Four quarterfinal games were on the schedule for the men\u2019s ice hockey tournament at the Winter Olympics on Wednesday and did they ever deliver the drama. Of the four contests, three went into overtime, all featuring late drama that saw one of the teams needing a late equalizer to keep their Olympic hopes alive. In the end, Slovakia, Finland, Canada, and the United States all survived and have guaranteed themselves a shot at a medal of some sort.<\/p>\n
That being said, despite all the theatrics from Wednesday, there will be piece of news likely to dominate headlines and keep Canada fans and fans of the Pittsburgh Penguins holding their breath.<\/p>\n
Canada may have survived a scare from the Czechs to advance, but all the talk will be about the status of Sidney Crosby who left the game in the second period with an lower-body injury and did not return. Crosby was injured after a hit from Czechia defender Radko Gudas. [Pensburgh<\/a>]<\/p>\n No one imagined it when the season began, but the Stanley Cup playoffs are very much as possibility for the Penguins this season. While they sit in good position at the Olympic break, there is still work left to be done once everyone returns and the season resumes next week. [Pensburgh<\/a>]<\/p>\n It was a tough Valentine\u2019s weekend for the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins after they were shutout on Saturday by Syracuse to end a five-game winning streak then lost to Cleveland on Sunday where they were still able to secure a point by getting the game to overtime. [Pensburgh<\/a>]<\/p>\n Forward Filip Hallander returned to practice with the Penguins this week for the first time since being diagnosed with a blood clot in December. Hallander is now on his way to Wilkes-Barre where he will take on a conditioning assignment as part of his return to hockey. [Trib Live<\/a>]<\/p>\n Another face returning to practice since team activities were allowed to resume was defenseman Kris Letang. After missing the final four games before the Olympic break, Letang is back on the ice and looking healthy, with full plans to play next Thursday against New Jersey. [The Athletic<\/a> $$]<\/p>\n So far the surprise side in Milan after winning Group B, Slovakia kept rolling right into the semifinals and guaranteed themselves a chance at a medal by steamrolling Germany 6-2 in the first quarterfinal game on Wednesday. They will face the United States in the semifinals on Friday. [NHL<\/a>]<\/p>\n For the first time in this Olympic tournament, Canada was given a scare as Czechia pushed them to the absolute brink before Nick Suzuki and Mitch Marner stepped up to save the day and push Canada into the semifinals where they will meet Finland on Friday. [NHL<\/a>]<\/p>\n For over 50 minutes, Finland looked to be dead in the water against Switzerland before a frantic final minutes saw the Finns find two goals late to force overtime where they capped off the comeback when Artturi Lehkonen went bar down to push the defending gold medalists into the semifinals to meet Canada. [NHL<\/a>]<\/p>\n Wrapping up the action on Wednesday was yet another overtime thriller that saw the United States clinging to a 1-0 lead late in the third period before Sweden forced overtime with a late tying goal where Quinn Hughes came to the American rescue and set up a semifinal date with Slovakia. [NHL<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four quarterfinal games were on the schedule for the men\u2019s ice hockey tournament at the Winter Olympics on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5,40,4,118,33852,1469,100,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-463265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-penguins","12":"tag-pens-points","13":"tag-pittsburgh","14":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","15":"tag-pittsburghpenguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116096981050327653","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}