The Sochi Winter Olympics 2014 schedule picks up in February with NBC handling the event on their various networks and online website and the Olympics in Russia are expected to be one of the most watched events in history and a number of sports will be in action early, including men's ice hockey, figure skating, snowboarding, skiing and curling and they come after the Opening Ceremonies on February 7.
The Opening Ceremonies will not be streaming online from NBC this year and that is an interesting decision, as the network is planning to put many events and live coverage online for viewers to stream from home. NBC said in a statement that they felt the opening ceremonies should be presented live on television to give it the "pageantry" it deserves and that really just means the network wants as many eyes on the TV as possible to start the Olympics and the opening ceremonies are usually full of extravagant performances and nationalistic celebrations.
The event starts on February 7 with the Opening Ceremony and it comers after NBC shelled out a couple billion to retain the rights to the Olympics and the network is pulling out all the stops, as r, Meredith Vieira and Bob Costas are going to be hosting the opening. The network has over 1,000 live hours scheduled for the event and will also stream numerous competitions online.
One of the most anticipated events and competitions in the Olympics are the men's hockey games and that will start up on February 12 and go through to the gold medal game, which will be on February 23. Alex Ovechkin will be looking to get the Russian team in contention, while Canada is looking to retain their gold medal over the runners-up from Vancouver in the United States national team. Both Canada and the US are stacked for the games and the matchups begin early for some of the teams to start up, as the USA team is playing their first preliminary games on the schedule at 7:30 am and the Canadian teams play their games at 12 pm noon to start.
The hockey games will be online and on TV and the stream will be from the NBCOlympics.com website and the network has experience from their NBC Live Extra, which is considered one of the best streaming websites of the sports networks. For fans that miss the games, the NBC Sports Network will broadcast the best game of the day in the evening for fans to check out. Canada opens things up against Norway, while the United States plays against Slovakia and then against Russia before playing Slovenia. Canada will have Norway, Austria and Finland, while Russia has Slovenia, the US and Slovakia.
Check here for the full hockey schedule and more on the winter games schedule.