Who will win Olympic hockey gold?

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It's safe to say that hockey will be the most watched, and most talked-about, sport at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Italy.

The men's tournament in particular is going to draw a ton of interest as NHL players return for the first time since 2014, giving Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews and many of the league's other young superstars their first taste of the Olympics. A Canada-U.S. clash for the gold medal seems to be in the cards after the bordering rivals' electrifying battles at last year's 4 Nations Face-Off.

On the women's side, another extremely competitive, winner-take-all showdown between Canada and the U.S. feels almost inevitable as the archrival superpowers continue to dominate the world.

So, two Canada-U.S. hockey gold-medal games next month? Yes, please! It's hard to imagine a more exciting outcome than that. But is that the way it will actually play out?

To help gauge the chances, we once again turned to our friends at Shoreview Sports Analytics. Much like they did for our Olympic curling preview last week, the Shoreview guys built a model to predict how each country will do in the men's and women's hockey tournaments. And some of the projections are pretty surprising.

Let's dive in.

Men's

The most surprising things to me here are Canada's relatively low gold-medal chances and the fact that Sweden — not the United States — comes out as the Canadians' top challenger. It's also a bit unexpected to see the Czech Republic ahead of Finland after the Czechs were left out of the 4 Nations Face-Off.

Mainly, though, I'm struck by how tight