Olympics updates: NHLers are officially back! Plus: Tour the Scotland factory making curling stones

Games Briefing 🏅 | This is The Athletic’s daily newsletter for the Milan Cortina Olympics. Sign up here to receive the Games Briefing directly in your inbox.

MILAN — The NHLers return to Olympic ice. A speedskater could be the next multigold American star. A Ukrainian skeleton athlete is making his voice heard.

So much happening across Italy. Let’s dive in:

🏒 NHL 🤝 Olympics

🇺🇦 A Ukrainian’s statement to the world

⛸️ Skates from a world record

To stay on top of everything throughout Italy, 📲 stick with our ongoing live coverage and 📅 customize your schedule by day and by sport, tailored to your time zone.

Projections: Can anyone beat the U.S. or Canada?

The best-on-best nature of the Olympic men’s hockey tournament starting Wednesday is a great chance for us to put our best analytical minds to work. Here’s a look, as things begin, at how our current models see the top teams’ medal chances:

These projections — which will update for you throughout the Games — come from a statistical model that uses player ratings to estimate relative team strength, then calculates each team’s odds of winning each game, simulating the full tournament 30,000 times.

Our Dom Luszczyszyn also has a smart look at the tournament’s start that dives deeper into the players themselves, and considers what we can draw from their NHL appearances. He explains why Sweden’s depth, for example, gives it a good shot to contend for a medal … even gold.

We’ll see how things progress, with Finland-Slovakia and Sweden-Italy on Wednesday and the rest of the field, Canada and the United States included, playing on Thursday. That gives you time for:

Additionally, the women’s tournament is off today, but the updated betting odds are giving the U.S. team a big edge because of its 5-0 blowout of a Marie-Philip Poulin-less Canadian team (even though neither squad was at full strength).

So much action. We are quite excited to see how it progresses.

Around the Games

🇺🇸 As I type this, our Brittany Ghiroli is sitting to my left, and we could easily throw a ball to one of the finish lines at Milano Speed Skating Stadium, where Jordan Stolz is currently sitting and rehydrating after taking some runs around the track to get loose. He will be the marquee name in a 1,000-meter race that could make him an even bigger star.

As Brittany notes, he’s saved some special skates for this. When he last used them, he set a world record at this distance.

📹 Matt Slater watched the Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych train while wearing a helmet featuring 24 athletes who were killed in the war in Ukraine, despite the objections of Olympic organizers.

⛸️ Meet Rafael Arutyunyan, the coach who helped Ilia Malinin develop his quadruple axel — a jump that only Malinin has done in competition. 

🪰 Those wild drone overhead shots you’ve been seeing throughout these Games? They’ve become ubiquitous here. There are 25 drones being used throughout Italy, the CEO of the Olympic Broadcasting Services said.

💔 Miss the saga of the Norwegian biathlon bronze medalist who used his moment in the sun to confess his infidelity? Well, his former girlfriend has responded, according to the tabloid VG in Norway, and said it’ll be hard to forgive him. “I did not choose to be put in this position, and it hurts to have to be in it,” she said, according to VG.

🛖 What’s it like in the small cabin where skiers start their runs atop the mountain in Bormio? “A funeral,” Kyle Negomir of the United States told Charlotte Harpur.

🍝 At these Games, roughly 1,300 pounds (!) of pasta will be served each day across three cafeterias in the athletes’ village, The New York Times reported. And the Olympians love it.

Reminder: All of The Athletic’s Olympics coverage is free to read in our app.

📸 On the Scene:

One of the most interesting elements about curling is that the stones used in the Olympics are made from a special granite in a factory in Scotland.

Want a tour? Matt Slater’s got you.

Planning Ahead: What to watch Thursday

📺 There will be eight gold medals in play Thursday. Here are some of them:

Alpine skiing, women’s super-G
Cross-country skiing, women’s 10-kilometer interval start freestyle
Freestyle skiing, men’s moguls
Snowboarding, women’s halfpipe

And here’s a peek at how that medal race is shaping up, sorted by total medals, with 31 events down and 85 to go:

Thank you for reading and following our coverage. You can reach us at ogarcia@theathletic.com and zpierce@theathletic.com with any questions or feedback.

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