2022 Winter Olympics Best Bets Day 15 | Feburary, 02/19/21

Curling takes center stage on the penultimate day of the 2022 Winter Olympics this Saturday as Great Britain meets Sweden in the Men’s Curling Gold Medal Game and Sweden clashed with Switzerland in the Women’s Curling Bronze Medal Game. We’ve got picks in these two matchups as well as one in the Men’s Ice Hockey Bronze Medal Game between Sweden and Slovakia in Saturday’s Winter Olympics best bets for Day 15.

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Men’s Curling: Sweden (-105) vs. Great Britain (-135)

Great Britain avenged its one loss in the round robin stage in the semifinals with a convincing 8-4 win over the United States. Sweden beat Canada for a second time in Beijing in the semifinals, defeating them 5-3 this time around after winning 7-4 in round robin play. Now Niklas Edin’s Sweden will try to defeat Bruce Mouat’s Great Britain after the two teams played to a well-fought 7-6 Great Britain win in Draw 10.

Sweden fell into an early 3-0 hole in the previous matchup between these two teams as Great Britain stole two points in the second end. This is an extremely even matchup that is likely just going to come down to one key frame again. We lean slightly towards Great Britain getting the win, but think the better bet here is the UNDER 12.5 points at (-180). Even though the last draw snuck over this total by a half point, the gold medal game will bring a lot more focus and a lot less risk-taking, as we saw in each team’s low scoring semifinal wins. Look for a great game that goes well under the posted total.

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Women’s Curling: Switzerland (-115) vs. Sweden (-115)

Many were expecting this matchup to be the gold medal game, but here we are getting it a day early in the bronze medal game. Sweden was defeated 12-11 by a strong Great Britain side while Switzerland was stunned in an 8-6 upset loss as big favorites against Japan. It’s hard to know which of these two teams will be more disappointed to be here; Switzerland was the best team during the round robin stage this year with an 8-1 record while Sweden was looking to defend its gold medal.

In what feels pretty close to a toss-up, we’ll take Switzerland to win bronze. As mentioned above, both teams will be disappointed to be competing for bronze instead of gold, but Switzerland has a bit of added motivation in looking to avenge its only loss of the round robin stage (7-6 to Sweden) and looking to medal for the first time since 2006. Sweden has been in each of the last four gold medal games and may not be as highly motivated to fight for bronze.

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Men’s Ice Hockey: Sweden -1.5 (+118) vs. Slovakia +1.5 (-144)

Sweden has been the better team in this tournament thus far with a 2-0-1-0 record in the group stage and a solid 2-0 win over Canada in the playoff round before being eliminated in a shootout loss against Russia. Slovakia went just 1-0-0-2 in the group stage including a 4-1 loss to Sweden. But Slovakia has found new life in the playoff round with a 4-0 win over Germany and an upset shootout win of 3-2 over the United States before losing 2-0 to Finland in the semifinals.

That loss to Finland by only two goals was an impressive one given how dominant Finland has looked throughout these Winter Games. The UNDER would be a tempting play at five goals, but at 4.5 goals it doesn’t leave enough room for error. So we’ll instead be going with Slovakia as a 1.5-goal underdog; goaltender Patrik Rybar gives Slovakia a puncher’s chance at an outright upset, and he should at least keep this game closer than Matej Tomek did when these two teams last met.

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