For the first time in over a decade, NHL players have been participating in the Olympics, and it has created some excellent hockey. Over the past week or so, teams have been participating in the preliminary round, where they play each of the three other teams in their group. However, the next round of games could see the Sabres' top two players face off early in the tournament.
The next phase of the Olympics is the qualification round, where the Top 4 teams get a bye to the quarterfinals, while the remaining eight teams play in the qualification round. Team USA has one more game, against Germany at 3:10 ET on Sunday, and they will be playing for the one seed. They will not only need to win but also have a better goal differential than Canada, which plays earlier in the day.
If Team USA doesn't finish with a better goal differential, they will finish second and then have to play the winner of Team Sweden and either Latvia or Denmark, as detailed by James Mirtle of The Athletic. In that scenario, Thompson and Dahlin will have their two teams meeting in the quarterfinals.
Rasmus Dahlin has made a bigger impact than Tage Thompson to this point of the Olympics
While Thompson still has one game left to play, Rasmus Dahlin has made the bigger impact for his team to this point in the Olympics. Thompson has one goal, which was a beautiful power-play goal, but Dahlin has one goal, also a power-play goal, but three assists.
Thompson, though, is no stranger to making big plays in big moments in international tournaments, as he had the golden goal in the 2025 IIHF World Championship last summer. It was one of the reasons that he earned this spot on Team USA after being left off the 4 Nations Face-off roster last season.
Thompson and Dahlin have been teammates for eight seasons now with the Buffalo Sabres. They have helped the team get in great position to end their playoff drought, and they have shown they can work well together when on the same team. It will be interesting for fans to see how they do potentially competing against one another if the results of Sunday set them up for a matchup in the quarterfinals.