There may be no NHL players participating, but the 2018 Winter Olympics ice hockey tournament will still proceed, just with a lot less fanfare.
The Women’s tournament begins on February 10th, but it’s really the inevitable finals between Canada and the USA that will take place on February 22nd that we are all waiting for.
The Men’s tournament begins on the 14th and it should be interesting because we really don’t know what to expect. The Gold Medal game takes place on the 25th and it will be interesting to see if Canada can overcome the lack of NHL players to defend their gold from 2014.
I’ve included the gold medal odds for both the Women’s and Men’s tournaments below. You can also bet on each individual game at SportsInteraction.com, our top rated betting site for Canadians.
Women’s Ice Hockey Gold Medal Odds
Here are the odds for the Women’s tournament from SportsInteraction.com (odds taken on February 3rd – after 1 round robin game):
As usual the women’s tournament will be a two nation battle between the USA and Canada. Team USA defeated Canada in a shootout to win the gold medal in 2018. Team Canada had won the gold medal in women’s hockey at the previous four Olympic Games.
Team Canada comes into the tournament in great form, having won the 2021 Women’s World Championship, defeating Team USA in overtime in the finals to win that international tournament. Team Canada had also defeated Team USA 5-1 in the round robin, so they are the rightful favourites heading into the Olympics.
I like Canada to get the job done in China.
Play: Team Canada 1.79
Men’s Ice Hockey Gold Medal Odds
The NHL pulling out of the Olympics in December, really threw a wrench into the tournament. With the best players in the world not participating, the Men’s Hockey tournament is really anyone’s tournament to win.
It’s no surprise that the Russians come in as favourites considering they were able to put together a team of KHL players, which is widely considered the second best professional league in the world. Well known NHL alumni including Nikita Nesterov, Slava Voynov, Mikhail Grigorenko, and Nikita Gusev are on the roster. Even if the NHL had been participating a good portion of Team Russia would still have been composed of KHL players, so they are really only losing half of their top players, while other countries such as Canada, USA and Sweden would have been 100% NHLers. For this reason it’s no wonder that the Russians are favourites.
That said, I do not think Russia are good value at those odds. There are three elimination games for every team en route to the gold medal, and I do not consider Russia as a big enough favourite in those games to justify odds implying close to a 50% chance of winning the tournament.
I think any of the top 8 teams could win this tournament. In terms of value, I like Germany at 20-1. The Germans won the silver medal at the 2018 Olympics, losing in overtime in the gold medal game to Russia. The Germans have a quality roster that has the ability to do damage if they find chemistry and get some good goaltending in this short tournament.
I think there are two tiers of contenders in this tournament. Russia as tier one, and then Finland, Sweden, Canada, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany and USA as tier 2. Give me the value on Germany at odds of 20-1.
Play: Team Germany 21.09
You can also bet on any individual game of both the Men’s and Women’s tournament’s at SportsInteraction.com. You can find all of the odds by selecting ‘Hockey’ followed by ‘Olympic Mens’ or ‘Olympic Womens’ at the Sports Interaction website.
Check out our hockey betting section for a further breakdown of the various bets you can make on each game, including money line, regulation time and over/under.
If you’re new to betting online you can follow our 3 step guide to betting on the Olympics. It’s very easy and only takes a few minutes to get your first bet in.
Tagged With : 2018 Winter Olympics • Ice Hockey • Olympics betting • Olympics Ice Hockey • Winter Olympics • Winter Olympics betting
