Olympic Hockey

Watched all four games from yesterday (3 live,1 on tape) and came away with a few thoughts.

After watching the four winners,considering today's matchups and putting Canada aside,if I had to pick a lower seed to pull an upset today,I might lean towards Slovakia.
The Czechs against Finland really is a toss up and with Jaromir Jagr possibly missing the game for the Czechs,let's go with Slovakia as my possible upset.

I do like the Olympic knockout round better than the system used in the past.
This way,you get three fun games to establish the four teams that get byes and then every game has win or go home implications.
No roll over Dungys in Olympic Hockey!

Give some credit to two teams that I figured would lose by a substantial margin as both Latvia and Norway produced gritty efforts in games against better competition to just miss a huge upset.
Latvia fell in overtime to the Czech Republic,while Norway lost to Slovakia 4-3 on a third period goal.

If the KO shot by Ole Kristian Tollefsen on Slovakia's Lucas Bartecko not occurred,I think the Norwegians would pulled the shocker.
The penalties called (Properly so) produced a power play that saw Slovakia score two of their four goals on the evening and wake up a seemingly coasting team.
Not bad for the team that Ryan said was the worst in the tournament going into play.

Canada pounded Germany as they should and the Canada-Russia game could be the game of the tournament,even if the winner doesn't win the tournament.
Hard to believe that the loser of this game that was a co-favorite to win the tournament will go without any medal at all.
In either case,I am sure that is going to go over very well in the home country.

My vote for best Olympic jersey goes to the Whites worn by the German squad.
They may not have been much on the ice,but they looked good doing whatever it was they were doing!

Quick Selections

USA over Switzerland
Canada over Russia
Finland over Czech Republic
Sweden over Slovakia