Olympic Ice Hockey 2022: The Russian Ice Hockey Team Will Not Defend The Title

Russia, the reigning Olympic champion, is the main favorite for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Will the Red Machine be able to defend the title of the strongest national team in the world? Our prediction: The Finns have a better chance to succeed.

The Russian national team won the Olympics in Pyeongchang, but it is enough to recall the course of the final game against the modest Germans to understand how difficult that championship was. It is important to understand that the current roster of the national team is certainly not stronger than the one with Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Kovalchuk, and Kirill Kaprizov, plus Sergei Mozyakin added some experience and was able find his chance in the majority, while the current NHL stars Ilya Sorokin and Igor Shesterkin were benched at the 2018 Olympics.

Now debutant coach Alexei Zhamnov has turned down one of the KHL's best forwards, Anton Burdasov, and also complains about Andrei Kuzmenko' weak play on defense, leaving him paired with Alexander Kadeikin only on the reserve list. On the roster, however, we find a plethora of players from CSKA, with not every one of them having an outstanding season in the KHL. The Russian national team decided to go to Beijing on their own plane, but even that move didn't prevent them from testing positive for COVID, which clearly doesn't improve their chances of repeating their triumph.

Among the favorites for the Olympics in Beijing are the teams from Finland, Sweden, Canada and the Czech Republic, which traditionally solve big problems at major international tournaments with their skilful ice hockey players. Among the not-so-obvious options are the 2018 Olympics finalist Germany, as well as the big-named Swiss team, which has repeatedly made it far in the playoff grid at the world championships.

The competition at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games will be much higher than that of the 2018 Olympics, so the chances of a weakened Russian national team to defend the title look very modest. The main favorite of the tournament in China is Finland, who won gold and silver at the last two World Championships, and now Jukka Jalonen has called upon a very strong and experienced squad that is ripe enough for great success.

The Suomi representatives play systemic hockey, with each player knowing exactly what his mission is. In case of injuries and positive coronavirus tests, the coaching staff can painlessly bring in reserve players, which is the most important thing at the 2022 Olympics. The Finns have a very strong and stable goalkeeping squad, high-quality defenders and offensive line seems to be the strongest in the whole tournament. Based on this, betting on the Finland ice hockey team's victory at the Olympics for about 5.00 looks like a great option.