Olympic Men's Hockey: Predicting Each Semifinal Matchup

Four teams are left playing for a medal in Olympic men's hockey.

We went 3-for-4 in our qualification playoff predictions and 3-for-4 in the quarterfinals as Canada, the United States, Slovakia and Finland all advanced to the semifinals. Switzerland nearly knocked out Finland as we predicted, but the Finns pulled off a memorable comeback to win in overtime.

The semifinals will be played on Friday. The losers will battle for bronze on Saturday at 2:40 p.m. ET, while the winners square off for gold on Sunday at 8:10 a.m. ET. 

We're expecting excellent semifinal action at an Olympics that have featured universally terrific games.

Here are this writer's predictions for each of the two games in the semifinals.

Prediction: Canada beat Finland 3-1

The Canadians had a major scare in the quarterfinal, falling behind Team Czechia twice before pulling out a 4-3 overtime win.

Team Finland, meanwhile, was down 2-0 to Switzerland before rebounding for a 3-2 overtime victory. So both semifinal squads survived upset attempts.

But make no mistake – Team Canada is a heavy favorite against the Finns.

Things might be different if Finland had superstar center Aleksander Barkov in the lineup, but the Florida Panthers captain has missed the entire season with an injury. So, on paper, at least, the Finnish group simply doesn't have the depth at the high end that the Canadian team has.

While Vegas Golden Knights right winger Mitch Marner turned out to be the overtime hero for Canada, the reality is it could've been any one of a slew of Canadians who gave their team the win over the Czechs.

That said, if the Canadians don't have captain Sidney Crosby due to an injury he suffered against Czechia, that will be a significant blow to their gold medal chances.

We're not predicting a goalie duel between Canada's Jordan Binnington and Finland's Juuse Saros. But we are predicting a tight-checking, low-scoring game between the two teams. Just one or two mistakes could be the difference.

But in the end, we believe the Canadians will have the discipline and depth to emerge as the winner and move on to the gold medal game.

Prediction: United States beat Slovakia 5-4

The Slovaks were a feel-good story after upsetting Finland 4-1 at the start of the Olympic tournament. Since then, they beat Italy before losing to Sweden in their final round-robin game. In the quarterfinal, they made quick work of Germany, winning 6-2.

The U.S. had a scare of their own against the Swedes in their quarterfinal game, and American goalie Connor Hellebuyck had to be sharp to limit Sweden to a single goal in an eventual 2-1 overtime win.

But we're going to go a little counterintuitively with this prediction and, rather than predicting a low-scoring affair between the Slovaks and Americans, we're going to guesstimate that a slew of goals comes from both teams.

On paper, the U.S. are far and away better than Slovakia. But strange things sometimes happen in hockey, and a few bounces here or there could give the Slovaks the life and inspiration to go toe-to-toe with America.

We're still sticking with our pre-Olympics prediction of the U.S. winning gold, but they'll have to get by Slovakia first – and that could prove much more difficult than anyone would've anticipated.

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