Published : Feb. 20, 2018 - 11:57
GANGNEUNG, Gangwon Province -- Three North Koreans will dress for the joint Korean female hockey team's last game against Sweden at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics on Tuesday.
At least three out of 22 players in the lineup for each game here must be from North Korea, as per terms set by the International Olympic Committee for the combined team last month. And head coach Sarah Murray went with forwards Kim Un-hyang and Kim Hyang-mi, and defender Hwang Chung-gum. The puck drop for this seventh-place match is 12:10 p.m. at Kwandong Hockey Centre in Gangneung, host of all ice events during the Olympics.
Kim Un-hyang played in each of the team's first four games, while Kim Hyang-mi played once in the preliminary round and then faced Switzerland in the classification game last Sunday. Hwang is back in the lineup after missing that game against the Swiss.
The joint Korean women`s hockey team practices at Kwandong Hockey Training Centre in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, on Monday. (Yonhap)
During the preliminary round, Murray used three North Koreans in each of her first two games and then had four in the lineup for the third game. Then for the classification match against Switzerland last Sunday, she went back to three North Koreans, though two of them, Kim Hyang-mi and Jin Ok, didn't' actually get on the ice.
This is a rematch of Korea's second preliminary game from Feb. 12, when Sweden beat up on the overmatched Korea 8-0.
South Korean forward Lee Yeon-jeong, a healthy scratch for the first four games of the competition, will dress for the first time and will be on the fourth line, though it remains unclear if she will get regular shifts.
And for the first time in the tournament, Murray only used her North Korean players on the bottom two lines, after spreading them across the second to fourth lines.
Kim Un-hyang is back on the third line next to Han Soo-jin and Choi Yu-jung. Hwang will be the seventh defenseman, and Kim Hyang-mi will be the 13th forward.
The 23 South Korean and 12 North Korean players have been training together since late January. While the IOC bent the rules so that Korea could have 35 players on its entry -- all other nations have 23 -- the game roster of 22, with 20 skaters and two goaltenders, was left unchanged.
Aside from injured forward Lee Eun-ji, there were two South Korean healthy scratches among skaters: forward Jung Si-yun and defenseman Cho Mi-hwan. (Yonhap)