The Olympics hockey schedule picks up again on Friday with the men's ice hockey playoffs tournament and the semifinals have the United States and Canada playing to see who gets into the gold medal game and the US is looking for revenge in Sochi 2014 after losing in Vancouver to the Canadians and on the other side are Sweden and Finland.
The Swedish team has won a gold medal before and the Canadian team is coming off of a gold medal win in Vancouver and now the pressure is on the Americans to perform, as they have been playing very well and suffered a tough loss back in 2010 to team Canada. The Friday schedule comes after the quarterfinals on Wednesday and the bronze medal game will be on Saturday before the gold medal game on Sunday.
The United States and Canada will be playing the premier game on the schedule and that will be at 12 pm Noon ET and comes on the NBC Sports Network, while the other semis matchup will be earlier in the day at 7 am ET and will also be on NBCSN. The gold medal game comes on Sunday and that will be at 7:00 a.m. EST and the Saturday game for the bronze will be at 10 am ET.
On the women's side, the U.S. and Canada teams will play in the gold medal game that everyone wishes they could have on the men's side. The US team is looking to take it there as well and for the men, they have been playing very well arguably better than the Canadians and that should make for another anticipated matchup between the two sides.
The US dominated another opponent on Wednesday, as they won 5-2 over the Czech Republic, while Canada hung on for a 2-1 win against Latvia and that gives the Americans some momentum heading into the game. The team lost in Vancouver and now they are ready for revenge and they are motivated to do it after losing the gold and the team has not lost yet in the tournament. James van Riemsdyk was the man who scored the winning goal and Jonathan Quick was solid net once again for the team.
Jonathan Quick has been excellent and he has made people forget that Ryan Miller was amazing for the Us back in Vancouver and now he will be in net for the team against Canada. The Canadian team is starting Carey Price for their big games and now this is the matchup that everyone was hoping and waiting for and while it is not in the gold medal game, it could be just as good as last time around. The finals will be a good matchup no matter who makes it, but it could have two former gold medal winning teams facing off against each other and now Friday will be the day as Finland and Sweden play before the United States and Canada from the Winter Olympics in Sochi.