Team Canada and Latvia are playing their men's Olympics ice hockey quarterfinals playoff tournament matchup on Wednesday at 12 pm noon ET and the game comes on MSNBC and streaming online from the NBC Olympics website and comes as the Canadians are looking to win a second straight gold and they have an upcoming date with Team USA if both nations advance in the tournament.
Canada won the gold medal in Vancouver in 2010 and the Swedish team is still alive and into the semifinals on Friday after winning over Slovenia and they have won a gold as well, meaning it will be a tough ride for the United States and Canadian teams in the tournament. The Russian team was eliminated from contention and that match against Finland showed how weak the team was in the first place past Alex Ovechkin and while many felt they got hosed against the US, the United States team is far and away better than the Russians.
Sweden and Finland now will go at it on Friday after they won and Henrik Lundqvist comes in playing very well and in their last game he had a shutout to send the team into the semis. Sweden won over Slovenia 5-0 on Wednesday morning and Finland won over Russia and now the US plays against the Czech Republic and Canada plays against Latvia to decide the other semis matchup.
The United States and Canada are rivals and considered to be the two best teams in Sochi and now because of the way the seeding and the tournament shakes out, the finalists from Vancouver now play in the matchup before the gold medal game as long as they both win. The teams are favored in their games on Wednesday, but that doesn't mean they will be easy matchups and it comes after both made it through the preliminaries clean, with the Us getting a big win in a shootout with the Russians.
Carey Price will be in net once again for the Canadian team and this comes after Roberto Luongo got a start and also after he won the gold last time around in Vancouver and on the USA side, Jonathan Quick will be in net and he follows a similar path. Quick started two of three games for the US and has been excellent and he will be in over Ryan Miller for the team and he was in net for that big game against Russia as well.
The United States finished off their run with a huge win against Slovakia and Canada won over Norway and finished 2-0-1 as well to win their group and now they are looking to get to that next matchup with the US. Luongo started the game over Austria that was a 6-0 shutout and now they have some momentum heading into the quarters. The Canadian team is very strong and adding a medal here would be very solid, as the US is a great team and Sweden has shown already they can win the gold.
Click here for the Canada and Latvia live coverage from NBC.