MILAN (AP) — Juraj Slafkovsky has been here before. He was tournament MVP in 2022 when, at 17, he led Slovakia to its first medal of any color at the Olympics with bronze in Beijing. That was without NHL participation.

History slightly favors Team USA against Slovakia in Olympic men’s hockey, where the US won three of the six matchups.

The semifinal round for the men's hockey tournament at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics is set, with Canada, USA, Finland and Slovakia.

McAvoy, Swayman, Jokiharju and Korpisalo are all still in the running for an Olympic medal ahead of Friday’s semifinal meetings. The gold-medal game is scheduled for Sunday at 8:10 a.m. ET; the bronze-medal game will be on Saturday at 2:40 p.m. ET.

The last time the U.S. men’s hockey team captured Olympic gold, a group of college standouts and minor-league nobodies engineered the Miracle on Ice. Forty-six years later, the Americans boast the strongest roster they’ve ever brought to an Olympics and the belief that it is at last their time again.