The Sochi Olympics hockey schedule for 2014 picks up on TV for the men's event starting February 12 with times at various locations at the Russia Winter games and the USA national team will open with Slovakia and they are in a group with the Russian national team and that will be a very anticipated matchup as the preliminary round starts before the playoffs come up the next week at February 18.
The game start up officially next Friday and after that many of the events will kick off and the preliminary round starts early at 12 pm noon on February 12 and has the Czech Republic against Sweden, while Latvia and Switzerland will also go at it and a day later the United States team will kick off their Group A go of it and they will be looking to win gold after getting the silver in Vancouver. The rivalry between Team USA and Canada has been growing over the years and it hit its nexus in Vancouver in 2010 when the two met in the gold medal game and CAN came out on top and now the US will be looking to get some revenge.
For fans of team USA, all the games are at a decent time at 7:30 am ET on NBC and their family of networks and those will be for the preliminary round matchups. All the games for Team USA will be broadcast live and the men's hockey tournament in general will have all the game available, including 14 matchup's on the NBC Sports Network, eight on the USA Network and seven on MSNBC, while the gold medal game will be on NBC obviously. The gold medal game should be one of the best draws of the entire event for NBC and if teams like Russia, the US or Candida are in it, it could mean huge numbers.
NBC has done a good job over the years of bringing as much as they can live from the games and this year they will have the games streaming from NBCOlympics.com and they will also be airing the best games on repeat later in the day in the US when the live events are over. The time difference gives NBC the chance to air a ton of events live during the day and then at night they can re-air some of the best games and competitions and the Russian team will have plenty of pressure and they are in a group with the US and they start with Slovenia before playing the US and then they finish off against Slovakia.
The United States has a tough road, but they have been in this position before, while the favorites in Canada have a tough group as well and they open with the preliminary stage against Norway and then they play against Austria and Finland. The US team is shaping up to be very good this year against Team Canada and captain Sidney Crosby, as they have a number of excellent players on the team, especially at goalie, where Ryan Miller, Jonathan Quick and Jimmy Howard will be commanding the net and that gives the team a nice advantage over other nations. Some other names include Ryan Callahan from the Rangers along with teammate Ryan McDonagh and James van Riemsdyk is a player to watch after he has come on over the past couple seasons.
The schedule for hockey starts up on February 12 and goes until February 18.
Click here for the Winter Olympics Sochi hockey schedule or for the NBC hockey schedule from NBC's Olympics website.