2010 Winter Olympics - Men's Ice Hockey

While the 2010 Winter Olympic's opening ceremony was four days ago, the sport I've been waiting to see has it's first games being played today.

The men's ice hockey tournament begins today when teams in Group A face off against one another, including USA vs Switzerland and later Canada vs Norway. The teams in Group B are Russia and Latvia (who also play one another today), Czech Republic, and Slovakia while Group C is comprised of Sweden, Finland, Belarus, and Germany.

As a Buffalo Sabres fan I am excited to see Ryan Miller as the starting goalie for Team USA, as well as Henrik Tallinder (Sweden), Toni Lydman (Finland), Andrej Sekera (Slovakia), and Jochen Hecht (Germany). You Washington Capitols fans may have a harder time rooting for your home nation as both Alexander Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, and Semyon Varlamov are on the Russian roster. Other Caps competing are Tomas Fleischmann (Czech Republic) and Nicklas Backstrom (Sweden).

Olympic ice hockey is great because not only do you get to see great NHL veterans you wouldn't normally get to see play together, but you also are able to see emerging young talent from "across the pond" and former NHL stars who are now back playing in Europe such as Jaromir Jagr (Czech Republic), Sergei Federov (Russia), and Peter Forsberg (Sweden).

Here's the scheduled Group A games for the United States: Switzerland (Feb 16 at 12 pm), Norway (Feb 18 at 12 pm), and Canada (Feb 21 at 4:45 pm).