The photo today is some of the detail on the Duomo di Milano, which you see a lot of on the CBC broadcast.

Today the men's hockey begins, and if you missed the explanation of the format, I'll repeat that here:

The men's tournament has three groups of four teams each. Canada is in Group A with Switzerland, Czechia and France. The Olympics use a unique format for the men's tournament that is closer to the women's than to what the Men's World Championships uses.
Each group plays a preliminary round within their group. The results of that round are combined into a full ordering of all 12 teams. The first four teams will receive a bye into the quarterfinals and are the home teams for those games. The other eight teams play in a single-elimination qualification round with the four winners moving on to the quarterfinals. Once that is set, the tournament continues as you'd expect with a re-seeding of teams going into the semifinals.
The men's gold-medal game is on Sunday, February 22 at 8 am ET.

At this stage of the tournament, ties are decided by five minutes of three-on-three overtime followed by a shootout if necessary.

Sweden plays Italy today at 3 pm ET, and the Italians (featuring Nic Petan's brother, by the way) are not up to the level of the other teams here. Sweden's other two preliminary games are on at 6 am ET and are against Finland on Friday and Slovakia on Saturday.

As of yesterday, it was uncertain if William Nylander would play today. The most likely outcome of this group is that the winner of Finland vs Sweden gets the bye, so that's the game they should be targeting as the most serious.

Canada opens their preliminary competition tomorrow.

All preliminary round games featuring Canada or Sweden are in Milano Santagiulia (the large new arena). There are a very few games from lower ranked teams in Milano Rho.

Yesterday in Women's action most of the order heading into the quarterfinals was sorted out. Italy fell to Germany in their preliminary match on a German goal in the last minutes of the game. Italy, only here because they are the host team, nearly came second in their group which is an outstanding result for them. They will be in the quarterfinals, facing whoever comes first in the top group. Germany will face the second-place team, and Sweden, who won four straight games, will face the third place team. Teams four and five in the top group play each other in the quarterfinals. France and Japan failed to qualify.

If the Canada-Finland game had not been postponed to tomorrow, we would know the order of the top group as well, but that remains an open question. Canada lost badly to the USA yesterday, and Finland won their game against Switzerland. If Finland beat Canada in regulation tomorrow, they will come second with Canada third. Any other result and Canada comes second.

If Finland lose in any fashion, Czechia is third and Finland is fourth. Switzerland will be fifth in the group no matter what happens.

Now as to that Canadian loss, I saw this Tweet:

And this fellow is usually a baseball reporter it seems, but he's absolutely correct. If anything he overstates the meaning of Marie-Philip Poulin being hurt. Yes, she is the best player on the team, but one player does not carry a team. Yes, some dynamic offence might have helped, but one player does not create a possession game out of that dismal performance on their own.

The Americans were faster, tougher, stronger, and smarter. Canada looked like they needed some extra time to figure out what to do, and they were weak on the puck, weak defensively, slow to backcheck, slow to identify their defensive roles, and they turned the puck over so easily, the USA likely played a lot harder than they needed to.

Sometimes in international hockey this just happens. You hit a lull where the quality of your team isn't as good as the other top teams' have. The USA is very much helped in their ability to play hard and fast by having the best goalie in the women's game as well. They play without fear.

However, it can also be true that, as the women's game has grown and my goodness has it ever, USAHockey is right there where the players with the best programs and the best coaches are learning the game. Almost every Canadian player of note is an NCAA grad so they are from the same system, but they aren't exactly of that system. USAHockey used to have a terrible reputation for its interest in the women's game. They've changed a lot while Hockey Canada was busy completely remaking their management structure into an actually professional organization.

For all the PWHL is accelerating the growth in player skill and game systems, the NCAA is the incubator of the game.

I have some questions about Troy Ryan as well. That offensive system that the USA plays is nothing at all like the "ring the passes, shoot from the points" stuff the Canadians and the Sceptres rely on way too much. USA plays a game where they drive the net hard and challenge the puck carrier hard all the time. Canada, well, they just don't.

But at the end of the day, the Canadians just aren't as good a team and USA has more than one elite player so it doesn't matter that a couple of their stars are showing their age.

But this is hockey, and all that game decided (eventually) was who plays whom in the quarterfinals. Anything can happen from here on out.

In other news, Artie is a hit at the AHL ASG:

It would be really amazing if he was a real boy. He is still second on Moneypuck's list of goalies by Goals Saved Above Expected per 60.

That's all for now. Have a great day.

From The Branches