A (too early?) look at the Olympic hockey tournaments
CBC
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Is it too early to talk Olympic hockey? I say no. The schedules for the men's and women's tournaments in Beijing were released yesterday. So let's dive into them and dole out some initial thoughts:
Women's tournament
How it works: The first games are on the night of Wednesday, Feb. 2 in Canadian time zones — two days before the opening ceremony. The 10 teams are split into two groups of five for the round-robin stage. Because international women's hockey is so top-heavy, all the best teams are grouped together and they all advance to the quarter-finals no matter what. The top three teams from the other group will join them. The quarters take place from Feb. 10-12 in Canadian time zones. The semis are Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 13 at 11:10 p.m. ET and Monday, Feb. 14 at 8:10 a.m. ET. The gold-medal game — likely to be another showdown between Canada and the defending champion United States — is Wednesday, Feb. 16 at 11:10 p.m. ET.
Canada's schedule
Thoughts: Everyone will have the Canada-U.S. game circled on their calendars, but their round-robin matchups tend to be glorified exhibitions. Neither team wants to show its rival too much when they're probably going to face off for all the marbles the following week. Don't sleep on the Finland game: they upset Canada in the semifinals at the 2019 world championship and then appeared to stun the U.S. for gold before their overtime goal was disallowed by video replay and the Americans went on to win in a shootout. The Finns took bronze at this year's worlds in Calgary.
Men's tournament
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This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here.
This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here.
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This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here.
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