The preliminary round is but a distant memory, and the men’s hockey tournament enters the fun part as teams begin playing single-elimination games for the opportunity to somehow bring home gold.
By the time this thread goes up one of Slovenia or Austria will have advanced to play Sweden in the quarterfinals, but at 7:30 am ET Russia goes head-to-head with Norway in a bid to avoid a complete embarrassment by not even making it beyond the qualification round.
The Russians came out strong and got up on Slovenia early in their first match, but then they were unable to contain T.J. Oshie (which should not be a sentence anyone ever utters) and barely made it past an underachieving Slovakian team to set up today’s game.
In the afternoon, we get an intriguing match up in Slovakia-Czech Republic in one game, and the right to see who loses to Canada in the other as the Swiss take on Austria. The Slovakian game is of interest to Red Wing fans because Jerksauce have the opportunity to put a bad team effort in the prelims behind them and make a little noise in the medal round. The Swiss scored 2 goals and only allowed 1 in the prelims so if you get up early to watch Russia then I highly advise you take your nap right around the time the puck drops between SUI/AUT.
Really, it’s not like it matters, since not a single team playing today has any shot at gold. It’s Canada’s tournament to lose and everyone is playing for silver. Too many people have said this is true so it must be right.
Anyway, go Norway!
