The NBC men's Olympics hockey schedule starts on TV Thursday as the US, Russia and Canada teams play their first round games from the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 and the matches will be on television throughout the day starting at 7:30 am ET and the channels that carry the games will be the NBC Sports Network and MSNBC.
The actual tournament started on February 12 and that saw Sweden win their game over the Czech Republic, while Switzerland ended up winning over Latvia with a 1-0 score and now the games pick up on Thursday with the top teams in action. Alex Ovechkin is leading the way for the home Russian team, while the United States and Canada are expected to be the teams at the gold medal game when it all finishes up.
The US schedule has the Americans playing at decent TV times, as all their first round games will be televised and will be at 7:30 am ET. Canada has their games at 12 pm Noon ET and the gold medal game finishes things up on the 23rd, while the bronze medal game will be the day before that. The games are all streaming online from NBC and will be live on TV and there will also be a replay of the top game of the day at 6 pm on the NBCSN.
The preliminary round runs from Wednesday and stretches into Sunday and then the playoff begin and all the teams make it through with the top four getting byes. The standings will be determined by points, goal differential and rankings and in the US group is Russia, Slovakia and Slovenia and the United States starts up with Slovakia on Thursday and then plays against Russia on Saturday before the final matchup against Slovenia. The US and Russia are the favorites in that group, while Canada is with Norway, Austria and Finland and all of their games will be at 12 pm ET and broadcast on the USA Network.
Martin St. Louis was added to the Canadian team after an injury and this came after his initial snub and now the two favorites have things set in goal for their first games. Team Canada will give Carey Price his first taste of the Olympics in their game, while the United States will have Jonathan Quick starting things off with Ryan Miller and Jimmy Howard as backups. The Canadian team will start Roberto Luongo as well and the US team has a strong crop of goalies and they will try to ride that to the gold medal game, which is what the team did on Miller in Vancouver.
Russian center Pavel Datsyuk is ready to play and he plans on starting for the team after dealing with an injury earlier in the season. Russia opens up with Slovenia and the star said he would be ready to represent at the match. Quick has not been as sharp in the NHL this season, but the team is looking to have him be the primary starter. The games on Wednesday start up at 7:30 am ET.
