2022 Winter Olympics: How to watch men’s hockey Gold Medal Game

2 years ago  /  Broad Street Hockey

Photo by Jean Catuffe/Getty Images


Get those old Filppula shirseys out. The Big Game™ is finally here! Well, the other Big Game. The Women’s Gold was last week. Anyhoo, tonight at 11:10PM ET Team Finland and the ROC will meet up to compete for the Gold in these Beijing Olympics.
In case you missed the last couple of weeks, let’s take a look back at how these two teams got here:
Team Finland
After going 3-0 in the preliminary group play, the Finns found themselves facing the Swiss team in the Quarterfinals. A definitive 5-1 win moved them into the Semifinals, where they met with a Slovakian team fresh off of a huge upset over Team USA. Despite the momentum that was surely carrying Team Slovakia after that win, Finland skated to an easy 2-0 win, with goals from Olympic leading scorer Sakari Manninen and a late empty-netter from Harri Pesonen.
The ROC
The athletes from the ROC went 2-1 in group play, their one loss being a close 6-5 decision against the Czech Republic. That was good enough for the top seed in Group B and set them up for a Quarterfinals match with Denmark, a 3-1 win for the Russians. After Sweden’s big 2-0 win over Team Canada, the ROC and Team Sweden would meet up in the Semifinal. That game was an absolute thriller, with the ROC getting the win in round eight of the shootout.
So how do these two teams match up? Finland will be looking to win its first Gold ever in the Men’s Olympic tournament, having come up short and leaving with Silver in 1988 and 2006. The ROC are the defending champs; they defeated Germany to win the Gold in Pyeongchang.
That doesn’t necessarily make them the favorites here, though. Two of the top-three scorers in these Olympics are members of the Finnish squad — both Sakari Manninen and Teemu Hartikainen have 7 points thus far. They’ve also got four of the top ten goal scorers in the tournament, Manninen with four, and Miro Aaltonen, Iiro Pakarinen, and Harri Pesonen have each scored three. The ROC’s points leader, Nikita Gusev, has 5 assists. Their leading goal scorer, Nikita Nesterov, has 2 goals.
Finland has the edge in goal as well. Goalkeeper Harri Sateri has stopped 111 of 115 shots faced in these Olympics, good for a .965 SV%. Russian goalie (and Flyers prospect!) Ivan Fedotov has been no slouch, stopping 135 of 143 shots faced for a .944; great numbers, but not as great as Sateri has posted in these games.
Looking at special teams, the Finns are on top with the man advantage, converting on 30.77% of their power plays to the ROC’s 12.50%. On the penalty kill however these teams are dead even, both having killed off 66.67% of the power plays they’ve faced.

How to watch
The Gold Medal Game will air tonight on the USA Network at 11:10PM local Philly time. It will stream on Peacock, the NBC Sports app, and at NBCOlympics.com. If staying up until 3AM isn’t really your bag, you can queue up a replay on any of the streaming platforms when you wake up tomorrow morning.
If you’re looking to place one final wager on Olympic hockey for the next four years, head on over to DraftKings to check the odds, the lines, all of the betting things. Please gamble responsibly, pals.
All Olympic statistics and standings courtesy of IIHF.com...

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