Women’s hockey got two USA-Canada games, including a dramatic gold-medal game that was decided in overtime. Men’s hockey now gets its turn in the classic rivalry.
Canada and Team USA will meet in Sunday’s gold-medal game at the Olympics. The Canadians enter as favorites, albeit narrowly. Canada is -125 on DraftKings, -118 on BetMGM and -113 on FanDuel. Those odds imply Canada’s chances of victory range between 53 percent and 56 percent. Simply put, Canada is getting the edge, but it’s tight.
Canada has endured plenty of drama to get to the final. The Canadians trailed twice to the Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, in the quarterfinal and scored in the final four minutes to force overtime and eventually win. In Friday’s semifinal, Canada fell behind 2-0 to Finland before coming back for a 3-2 win sparked by a Nathan MacKinnon power-play goal in the final minute of regulation.
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The Americans also faced tension on their journey, needing overtime to advance past Sweden in a quarterfinal. The semifinal against Slovakia, however, was a lopsided 6-2 win that was realistically decided before the start of the third period.
Canada has faced third-period deficits in both of its knockout games, but style points don’t matter. The much-anticipated all-North American final has materialized, and the stacked Canadian team remains the favorite for Sunday’s finale at 8:10 a.m. ET.
The U.S. hasn’t won Olympic gold since the famed 1980 “Miracle on Ice” team. In the 46 years since, the Americans have made the gold-medal game twice (2002 and 2010) and lost both to Canada. In 2002, in Salt Lake City, Canada won 5-2 in a game in which the Americans scored first and trailed by one entering the final five minutes. In 2010, in Vancouver, Team USA won a group game between the rivals, 5-3, before losing in the final, 3-2, in overtime.
While the Americans have two men’s hockey gold medals, both on American soil, Canada leads the way with nine. The U.S. has eight silver medals, and six of those came when Canada was triumphant.
That history, plus the loaded talent of Team Canada, adds up to a clear case for why the Canadians enter as favorites.
Before the tournament, Canada was +115 on BetMGM to win gold, and the U.S. was +200. Now that the gold medal game has set, the gap between the two teams has narrowed.
Last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off reinvigorated the rivalry in a best-on-best format. The Americans won 3-1 in Montreal in round-robin play, but Canada won the final 3-2 in overtime in Boston.
USA Hockey has been building up to this for years, with a talented group of young players coming up together and coming off a title at the world championships last year (a tournament where Canada went out in the quarterfinals and the two rivals did not play each other). Can the Americans pull off the upset against a team that has historically had their number?
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These teams met four years ago in the Beijing Olympics, and the U.S. won 4-2 in the preliminary round, but NHL players did not participate, and neither country made it to the semifinals.
The last time these teams met with NHL players in the Olympics was a 2014 semifinal that Canada won 1-0 en route to another gold medal. Since the format for the Olympic tournament included an elimination bracket in 1992, the United States has never beaten Canada in an elimination game. The Canadians are 3-0 in such games.
One key note is that Canada may be without captain Sidney Crosby, who suffered an injury in the quarterfinal against the Czech Republic on Wednesday. The severity of his lower-body injury hasn’t been made public, but he did not play in Friday’s semifinal and has not yet been ruled out of the final.