MILAN — Three teams made it through to the Olympic men’s hockey semifinals by a hair, a bounce, navigating the cold, heartless madness of three-on-three overtime to reach the promised land of the medal phase of the tournament.
A fourth team made it comfortably, popping in two goals with its best player on the bench holding an ice pack on the back of his neck, and coasting to a quarterfinal victory.
The three teams that survived overtime are three hockey superpowers. The one team that comfortably punched its ticket to the final four is a hockey minnow, the youngest team in the tournament, riding a wave of positive energy and perhaps the most dangerous thing of all: having nothing to lose.
It’s down to Canada, the United States, Finland, and, the party crashers, Slovakia.
The Olympic semifinals go Friday, with Canada facing Finland and the U.S. facing Slovakia, and judging by how Wednesday’s quarterfinals unfolded, we should be in for some kind of ride.
The clear favorites are the U.S. and Canada, but the underdogs have similar stories to tell.
Let’s get into both matchups:
No. 3 Slovakia vs. No. 2 United States
The Miracle on Ice, when a young, upstart U.S. team beat the powerhouse Soviet Union in the semifinals of the 1980 Olympics, is so steeped in American lore that its name is capitalized and requires no explanation.
A victory for the Slovaks against the U.S. here would not quite match the unlikeliness of that upset win 46 years ago; it would not match the significance of the geopolitical undertones that made it legendary, at least not internationally.
But in Slovakia? It would be just as big, if not bigger. A small nation of roughly 5.4 million people — slightly less than the size of the Philadelphia metropolitan area — Slovakia is a proud hockey nation whose seminal moment came when it won the 2002 men’s world championship. That generation of players, which also won silver at the 2000 worlds and bronze in 2003, was fueled by NHL stars.
But then, it was as though hockey skipped a generation in Slovakia, and fans in that country have waited decades for this moment — a team fueled by young stars such as Juraj Slafkovský, Šimon Nemec and Dalibor Dvorský, and an unheralded minor league goalie who plays in Iowa, Samuel Hlavaj.
“The people are really happy,” Dvorský said after Slovakia’s 6-2 win against Germany in the quarterfinals. “The whole nation is watching. We just love playing good for our country and hopefully we can make our fans even more happy in the next two games here.”
Slovakia only has seven NHL players and — though a 4-1 win against Finland in the preliminary round was impressive — has not yet faced an opponent such as the United States, a team boasting the best blue line in the tournament, a veteran group that won a tight, tense quarterfinal 2-1 in overtime against Sweden, another world hockey power.
And the U.S., perhaps unlike the Soviets back in 1980, is not taking the Slovaks lightly.
“They’re playing out of their minds right now; they’re playing absolutely incredible,” U.S. forward Matthew Tkachuk said. “They’ve had a really tough bracket, the toughest bracket, and they came out of it on top. They were doing some great things, some big wins. And from what I’ve heard the building every time, their fans and everyone from their country are here, that it’s an incredible atmosphere, and they’ve got some guys playing at an all world level, guys that are in the NHL and guys that are not. So it’s gonna be a huge, huge test for us.
“And you know, at this point of the tournament, anything can happen. Their goalie is playing incredible, our goalie is playing incredible, and it’s going to make for a hell of a semifinal.”
Slafkovský, the 21-year-old Montreal Canadiens forward who was the No. 1 pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, is of particular interest to the U.S. — he is tied for fifth in tournament scoring with seven points in four games.
“They’ve been extremely dangerous,” American center Dylan Larkin said. “I think their big guys, and Slafkovský in particular, he’s a horse. He’s been that for them.”
On paper, the U.S. should win this game easily. But you could have said the same thing about the Finns, and they lost to Slovakia 4-1 in the tournament’s opening game.
“I like it, I want to be an underdog,” Slafkovský said. “Then you can surprise people.”
The U.S. reached the semifinals with an overtime win over Sweden on Wednesday night. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
No. 4 Finland vs. No. 1 Canada
Finland is similar in population size to Slovakia, with 5.5 million people, but has a consistent history of success at best-on-best tournaments. Of the five Olympics that have included NHL players, Finland has won a medal in four of them. But they have never won gold.
Unlike Slovakia, Finland is stocked with NHL players — only one, Mikko Lehtonen, plays in Europe — and has legitimate star power with Miro Heiskanen, Mikko Rantanen, Sebastian Aho and Roope Hintz, among others.
They also have a secret weapon in Colorado Avalanche forward Artturi Lehkonen, who scored the overtime winner against Switzerland in the quarterfinals. Lehkonen has now scored overtime winners that allowed the Montreal Canadiens to reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2021 and allowed the Avalanche to both reach the final and win the Stanley Cup in 2022.
“It was a huge goal last night,” Finland captain Mikael Granlund said Thursday. “Obviously he’s done those throughout his career. We have a lot of those guys on our team. We have a lot of guys who’ve played high-stakes games, who know what it takes to win a hockey game.”
But what Finland has most of all is a hockey culture, one that survives its players playing on different teams in the NHL and comes to life when they are reunited on the national team. They’ve grown up playing to a specific identity — tight-checking, low-risk, opportunistic hockey — that allows the country to consistently punch above its weight and excel in high-level hockey environments.
“We have our own structure, own things that we like to execute,” said Aho, a star center for the Carolina Hurricanes. “There’s going to be times in the game that we have to defend, that we have to live to fight another day. … We know that we have the firepower, but at the same time, we’re just going to do our job as well as we can and hopefully that’ll get us a good result.”
Canada may have to play the semifinal without captain Sidney Crosby, who left the 4-3 overtime quarterfinal win against the Czech Republic with a lower-body injury in the second period. Canada head coach Jon Cooper would not commit to Crosby’s availability for the game Friday, but the fact that Crosby has not yet been ruled out is an encouraging sign for Canada.
But even if Crosby can’t play, Canada remains a hockey behemoth with three of the NHL’s top-four scorers — Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and teenager Macklin Celebrini — perhaps playing on one forward line, as they did after Crosby was injured against the Czechs.
“It’s such a good team,” Granlund said. “It’s a full team. It’s highly, highly skilled. Good players. We all know what the challenge is going to be. But at the same time, we have a great team too.”
Canada, much like the U.S. with Slovakia, should win this game on paper. But the game is not played on paper, and Canada’s players know that they, too, have a significant challenge standing between them and a shot at a gold medal.
“Pretty much everyone on that team is such a good two-way player. They defend really well and they can also play offensive really well,” said Canada center Nick Suzuki, who would play in Crosby’s spot in the lineup if the captain can’t play. “It’s going to be a big test, probably the biggest one we’ve faced so far.”
