Will Team Canada secure the hockey Gold?

Just two words that could be used to describe Team Canada's Olympic Hockey experience are "under pressure". The overwhelming desire of the Canadians for their country to pick up a home gold was satisfied yesterday when freestyle skier Alex Bilodeau won the top prize in the men's moguls. However, it seems a safe Olympics bet that Bilodeau's feat will be of little concern to the hardcore Maple Leaf hockey supporters who have been awaiting this event eagerly since Vancouver was awarded the Games seven years ago now.

The NHL has added more pressure, with officials seeming increasingly less keen to support competitions in the future. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman revealed recently: "It's difficult for any business, any league, to shut down for two weeks with the attendant loss of attention and everything that flows from that". The players may still dream of the Winter Olympics but come 2014 when the games move to Russia, the NHL looks set to place continuity and consistency in their own competition above considerations of national pride.

With the future looking uncertain, this tournament is becoming all the more important. No athletes will be under greater pressure to deliver gold in Vancouver than the 23 men wearing the Maple Leaf on their jerseys. Additional pressure has been added by quotes such as this one that appeared in The Manitoban the day after the squad was announced: "The thought of a losing effort is something wholly unacceptable and incalculable within this culture, where national pride and hockey skill are (at least once every four years) inseparable entities".

The Canadians have an extremely talented squad which has strength in depth in every department but whether they offer any value at the current odds is another issue. A large number of bettors obviously think they do as they are very short priced hockey favorites but it often pays to go against the crowd and this is one of those times.

It's not enough to build the case against Team Canada on the basis of pressure; the squad holds numerous players with experience at the top level and captain Sidney Crosby has already lifted a Stanley Cup, so he will be able to deal with the pressure. However, has the whole nation been so expectant to this level before? So, whilst pressure needs to be taken into account, more important in my opinion is the format of the competition in which the eventual winners will have had to play seven grueling games over just twelve pressure packed days, with the knockout stages also offering no second chances.

Canada's overall record in the competition really doesn't make comforting reading in the context of the price on offer. In 1998 at the Nagano Olympics, where professionals were allowed to take part for the first time, Canada came back without a medal. Four years after this, they picked up gold in Salt Lake City, ending a 50-year drought, but then they stumbled to a seventh-place finish in the 2006 Turin Games, unable to match the achievements of the national women's team which took a second successive gold.

It also seems likely that the competition has much more depth than that suggested by the betting. Russia and Sweden will both arrive in Vancouver with similar expectations to the Canadians. The attack-minded Russians, led by the talented Alexander Ovechkin (the NHL's top sniper), have won the last two world championships and that rekindles memories of the late USSR's "Big Red Machine". With Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Ilya Kovalchuk, and Pavel Datsyuk, Russia have an explosive quality that is capable of terrifying opposing defenses.

Sweden still have thirteen of the players who brought them success in Turin four years ago and are very strong up front, just like Russia. In twins Henrik and Daniel Sedin, they have players who will be playing on home ice. They will be the primary threats to Canada's hopes but with Finland, the Czech Republic, and a young USA side also in contention, this competition is really open, despite the lopsided look to the odds at the moment. We also shouldn't forget dangerous outsiders Slovakia. Marion Gaborik is the leading scorer in the NHL today and Marion Hossa is proven at Olympic level.

If Canada are able to handle the pressures and expectations that could burden them, then they have a shot at home Olympic Gold but based on talent and quality alone they are far too short a price to land the major prize against a talented field. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is lay Canada or support a few teams against them. At the current odds you can back both Russia and Sweden combined at bigger odds than the Canadians; two for the price of one.

Whenever Team Canada enter the ice, the pressure will be all too evident and I think that it will show eventually. If it does, then Alex Bilodeau's name will be remembered far longer than Team Canada's for delivering that precious home gold.