Wednesday was the premiere for Men’s hockey in the winter olympics, it kicked off with two games between opponents in Group C.

The Winter Olympics consist of the best of the best, famed players from every possibly Stanley Cup Winning team will now join rival players to don the same uniform and lead their country to the gold.

There are three groups for the preliminary rounds, each group has four representative teams. Nine of the twelve countries that qualified did so automatically due to their ranking in the NHL and on on the international hockey level.
Group A consists of teams USA, Russia, Slovenia, and Slovakia; Group B contains Finland, Canada, Norway, and Austria; while Group C has Latvia, Switzerland, Sweden, and Czech Republic.

The teams will face off within their groups during the preliminary rounds, teams will then be ranked on their amount of points, or in cases of ties, points obtained and goal differences between the specific teams.

The playoff round is where we can expect to see some of the best hockey, the tension will be the same, if not higher, than the one felt at a stanley cup final game. The defending Gold medalist Canada is very likely to take the gold yet again, it is expected that it will be another tight game but the US will definitely take home a medal.