FOLLOW ALONG HERE FOR LIVE UPDATES FROM TEAM USA VS. SLOVAKIA IN THE MEN’S HOCKEY SEMIFINAL GAME AT THE 2026 MILAN CORTINA OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES.
Rarely has the sport of hockey had more momentum than after Wednesday’s thrilling set of quarterfinals action. A one-sided opening game was quickly followed by not one, not two, but three straight overtime finishes. One team tied the game in the final four minutes of regulation each time, twice scoring with the goalie on the bench for an extra attacker.
The gold medal game favorites, Canada and the United States, were both pushed to the brink. Canada had to make a late comeback without captain Sidney Crosby and the United States was forced to rebound after Sweden’s Mika Zibanejad tied the game in the final two minutes. Unlike in the first two overtimes, the team that let the late lead slip away was able to rally, with the United States’ Quinn Hughes joining Canada’s Mitch Marner and Finland’s Artturi Lehkonen in the hero department.
But the test for both nations, as well as their opponents, will be even greater than it was in the quarterfinals. All the remaining teams will have the chance to play for a medal, but it will take another hard-fought victory to earn the right to go for gold on Sunday.
There’s an obvious starting point for this section: Crosby. Canada hasn’t played a best-on-best game without him since 2006, which is the last time they didn’t win it all (and one of just two times Canada has failed to win an Olympic medal when the NHL has sent its players). He’s capable of making a difference just as a leader off the ice, but his absence on the ice would be a massive blow.
“Sid is by no means ruled out of the tournament,” said head coach Jon Cooper on Thursday. “I can speak on [Josh] Morrissey, the same boat. And we are not going to put anybody in harm’s way, but if [Crosby] can play, he will, and we will know more in 24 hours. He’s not been ruled out.”
After Crosby went down, coach Jon Cooper ditched the initial spread-the-wealth plan and loaded up the top line, elevating Macklin Celebrini and Nathan MacKinnon to play with Connor McDavid. Celebrini scored his tournament-leading fifth goal on Wednesday, McDavid tied Teemu Selanne’s record for most points in one Olympics (in half as many games) and MacKinnon delivered a timely power-play tally.
Canada’s power play has unsurprisingly been spectacular, and Celebrini is a worthy replacement for Crosby on the top unit. Their 77.78 percent penalty kill rate is a bit underwhelming, though. Finland’s power play hasn’t been great (20 percent, tied for eighth), but they have enough talent to make Canada pay if they parade to the penalty box.
If Crosby doesn’t play, Canada will need some players to step up, especially if they stack their first line again. It’s been a disappointing tournament for Sam Reinhart, the team’s only forward to play all four games and not score a goal. He has just one assist after serving as one of the driving forces of the back-to-back Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers. It hasn’t been much better for his Panthers teammates Brad Marchand (one assist in three games) or Sam Bennett (one assist in two games). Bennett missed Wednesday’s game due to illness, but Canada will need him healthy if Crosby can’t go.
The goaltending matchup will be interesting to see play out. Neither Canada’s Jordan Binnington nor Finland’s Juuse Saros have had great seasons in the NHL. Both have put up great numbers on Milan, though – a .922 save percentage for Binnington and a .936 mark for Saros. Binnington’s stats weren’t great against Czechia, but he didn’t allow any bad goals and made some key saves late in regulation and in overtime.
Outside of the 11-0 rout of Italy, Finland has scored just eight goals in three games and was less than seven minutes away from being shut out by Switzerland before rallying late. The play of the four Dallas Stars on the roster figured to be critical for Finland against Switzerland, and sure enough, all four of Miro Heiskanen, Mikko Rantanen, Roope Hintz and Esa Lindell were on the scoresheet. That was exactly what the doctor ordered and something Finland needs to see going forward, especially from Rantanen and Hintz.
“We talked with the coaches and [between] us, the players. We said we needed to get more pucks to the net,” Rantanen said on Finland’s late surge. “The [Swiss] goalie was playing really well. He is not the biggest goalie, so we needed to get some guys there.
“On our tying goal, I know it was six on five, but we had three guys around the net and usually that’s when things happen.”
Sebastian Aho continues to be a steady producer for Finland just as he’s been for the Carolina Hurricanes for nearly a decade. It’s not a coincidence that Carolina’s rise into a power team has coincided with Aho’s growth into a first-line center, and his three goals lead the Finns. Finland’s depth shouldn’t be slept on, either, as they have seven multi-goal scorers, the exact same amount as their opposition.
You also can’t discount the clutch factor of Lehkonen. He added an Olympics elimination game overtime winner to a résumé that includes two overtime goals that sent two different teams to the Stanley Cup Final in consecutive seasons (the Montreal Canadiens in 2021, the Colorado Avalanche in 2022). He also scored the Cup-winning goal for Colorado in 2022, and it’s not like scoring is the only value he provides, either.
Except Finland to ride heavily on Heiskanen as he’s easily their best puck-mover on the backend. Canada’s ability to attack the rest of the Finnish defense on the forecheck will be a key factor in deciding this game. This matchup figures to be one of the most exciting we’ve seen so far. Either squad could easily win gold, but only one will have the chance to play for it.
Sometimes, everything seems to balance out. After having arguably the hardest matchup in the quarterfinals despite being the No. 2 seed, this time the U.S. is probably happy to not be the top-ranked team in the semifinals. By the numbers, the United States should be fairly heavy favorites. The U.S. and Canada have 25 NHL players and Finland has 24. Slovakia has seven. The United States, Canada and Finland have collected at least 61 percent of shot attempts in their games; Slovakia is at 48.15 percent.
If Juraj Slafkovsky doesn’t record a point on any goal scored on a tended net, it’s difficult to see Slovakia’s path to winning. They were able to cruise past Germany in the quarterfinals with that being the case, but the difficulty is about to ramp up drastically. The Germans only had one NHLer on their backend, and while Moritz Seider is a great one, the U.S. has three excellent pairs for head coach Mike Sullivan to roll.
The nail-biting finish to their quarterfinal matchup with Sweden makes it worth revisiting the makeup of Team USA’s roster. On the one hand, loading up on two-way forwards nearly allowed them to pitch a shutout of a dangerous Swedish team, and the U.S. still racked up a 40-29 shots-on-goal advantage and seemed to get more quality chances than the Swedes.
However, they struggled to finish on Jacob Markstrom, who is a good but not elite netminder, and their hopes of reaching this stage came perilously close to going unrealized as a result. Their play against Slovakia’s Samuel Hlavaj will be a litmus test. Will they make him look more like the guy with a .932 save percentage in these Games or the one with underwhelming minor league numbers back in North America?
“That is as nervous as I have ever been in a hockey game,” said Dylan Larkin on the finish of the Sweden game. “The way 3-on-3 goes, it is about being opportunistic. Someone could fall, the puck could bounce, anything can happen, especially with the ice out there.”
Special teams will be a key area to watch in this game. Slovakia’s 3.25 goals per game (that aren’t on the power play or penalty kill) are the fewest among the semifinalists. Both teams are strong across the board here, although the U.S. penalty kill deserves some extra love as the tournament’s lone perfect unit, going 10 for 10 to this point. That’s a point in favor of the roster the U.S. has built.
It will be a key hinge point to see if Slovakia can muster any secondary scoring. Five players – Slafkovsky, Dalibor Dvorsky, Adam Ruzicka, Pavol Regenda and Martin Gernat – have at least four points, with all but Gernat (the lone defenseman of the group) scoring multiple goals. No one else on their team has more than one goal or two points, though.
The Slovaks balanced the usage of their three defense pairs against Germany, but a much deeper U.S. team will probably force them to rely more on Erik Cernak and Martin Fehervary, the defensive anchors of their top two pairs. Simon Nemec, Fehervary’s partner, is also a key player to watch as the other NHLer on the Slovakia’s blue line.
One change that the U.S. might make would be replacing Clayton Keller with Kyle Connor. The former played just 4:44 against Sweden, easily a team-low and nearly half as little as any other forward. While Connor has struggled to make an impact in best-on-best competition, he is the NHL’s seventh-leading scorer over the last two seasons.
If Slovakia can start strong, perhaps it can amplify the pressure on the shoulders of Team USA. If there’s one thing these Olympics have reminded us, both in this tournament and across the entire sports landscape, is that no outcome on paper is guaranteed to play out, no matter how likely.
“If someone had told us that before the tournament, we would have taken it all day,” said Regenda on reaching the semifinals. “We are happy, we are a great team, from first [player] to last.”
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