I know it’s a little bit early to make my picks for the semi-finals of the Men’s Olympics tourney, but I’m excited after watching the games today and I’m ready to place my bets.
I can’t seem to get ahead in these Olympics with my record because I continue to basically break even every day. Today I was correct with Sweden covering the spread against Slovenia and Finland upsetting the Russians, but Canada was in tough against the Latvians and the Czechs weren’t able to pull off the bigger upset of the day against the Americans.
Olympics record: 8-8 for +0.16 units.
I’m excited for both of these semi-finals because they are two of the biggest rivalries in International hockey. The close proximity of each semi-final makes the teams hate each other that much more and each team has quite the history with the other.
Sweden vs Finland Semi-Final
The Swedes did as expected and knocked off Slovenia with ease today, winning the game 5-0. They have now gone 4-0 in this tournament and it seems like they were likely in the group with no easy wins after Latvia showed just how strong of a team they were in playing Canada to a 2-1 loss today in the quarters. The Swedes, even without some of their top players, are a much more talented team than the Finns. Sweden also has a lot more offensive weapons than Russia in terms of how they can score goals. The Russians struggled offensively in this tournament and I think it’s because they didn’t have strong defenders to quickly get the puck to their forwards. Sweden does not have this problem with Erik Karlsson being the best offensive defenseman in the game today and OEL being close behind. In this tournament defensemen have factored in the scoring quite a bit and I expect that is how Sweden will break down Finlands tight checking game.
The Finns of course have had a strong tournament themselves, taking Canada to overtime in the round robin and then defeating Russia 3-1 in the quarters. That said, the Russians did outplay the Finns for much of this game, but couldn’t capitalize on their offensive zone time with quality chances. I think the lack of talent on paper will finally catch up to Finland in this game. Lundqvist should be just as strong as Rask and I expect the Swedes to be able to win this game at least 70% of the time. That means taking them at the current odds is a must.
Play: Sweden 1.645 (5Dimes)
Canada vs USA Semi-Final
It looks on paper like Team USA has had the best tournament in these Olympics. That said, they are the only team left from their group that is in the semi-finals. The Russians were not as good as expected and they took the Americans to a shootout. Other than that the USA defeated a tired and underachieving Czech Republic team today, while adding in big wins over Slovakia (who had a horrible tournament by their standards) and Slovenia (who were not expected to win a game at this tournament). Yes, Team USA looks good, but they have really done as I would have expected them to. Russia was overrated heading into the tournament, and the Czechs and Slovaks were both expected to digress from the previous year. So when you look at it logically the Americans really haven’t had as good a tournament as it looks like on paper.
The Canadians on the other hand have had a better tournament than it shows on paper. They already battled a semi-final team in the Finns and although they had to win the game in overtime they did outshoot Finland 27-15 and only gave up 1 goal to a team that has scored 3 or more in every other game. The only real knock against the Canadians is they haven’t run up the score against weaker opposition. That said, they were never REALLY in danger of losing the games against Norway or Latvia. Both of these teams clogged up the middle and played more not to lose than to win against Canada (which is the smart way for them to play). It almost worked for Latvia, but really that method will only work against Team Canada maybe 5% of the time if that (it’s still better odds than playing them straight up would give them). Today was an intense game that Canada had to fight to win. I don’t look at that as Team Canada playing poorly (they outshot Latvia 57-16), but Latvia playing a very smart style and the goalkeeper coming up huge.
If this game happened before the tournament started Team Canada would be a bigger favourite than they are. I haven’t seen anything this tournament to change the expected outcome of this semi-final game, but the small sample size and misuse of this information has caused Canada to become only slight favourites in this game. I like their chances at these odds all day long.
Play: Canada 1.84 (BetOnline)
Tagged with: Canada • Finland • Sweden • USA