Team Canada kicks off its defence of Olympic gold today, facing Norway in what is a late night game in Sochi but an awfully early one on this side of the Atlantic. 

Canada is expected to use the following line combinations against the Norwegians, though of course with a larger international roster (allowing two extra dressed skaters than an NHL roster) there will be more flexibility than normal.

Aside from Crosby, that top line seems pretty weak by Canadian standards, though of course that’s not likely to be a concern against Norway. It’ll be interesting to see how much use Martin St. Louis gets as Canada’s spate forward and of course how well these units click.

No P.K. Subban is the interesting point here; I expected he’d be Canada’s seventh defenceman (and he may yet be) but so far the team is opting for a more pure-defence option in Hamhuis. It’s justifiable to some degree – Vlasic or Bouwmeester are more likely to need replacing in the regular rotation than anybody on the right side.

Price gets the start here, with Luongo all but certain to play against Austria tomorrow. It’s a tip of the hat that Price will be the starter over the course of the tournament. 

Scores from the first two days of the tournament:

Martin Marincin went minus-four against the United States in that lopsided loss. He wasn’t *that* bad by eye, but he did have some walkabout moments while partner Milan Jurcina was a turnstile. Marincin had an active stick, a couple of zone entries and a scoring chance of his own but was exposed at times in his own end. He ended up tied for the team lead with three shots.

The U.S. win was decisive, but interestingly they ran up the score only against Slovakia’s bottom-six forwards and bottom-four defencemen (all of whom got regular shifts from a generous Slovak coach). Despite the score, they finished even against Slovakia’s top-four D, which means they may yet have trouble scoring in tougher matches.

I didn’t see the Russian game, but Anton Belov scored a goal there, had two shots and finished plus-one in a little over 10 minutes of ice time. 

Ales Hemsky was barely used in the Czech Republic’s loss to Sweden, but looked good when he finally got on the ice in the third period. The Czechs have the talent to compete for a medal, but the management and coaching seems perfectly atrocious. From picking people like Petr Nedved and Roman Cervenka over Jiri Hudler and Radim Vrbata to giving Ladislav Smid 0:00 TOI in a game where Michal Barinka played more than 15 minutes, one would almost think that the people running the Czech team were intentionally sewering the club. 

That’s tough for Hemsky and Smid, who have seen their fair share of hardship in the NHL, but great for the other medal contenders who face a critically weakened Czech squad.