Some hockey topics to munch on for an Olympic Sunday.
Arturs Silovs made 26 saves against the Germans yesterday, helped Latvia to their first Olympic win in 12 years. [NHL.com]
Erik Karlsson notched two assists in Sweden’s win over Slovakia — but Sweden didn’t win by enough (5-3) and saw Slovakia celebrate winning the group due to total goal differential. Much more on this below. [NHL.com]
Jake Guentzel scored a goal in Team USA’s 6-3 win over Denmark as his partnership with Auston Matthews starts to take
off. [ESPN]
Teams are allowed to dress two extra players for games in the Olympics, how they’re used tends to vary. [Sportsnet]
Here’s the outlook entering today sets the stakes for an important day:
The US and Canada are in good shape to cinch up their byes into the quarter finals. Goal differential will be worth watching, the Americans are two behind (and have a tougher-on-paper opponent today), seemingly setup for a tougher road to travel. In the event of a tie in points, the top seed will go to the best goal differential in the event. That could be significant, being as the Olympics use a bracket and will not re-seed and Sweden is now locked into the seventh spot, lining up to play the No. 2 team in the quarters. Thus, as James Mirtle spells out:
The No. 1 team will face the winner of a game featuring some combination of Switzerland, Germany and the Czech Republic. And the No. 2 team will get the winner of Sweden versus Latvia or Denmark
Slovakia’s group win to bump them over Sweden upsets the apple cart and has created a bit of chaos. Many were of the belief that the US, Canada and Sweden were the top-three teams in the tournament (in varying order). The way things have setup from the early results it sure looks like two of these teams will be playing each other in the quarterfinals in the single-elimination event that will send one high-powered club home and open up the podium for a surprising team to make an appearance.
That makes today huge for the Americans and Canadians in a bigger way than just the actual games they’ll be playing. Canada plays first (10:40am eastern time) and the US goes at 3:10. The Americans will know what they need to win by and have huge incentive to try and pass their northern neighbors on goal differential in order to get a better seed and path in the knockout round. That will also put pressure on the Canadians to put up a big enough win today on their own to the point that the US can’t match/surpass.
