Quick Olympic Thoughts: Slovakia and Finland Open the Tournament

This hockey was great

NHL players have returned to the Olympics. We won’t be writing up every Olympic game, or even every game featuring Dallas Stars players. But the hockey is going to be very good, so we’ll bring periodic Olympic coverage here alongside other regular Dallas Stars stories over the next couple of weeks.

By the way, DFW’s own Hannah Bilka scored two goals yesterday in the USA women’s 5-0 dismemberment of Canada. She’s good at hockey.

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• The pace of the tournament reminds me of an early playoff round, or almost Sweden/Canada from the Four Nations. Man, it’s great to see two teams playing for all they’re worth. This is going to be good hockey.

• Esa Lindell shows off his NHL chops with a confident spin move on a zone exit, and Miro Heiskanen adds his own flash with a couple of offensive jukes down low in the other end. They’re the top defense pairing, but they’ve taken their offensive duties to heart.

• Lindell has begun on the right side, with Heiskanen on the left. But as the game goes on, they switch back to their Dallas positions, with Heiskanen playing on the right side. I wonder if the initial idea was to free up Heiskanen a tad more on D-zone breakouts, but that’s purely a guess.