Olympic Daily: The hockey is pretty damn good right now

We are down to the final four, and that's pretty damn cool.

I think when we’ve dreamed of “best-on-best” Olympic hockey, this is what I pictured.

A trio of tight-fought, back-to-back-to-back overtime matches featuring NHL players representing their national teams. Canada survived a thriller against Czechia, winning 4-3 in overtime, while Finland had a similar result battling back to win 3-2 in overtime against Switzerland. And then the United States ousting Sweden 2-1 in overtime on a goal by Quinn Hughes.

Awesome day of hockey.

There’s a lot to be said about those games, and many of you were probably glued to the television throughout the day, so instead of taking a micro view, I want to take a macro view now that we are down to the final four — Canada, Finland, Slovakia, and the United States.

While NHL talent dominates the Final Four, Slovakia is the only country without solely (or primarily in Finland’s case) NHLers on it’s roster, I think this tournament did a pretty good job showing many of us how slim the margins are between the NHL and the rest of the world.