2022 Winter Olympics Best Bets Day 16, 02/20/21 | Betting Preview

The 2022 Winter Olympics come to a close this Sunday with five gold medals on the line including the Women’s Curling Gold Medal Game between Great Britain and Japan and the Men’s Ice Hockey Gold Medal Game between Finland and Russia. We’ve got picks in those two games as well as one in the Women’s 30km Cross-Country Skiing Mass Start in Sunday’s Winter Olympics best bets for the final day of the Beijing Olympics.

Women’s Curling: Japan (+140) vs. Great Britain (-180)

While the Great Britain vs. Sweden matchup in the women’s curling semifinals was projected to be a close one that could go either way, the other draw between first-place Switzerland and fourth-place Japan was supposed to be an easy win for Switzerland. Great Britain’s match against Sweden went as expected, a thrilling back-and-forth game that Great Britain narrowly won 12-11. But what was supposed to be a win for Switzerland wound up being an impressive 8-6 upset for Satsuki Fujisawa’s Japan team.

Like Switzerland, Great Britain is the better team on paper, having scored only one fewer point in the round robin stage than Japan while having allowed 15 fewer points. Eve Muirhead’s Great Britain rolled to an easy 10-4 win over Japan during round robin play, but Switzerland had also beaten Japan 8-4 prior to the semifinals. This is a tough one to predict, but all of the pressure is on Great Britain here, and Japan has a bit of a “team of destiny” vibe going after its win over Switzerland. As (+140) underdogs with the betting market, Japan should at least be live to another upset.

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Men’s Ice Hockey: Finland (-115) vs. Russia (-105)

While it’s a shame that NHL players were unable to compete for their respective countries in Beijing, the men’s ice hockey tournament has still proven to be an interesting and competitive one. Ivan Fedotov has been rock-solid in goal for Russia, leading the team into this gold medal game with a 3-1 win over Denmark and a 2-1 shootout win over Sweden in the playoff round. Finland has also received excellent goaltending from Harri Sateri, who has allowed only four total goals across his four starts as Finland beat Switzerland 5-1 in the quarterfinals and Slovakia 2-0 in the semifinals.

Goals are going to be extremely difficult to come by in this match. We lean towards Finland as Sateri has been the tournament’s best goaltender with a 1.00 goals against average and a .965 save percentage while his team’s offense has been better than Russia’s thus far. But despite the total being set at an extremely low four goals, we think the best bet in this game is on the UNDER. It’s just hard to see these two extremely defensively sound teams not playing to a 1-0 or 2-1 type of final, so we’ll be it accordingly.

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Cross-Country Skiing: Women’s 30km Mass Start Top 3 Finish

Therese Johaug is going to win the 30km mass start. She’s the best distance skier in the world and has already won gold in the 10km and 15km events this year, winning the 15km in a blowout by over 30 seconds. She’s priced accordingly at -600 to win gold, leaving us to look elsewhere for value in the final event of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Three very talented skiers in the United States’ Jessie Diggins (+100 to finish in the top three), Sweden’s Ebba Anderson (+100) and Austria’s Teresa Stadlober (+130) are the heavy favorites to win silver and bronze. But which one will be left off of the podium stand?

Diggins finished 5th, Stadlober finished 8th, and Anderson finished 17th in this event in the 2017 World Championships, while the 2019 World Championships went Diggins in 4th, Anderson in 6th, Stadlober in 8th. In the 15km event here in Beijing, Stadlober won bronze, Diggins finished sixth and Anderson finished 10th. It’s tough to predict where these three will finish, but Jessie Diggins’ current form and strength in these type of events makes her look like the safest bet of the three to medal.

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