[US, Mexico & Canada customers only] Feb 15, 2026; Milan, Italy; Auston Matthews of United States celebrates scoring their second goal with teammates against Germany in men's ice hockey group A play during the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena. Credit: Marton Monus/Reuters via Imagn Images
By Sam Neumann on

The USA and Canada play for Olympic gold in men’s hockey Sunday morning at 8:10 a.m. ET, and it’s the game everyone wanted from the moment the NHL agreed to send players back to the Olympics for the first time since 2014.

Not just because it’s the best rivalry in hockey, though it is. Not just because of Sidney Crosby’s golden goal in overtime at the 2010 Vancouver Games or the U.S. coming up short of gold on home ice in Salt Lake City in 2002, though those moments still define what this rivalry means. It’s because last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off proved the appetite for this matchup is still massive. And now we get the rematch on the biggest stage with NHL players and Olympic gold on the line.

Unfortunately, most of North America will either be asleep or dragging themselves out of bed with coffee in hand.

That timing has sparked plenty of outrage in sports media. Some have called it “downright criminal,” while others have questioned why the IOC would schedule the marquee Olympic event at such an ungodly hour.

The criticism makes sense emotionally. This is the marquee event of the Olympics after all, but the game can’t — and won’t — be moved to cater to a North American audience. The logistics don’t allow for it.

The gold medal game is the final event of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The Closing Ceremony starts at 2:30 p.m. ET the same day. That means the hockey game has to finish with enough time for the players, coaches, officials, and everyone involved to travel from Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan to the Verona Arena in Verona, where the ceremony is being held. That’s about a two-hour drive. The ceremony can’t start until the athletes from the final event arrive, and the final event is the hockey game.

The puck drops at 2:10 p.m. local time in Italy. For European fans, that’s a perfectly reasonable Sunday afternoon. For North American fans, it’s early morning. The Olympics are in Europe, so the schedule is mostly built around European time zones. NBC would obviously prefer to have this game in primetime, but the IOC scheduled it when it needed to, based on when the Closing Ceremony is and where it’s happening.

This isn’t unprecedented. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics scheduled the men’s hockey gold medal game for 12:15 p.m. local time to ensure it finished before the Closing Ceremony later that day. The last event of the Olympics always gets scheduled around the ceremony. That’s just how it works. The difference is that in Vancouver, the game and the ceremony were in the same city, and the time slot was better for North American audiences because Vancouver is in North America. In Milan and Verona, the game and ceremony are in different cities, two hours apart, and the time slot is built for European audiences.

Could the IOC have scheduled the Closing Ceremony later in the day to give the hockey game a better time slot for North American viewers? Sure, but they didn’t. The ceremony is set for 8:30 p.m. local time in Verona, which is 2:30 p.m. ET. That means the hockey game in Milan needs to wrap up early enough for everyone to make the trip.

Kenny Albert will call the game on NBC alongside Eddie Olczyk and Brian Boucher, with Kathryn Tappen reporting. The game will air live on NBC and stream on Peacock. NBC will re-air it in primetime, but if you want to watch live without spoilers, you’ll need to set an alarm.

The game itself is everything people hoped for when the NHL agreed to send players back to the Olympics. The 4 Nations Face-Off around this time last year gave a preview of what this game could look like. The U.S. and Canada met in the championship game of that tournament, and it drew 9.3 million viewers on ESPN — the most-watched hockey game by an American audience on record when you exclude Olympic competition. The appetite for best-on-best international hockey is clearly there. NBC is counting on that interest translating to big viewership numbers despite the early morning start time.

The primetime replay won’t have quite the same stakes.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann