The bars and eateries lining West Seventh Street are generally thought of as places to go before and after hockey games, and not often listed among the highly-regarded breakfast establishments in the Capital City.

For one day anyway, with Olympic gold on the line, that’s going to change.

Team USA faces off versus their neighborhood rivals from north of the 49th parallel at 7:10 a.m. Minnesota time on Sunday morning, with the Americans seeking their first Olympic title since the famed Miracle On Ice in 1980. And with three Minnesota Wild players wearing red, white and blue, along with several more from the State of Hockey on the team, bars and restaurants throughout the region will be making adjustments to accommodate the fans.

“We’re going to be open at 6:30 in the morning,” said Tom Reid, the Wild broadcaster and namesake of his Hockey City Pub, located two blocks from Grand Casino Arena.

They normally open at 11 a.m. on Sunday, but with Team USA playing for gold for the first time in 16 years, exceptions are being made.

“We’ll have breakfast sandwiches and our full menu as well,” Reid said.

Although if you want a screwdriver or an oatmeal stout, you will have to wait until the first intermission. Per Minnesota state law, beer, wine and liquor may not be served at on-sale establishments until 8 a.m. on Sunday. At least one area restaurant manager thinks a one-day, one-hour exception is in order.

“We should definitely have that. How many times is the U.S. playing Canada for the gold medal? This is bigger than the Stanley Cup,” said Julia Flaherty, manager of Joseph’s Grill on Plato, across the river from downtown St. Paul. They will open at their normal time for a Sunday, 7 a.m., and have been experiencing big crowds for all of the Olympic men’s and women’s games so far.

An email to Governor Walz’s communications office regarding the idea of an earlier liquor serving time on Sunday was not immediately returned.

A few miles to the south in Inver Grove Heights, the folks at B-52 Burgers & Brew experimented with early openings on Sunday for the Minnesota Vikings games played in Europe in September and got good crowds. On Friday night when they announced their 7 a.m. Sunday opening for the hockey game, manager Michael Pitsiladis said the Facebook post got more than 400 likes almost immediately.

“We do brunch every Saturday and Sunday, we’re just starting it earlier,” he said, noting that the huge response on social media caused them to ramp up their staffing. “We were planning on opening with just one server and one bartender, but now we’re having a full crew on hand.”

And from the sounds of things, they will be busy early, even if they’re just serving coffee and orange juice for the first hour.

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MILAN, Italy — Dylan Larkin has been thinking about the United States facing Canada for gold at the Olympics for a year. All the dreams he had as a kid crystalized after he and his teammates lost to their rival in the final of the 4 Nations Face-Off.

MILAN, ITALY – FEBRUARY 20: Jack Eichel #9 of Team United States celebrates after scoring a goal in the second period during the Men’s Semifinals Playoff match between the United States and Slovakia on day fourteen of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on February 20, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

“I’ve thought about it so much,” Larkin said. “It’s what everyone wanted, this matchup in a gold-medal game. Yeah, I’ve thought about it a lot.”

Those thoughts become reality Sunday when the North American countries that have become the pre-eminent global hockey powerhouses face off in a titanic final of a best-vs.-best tournament with many of the NHL’s biggest stars. The U.S. against Canada on the biggest stage in sports should be hard-hitting, quick-skating, must-see entertainment.

“It’s gonna be a big-boy game,” Canada’s Tom Wilson said. “It’s going to be as fast and physical and skilled as you can ever imagine. Right now it’s the two big countries for hockey in the world. Every single guy is going to be doing everything they can at every single moment.”

Canada and the U.S. entered the tournament as the favorites and played like it. Each team went undefeated, winning all five games, with the U.S. outscoring opponents 24-8 and outshooting them 201-124 and Canada 27-8 and 202-106.

“It’s two of probably the best teams ever, maybe,” U.S. winger Matthew Tkachuk said. “We’ve got a lot of respect for the players over there and what they’ve done in the past, and we want to be the team that comes out on top.”

There were some scares and nervous moments along the way: Canada needed late tying goals to get past Czechia in overtime in the quarterfinals and Finland in the semifinals, while the U.S. also gave up the lead late against Sweden before winning in OT.

Unlike the preliminary round, the U.S. and Canada have each been tested facing elimination.

“It hasn’t been the smoothest quarters and semis for us,” said Canada’s Connor McDavid, the leading scorer at the Olympics with an NHL player-record 13 points. “But I think that adversity is good. Going through that has brought us closer. You can definitely feel that in the group, it’s been been fun to play in those games.”

In the last two Olympics the NHL participated in, Canada took home gold. In 2014, the team never trailed. In 2010, Sidney Crosby scored in overtime to defeat the U.S. and win on home ice.

Canada has won three of the five Games with NHL players to give it a record nine gold medals. Hockey was born in Canada, and the expectation is always to be the best in the world at it.

“You always feel that responsibility as a Canadian,” Wilson said. “We want to be the best. It’s been our game for a long time. The guys that are pulling the jersey on, it’s our responsibility to go out there and try and prove why we’re the best and why we should be the best. And continue to be the best.”

Arguably the best Canadian Olympian in history, Crosby, may not play because of an injury that knocked him out of the quarterfinals. Coach Jon Cooper did not show his hand over whether Crosby will be available.

“Obviously we’d love to have him,” Cooper said.

The last American men’s hockey gold medal at the Olympics was 46 years ago in Lake Placid, N.Y. The 1980 team of college players pulled off the “Miracle on Ice,” beating the heavily favored Soviet Union on the way to authoring one of the most talked-about underdog stories in sports history.

None of the players on this U.S. team were alive to see it; coach Mike Sullivan was about to turn 12. The reverence for that team remains as the current generation of players seek to join the likes of Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig in U.S. hockey lore.

“It’s unbelievable,” said forward Brock Nelson, whose uncle Dave Christian was on the 1980 team. “It’s exciting. The adrenaline, the chills, everything. This is kind of what you dream about as a kid and why you want to play the game.”

Eruzione captained the U.S. in 1980 and visited with players at the 4 Nations last year in Montreal. Auston Matthews, the U.S. team captain, said Eruzione’s best advice was, “Just leave it all out there.”

“This is what you play for,” Matthews said. “This is what you came here for: to have this opportunity and put ourselves in this position. We just got to go out there and leave it all on the ice.”

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FORT MYERS, Fla. —  A new season always brings a renewed sense of hope and promise. Perhaps no one is more ready for that fresh start, to put 2025 well behind him, than Bailey Ober.

Ober hurt his hip during spring training last year. He got clobbered in his first start of the season, yielding eight runs in 2 2/3 innings. He was mostly effective pitching through the injury in the early months of the season, even with diminished velocity. Then came June, a frustrating month during which Ober allowed 30 runs in 30 innings pitched and gave up 14 home runs, after which he decided it was time for a break to let his hip heal over the next month.

As he entered the offseason, Ober put all his attention into getting healthy and cleaning up his mechanics. He is pleased with the results.

“(I’m) physically feeling good,” he said. “I’m feeling faster, stronger. Now, it’s just time to go out there and do it.”

Ober split his time between his home in North Carolina and Sarasota, working with his trainer, before coming down to Fort Myers a couple of weeks before camp began. The focus of his work was undoing bad habits he had created last season as his body compensated while he tried to pitch through injury.

“A lot of that is like structure, position on the mound, not necessarily letting my chest collapse in front of me and staying tall, using my length and my advantages that I have naturally,” he said.

In retrospect, he admits, he could have done things differently last season. Perhaps he should have shut things down earlier to let his body heal.

“You kind of pick on up on stuff and you have more awareness of how you would like to approach things, how you would like to handle different situations,” Ober said. “That’s definitely an aspect I learned a little bit more of last year on the not so good side that I didn’t want to go through.”

With an offseason of work behind him, the Twins are counting on Ober to be an important member of their rotation again.

A return to form for Ober has become even more important in recent days with the Twins losing Pablo López for the season. The Twins have a number of starters in camp vying for a rotation spot and with López now headed for a year of rehab, Ober expects himself and Joe Ryan to step into even more of a leadership role within the rotation.

But perhaps most important, the Twins are simply looking for Ober to get back to who he was in past years: a pillar of consistency. And last season’s results have given him extra incentive to do just that.

“It’s always in the back of your mind and adds a little bit of a chip on your shoulder when all you’re doing is workouts,” he said. “Obviously you don’t want to repeat last year. It’s in the back of your mind, but I’m not dwelling too much on it. It’s a little bit of extra motivation to get back to knowing what I can do.”

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Team Peterson’s quest for the first U.S. women’s curling medal ended just short on Saturday as the Americans dropped the bronze medal game to Canada, 11-7, in Cortina D’Ampezza Italy.

A two-point hammer throw in the ninth by skip Tabitha Peterson kept U.S. hopes alive, but Canada put immediate pressure on the Americans in the 10th, curling through and around U.S. guards to put as many as five stones in the house.

Needing a perfect throw on her final shot — which she had done several times in these Milan Cortina Games — Peterson’s shot glanced off a blocker placed by Canada skip Rachel Homan and out of play.

It was a crushing end for Team Peterson, which had a successful round-robin, finishing 6-3 and advancing to the semifinals after beating Switzerland in their final pool play game.

The Swiss, however, won the rematch, and Team Canada — which lost to the U.S. for the first time in round-robin play — had the Americans chasing after the U.S. went up 3-2 in the fifth end.

Team Peterson, which finished sixth at the Beijing Games in 2022, advanced to the semifinals for the first time, and second time for a U.S. team since 2002. The Americans had to settle for fourth place, tying that team for Team USA’s best finish at the Olympics.

Canada took control with a three-point hammer throw to erase a 3-2 deficit to end the sixth end. Peterson, who was terrific in Cortina, threw a two-point hammer to tie the score 5-5 in the seventh.

But a terrific throw by third Tracy Fleury in the eighth knocked three U.S. stones cleanly out of the circle. Cory Thiesse knocked one out, but Homan used the final throw to put one back in the house for an 8-5 lead.

Again, Peterson made a perfect hammer throw to salvage two points in the ninth and make it 8-7 and give the U.S. a chance to win or send the game to an extra frame in the 10th. But Canada peeled off three U.S. guards and filled up the circle, putting the Americans on their back foot, and they never recovered.

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