The United States and Canada men’s ice hockey teams will play for the Olympic gold medal on Sunday’s final day of the Milano Cortina Games after both teams won their semi-final contests on Friday evening.
Canada left things late in the first game, fighting back from two goals down to win 3-2 over Finland on Nathan MacKinnon’s winner with 35.2 seconds remaining. The US took a more straightforward tack in the nightcap to set up the heavyweight final, roaring past Slovakia 6-2 after Jack Hughes and Jack Eichel scored in a 19-second span during the second period to blow things open, ensuring the Americans no worse than silver and their first men’s hockey medal in 16 years.
“We know that we’re the two best teams and when we’re in the summer and we’re thinking, laying in bed, thinking about the Olympics, we know that we want it to be USA v Canada,” Hughes said to Eurosport.
The Americans are targeting their third ever Olympic title in men’s hockey and first since the Miracle on Ice team of 1980, while Canada can win a record-extending 10th. It will mark the third time the border rivals have played in for the gold and the first since 2010, when Sidney Crosby etched his name into Olympic lore by scoring in overtime to seal a 3-2 win over the Americans on home soil.
Crosby, 38, is still in the Canada squad four Olympics later, but he did not dress for Friday’s game after leaving Wednesday’s quarter-final win over the Czech Republic in the second period with a lower-back injury. No details about the two-time Olympic gold medalist’s injury have been released and the severity remains unclear, but Canada coach Jon Cooper said “he’s got a better chance of playing in the gold medal game than he had of playing in tonight’s game”.
Canada found themselves staring down elimination for a second straight knockout game after Erik Haula’s short-handed goal fired the Finns to a 2-0 lead early in the second period.
But forward Sam Reinhart pulled one back before the second intermission for the Canadians, while defenseman Shea Theodore notched the third-period equalizer. Then after MacKinnon drew a high sticking penalty from Niko Mikkola, the NHL’s leading scorer fired home the winner in the final minute, improving Canada’s dominant power play to 7-for-16 (43.75%) in the tournament.
The US ran out to a 5-0 lead behind goals from Dylan Larkin and Tage Thompson in the first period, then Jack Hughes (twice) and Eichel in the second. The Slovaks narrowed the gap in the third through goals from rising Montreal Canadiens star Juraj Slafkovsky and Pavol Regenda, but Brady Tkachuk’s breakaway goal with nine minutes left kept matters on course.
The US and Canada are two of the only three teams in the Olympic tournament, along with quarter-finalists Sweden, made up exclusively of NHL players, who are competing at the Olympics for the first time since 2014.
The matchup comes one year after the bitter North American rivals played twice in the 4 Nations Face-Off, which was the first international tournament featuring the NHL’s best players since 2016. The Americans won the first 5-3 in a round-robin contest played at Montreal’s Bell Centre that saw the US anthem booed and featured three fights in the first nine seconds, while Canada won the final 3-2 in overtime at Boston’s TD Garden.
“It’s best on best, it’s what every American and Canadian grows up watching, grows up hearing about,” Matthew Tkachuk said. “This is the pinnacle of the sport. This is as good as it gets, a rivalry that’s as good as it gets. There will not be one TV without this game on in the United States and Canada. That should get you pretty fired up.”
