WHAT TO WATCH
TOP FIVE
1. MARCH OF THE MEDALLISTS: Canadian Olympic athletes will celebrate a record medal haul when they march in the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics (6 a.m. ET Sunday, CBC). Canada eclipsed its previous high of 26 medals from the Vancouver Olympics when Kaetlyn Osmond won figure skating bronze on Friday. The closing ceremony is expected to showcase K-pop, South Korea’s wildly popular musical genre that has been the soundtrack of these Games. The ceremony will also mark the handover to Beijing, which will host the 2022 Winter Games.
2. DAVID VS. GOLIATH: A juggernaut squad of Olympic Athletes from Russia will take on a German upstart in the men’s gold-medal hockey game (11 p.m. ET Saturday, CBC/TSN). The Germans, largely written off before the tournament began, upset Sweden in the quarter-finals, then shocked Canada 4-3 in the semis to reach the final. The Russians, playing under the Olympic flag, boasts a lineup featuring former NHL superstars Pavel Datsyuk and Ilya Kovalchuk. Canada, meanwhile, will face the Czech Republic for bronze (7:10 a.m. ET Saturday, CBC).
3. HOPEFUL HOSTS: The South Korean women’s curling team plays for a gold medal when it takes on Sweden in the final (7 p.m. ET Saturday, CBC). The Koreans have lost only once in the tournament, a 7-5 defeat to Japan way back in the third draw of the preliminary round. The hosts avenged that loss by beating Japan 8-7 in the semifinals. Canada won the event in 2014, but Rachel Homan missed the playoffs at this tournament.
4. HIPSTERS: Ice dance champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir and will pay tribute to the late Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie in Sunday’s figure skating exhibition (3:30 p.m. ET Sunday, tape delay, CBC). The couple plans to skate to the Hip track “Long Time Running.” Moir calls Downie, who died last year of brain cancer, “one of my heroes and a guy who was so wonderfully weird.” The gala is a curtain-closing tradition in figure skating with medal winners performing exhibition programs. It’s all show and no competition.
5. FAB FOUR: Canada will have three entries in bobsled’s four-man competition (7:30 p.m. ET Saturday, TSN). All eyes will be on Justin Kripps of Summerland, B.C., who won gold in the two-man event earlier in the Games. Other Canadian pilots include Chris Spring of Priddis, Alta., and Hamilton’s Nick Poloniato. In addition to Kripps’s gold, Canada’s bobsled team also has a bronze from Kaillie Humphries in the women’s event.