Rivalry renewed for the gold medal game

We were talking about the men’s hockey tournament at the Winter Olympics for over a year. Once the puck dropped in the preliminary round, it felt like the games flew by in the blink of an eye. We have reached the medal round after today’s semifinals, and we’re going to get the gold medal game nearly everyone predicted and wants to see.

Canada Sends Turbo to the Bronze Medal Game

For the second straight game, Team Canada looked beatable but found a way to mount a late comeback and survive and advance. That’s the thing about the elimination round; a one-goal win counts the same as a five-goal win.

Finland jumped out to a 2-0 lead thanks to a power-play goal by Mikko Rantanen in the first period and an Erik Haula shorthanded goal early in the second period. As we’ve seen in this tournament, multi-goal leads don’t mean much. Sam Rienhart got the Canadians on the board late in the middle frame with a power-play goal off a redirect.

Midway through the third period, Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Shea Theodore tied the game with a heavy slap shot through traffic.

With 2:35 left in regulation, Finnish defender Mikko Nikkola was called for high-sticking. While his stick did make contact with Nathan MacKinnon’s helmet, he could have easily been called for embellishment because he made sure he got the call. In fact, the referee’s arm didn’t go up until after the sell job. In the final seconds of the man advantage, Connor McDavid made a ridiculous pass to set up MacKinnon’s game-winning goal.

While there were many complaints about the officiating after the game, including from Hall of Famer Teemu Selanne, Finland has nobody to blame but themselves. Once they went up 2-0, they played not to lose. The Fins played on their heels and showed no interest in pressuring on offense. If you play back against a team like Canada, you’re going to lose. Instead of trying to score a third goal, they focused on not giving up three to Canada, and you see how that worked out.

Team USA Gives Us the Gold Medal Game We Wanted

While the Canadians have played two stressful games to reach the gold medal game, the United States played its most complete game against Slovakia, cruising to a 6-2 victory.

Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin opened the scoring for the Americans for the second straight game. Ever since Mike Sullivan put Larkin with Tage Thompson and Jack Hughes, that line has been fantastic.

The United States closed out its best opening frame of the tournament with a power-play goal from Thompson in the final minute. The goal looked awfully similar to MacKinnon’s game-winner a couple of hours later. This was the first time in five games that they scored more than one goal in the first period.

Jacks were wild for the Americans in the second period. Jack Hughes and Jack Eichel scored 19 seconds apart to give Team USA a 4-0 lead and chase starting goaltender Samuel Hlavaj. I have to believe that head coach Vladimir Orszagh made this move to both try to change the momentum and save his top netminder for the bronze medal game. For good measure, Hughes added a second goal late in the middle frame to put his team up by five goals.

Slovakia got on the board in the third period thanks to their top player, Juraj Slafkovsky, who benefited from Connor Hellebuyck's misplaying of the puck behind his net. Brady Tkachuk answered with a breakaway goal, the second one-on-one chance he had against Stanislav Skorvanek in the period. With the big lead, Sullivan had the luxury of spreading out his minutes over the final frame.

Canada and Team USA will play for the gold medal on Sunday at 7:10 am CT. The biggest wild card of the team will be whether Sidney Crosby plays or not. Head coach Jon Cooper said, “he has a better chance of playing that than he did of playing today.”

Something else to monitor over the next two days is Thompson's status. He was held out of the third period against Slovakia for precautionary reasons after racking up a goal and an assist. Hopefully, it was just because the game was already out of hand and they didn’t want to make a minor injury any worse in a blowout.

Teuvo Teravainen and Finland will play Slovakia for the bronze medal tomorrow at 1:40 pm CT. If they win, it would be their seventh medal in the last 10 Olympic tournaments.