Sweden and Switzerland are playing live on Friday at the winter Olympics in Sochi and it comes after the Swedes won their first match and the hockey tournament is pushing into the weekend and the playoff round starts next week and leads into the gold medal game next weekend and this game on Friday starts up at 7:30 am ET on TV and streaming online from the NBC Sports Network.
Sweden won the first game of the hockey competition in Sochi over the Czech Republic and they are one of the favorites out of their group after winning the tournament before the Vancouver games. Henrik Lundqvist had a great start in the first game and after playing against Switzerland, the team matches up with Latvia on Saturday and that will be on the USA Network. The United States, Canada, Russia and Sweden are all considered favorites to make it into the late stages of the tournament and this comes after the USA and Canadian teams played a thrilling gold medal matchup in 2010.
All of the teams will advance to the next round and the top four will get byes into that for the quarters and the bronze medal game comes next Saturday before the gold medal game on Sunday. The Swedish team has depth and experience and Erik Karlsson added two goals, while captain Henrik Zetterberg played a great game and had another score and that put the team in the winning column for their first game in the preliminary round. Lundqvist made 27 saves and the team showed off why they are one of the favorites with their offensive explosion early and they had four goals on their opening 12 shots in the game and this came without two of their top players in the lineup in Henrik Sedin and Johan Franzen.
The Swedish team won the gold in Italy in 2006 and now the have some momentum heading into the next game and old man and ageless wonder Jaromir Jagr had a goal against the team. The United States started off with a nice win with seven goals against Slovakia and Canada got a win in their opening game as well with Carey Price in his Olympics debut, while the US team had Jonathan Quick in net.
