Today at 7:30 a.m. ET, Norway and Russia go head-to-head in men's ice hockey live from the Bolshoy Ice Dome in Russia as part of the 2014 Winter Olympics. The game can be live streamed for free here.
The pressure is on for the Russians as the host country for the 2014 Winter Olympics will now have to win four straight games in order to earn a gold medal in front of the Sochi faithful. Russia bounced back from a shootout loss to the United States to defeat Slovakia 1-0 on Sunday in order to reach a play-in game against Norway.
"Overall we've played well. Everybody wants to beat Russia at home," Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin said, according to NHL.com. "It's the Olympic Games; nobody wants to make mistakes. We take what we take, and we're going to play in the future."
Ovechkin leads the NHL with 40 goals and has added 20 assists for the Caps this season.
Norway meanwhile, came in with fewer expectations than the Russians and finished with the No.12 seed following a 3-1 loss to Austria on Sunday. Norway will look for its first Olympic win since it hosted the 1994 Games.
"Obviously, we're going to be meeting better opponents," Norway captain Ole-Kristian Tollefsen said via NHL.com. "It was a big carrot for us in this game to meet Slovenia in the next game, but we couldn't pull the effort off. We just didn't play good enough."
The lone current NHL representative for Norway is Mats Zuccarello, who is having a career year for the Rangers and leads the team with 43 points off of 15 goals and 28 assists.
After losing a tight game to the United States and narrowly defeating Slovakia, Russia is now in a similar fate that Canada was in during the 2010 Games when the team lost the United States in group play and won four straight do-or-die games en route to the gold medal in Vancouver.
"That's every game here. It's very intense," former NHL and current KHL forward Ilya Kovalchuk said. "Even if you play against Slovenia or the USA, or [Sunday] against Slovakia, it doesn't matter. We couldn't find a way how to score, but we found a way to win."
Russia will look to find some offense after scoring just seven goals in its three group games and going 2-for-13 on the power play.
"It does not matter if we will have to play an extra match," goalie Semyon Varlamov told NHL.com. "The end result is that we will have to play against a good team eventually. And that is what we are focusing on."
Russia looks to not be a bust in front of the partisan Sochi crowd while Norway will try to pull an upset when the puck drops today at the Bolshoy Ice Dome as part of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
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