutes around a little bit so nobody got an extensive workload, but when you’re down two guys that early in the game, it is what it is. I thought the guys competed hard.”
Kreider, who was playing in his first game of the tournament, gave the U.S. a 1-0 lead just 35 seconds into the first period. Zach Werenski skated into the offensive zone and cut inside on Sweden defenseman Gustav Forsling before getting a shot on the net from the bottom of the right circle. Ersson made the initial save, but the rebound popped right out to Kreider, who buried it into the open net.
“I thought [Kreider] played really well,” Sullivan said. “He scored a goal, but he did more than score goals. He can really skate, he has good size, he can kill penalties, he played on the power play. We played him with Jack Eichel and he was a good fit there. [Kreider] goes to the net. He’s good in the puck pursuit game and he can really skate. His north-south speed is a challenge for any opponent.”
