Canada favourites in upcoming Olympic games

The Olympic fire will be lit in Sochi on Friday and the men's ice hockey tournament will start on next Wednesday with the games Czech Republic-Sweden and Latvia-Switzerland.

Taking a look at the bookmakers' odds you can see that most of them keep Canada as favourites giving around three times the money and a slightly higher odds for Russia. Sweden are considered third favourite with USA behind them. Czech Republic and Finland also have odds with a reasonable chance of winning while all other winners are considered very unlikely. At SportsBettingDime.com you can compare different bookmakers and check out their odds for the Olympic tournament.

The Olympic tournament will play with three groups with Slovakia, Slovenia, USA and Russia in Group A, Finland, Norway, Canada and Austria in Group B and Sweden, Switzerland, Latvia and Czech Republic in Group C.

All teams will qualify for the playoff round with the group winners and the best runner up receiving a bye and qualifying directly for the quarter finals.

You can follow all the action here on our Olympic at Eurohockey.com page and our reporter Davide Tuniz will be on location in Sochi.

We will also report from the Women’s tournament that starts already on Saturday. As usual at international women’s tournaments Canada and USA are huge favorites to battle for the Olympic gold medals in the final.

In the Women’s tournament there are eight teams divided into two groups. The groups are seeded so the best four teams USA, Finland, Canada and Switzerland play in Group A while Sweden, Japan, Russia and Germany play in Group B. The top two teams of Group A will qualify for semi finals while team three and four of Group A will play the top two of Group B in the quarter finals.

The women’s final will be played on Thursday February 20 while the men’s final will be played on the very last day of the Olympics, Saturday February 23.

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