TURIN, Italy — Games this good aren't supposed to come this early in the Olympic men's hockey tournament.

How about Canada vs. Russia — hockey's biggest rivalry for a half-century — in Wednesday's quarterfinals?

Or the world champion Czechs against Slovakia, barely a dozen years after Czechoslovakia split to form two countries and one fast-growing rivalry on ice?

And there's Sweden getting the game it wanted against Switzerland, which plays great against the good teams and awful against the bad ones.

As for the Americans, they have a formidable quarterfinal matchup with undefeated Finland.

The U.S. (1-3-1) played perhaps the most exciting game in Turin so far — a 5-4 loss to Russia on Tuesday that repeatedly brought a sold-out, pro-American crowd to its feet cheering, almost pleading for a victory.

That didn't happen, but the Americans feel much better prepared to go against unbeaten Finland (5-0) on Wednesday than they did after being held to nine goals in their first four games. Finland closed out qualifying round play by beating Germany 2-0.

"We really feel confident about our chances," Doug Weight said after the U.S. became the only team to advance by winning just one round-robin game. "They are a little more North American than most European teams. It's a little more our comfort level."

He also made this promise: "We're not ready to go home yet."

Brian Rolston, Brian Gionta and Scott Gomez scored power-play goals, but the biggest U.S. problem, for a change, was defense — one short-handed goal allowed and another goal that occurred immediately after a U.S. power play ended.

Russia's fourth consecutive victory sends it against Canada, which opened up its offense after successive shutout losses to Switzerland and Finland by scoring three goals in the first period against the Czechs.

The Canadians' problem was they didn't score any more — they have only three goals in the last nine periods. They held on to beat the Czechs 3-2 only because Martin Brodeur looked every bit the gold medal- and Stanley Cup-winning goalie he is.

Canada knows it may need more goals against Russia, which has scored 20 goals in four games since an opening-game 5-3 loss to Slovakia. Russia got goals Tuesday from each of its star-in-the-making young forwards, 20-year-old Alexander Ovechkin and 19-year-old Evgeni Malkin, who provide fresh legs in a tournament in which the finalists must play eight games in 12 days.

Maybe this Canada-Russia matchup isn't the 1972 Summit Series revisited, but it's not bad.

"It will be the biggest game of my life," said Ovechkin, the Washington Capitals' rookie. "Canada will be a lot tougher than the Americans."

Canada coach Pat Quinn hopes so. He was glad to get early goals from Brad Richards, Martin St. Louis and Chris Pronger, but disliked how the Czechs dominated play after that. They outshot Canada 26-8 over the final two periods and 33-16 overall, but never could catch up.

"There are not going to be any easy games," Quinn said of having to play a team as good as Russia so soon.

Don't tell that to Sweden coach Bengt-Ake Gustafsson, who created a stir by suggesting his team would be better off losing to Slovakia on Tuesday to avoid playing the Czechs or Canada in the quarterfinals.

The remarks irritated International Ice Hockey Federation chief Rene Fasel, who said any suggestion a game's integrity was in doubt was regrettable.

The Swedes did lose, 3-0, but there was no sign they purposely lost the game. If anything, their coach's remarks might have made them play harder to avoid any suggestion they were compromising the game.

Afterward, Gustafsson wouldn't back off his comments that Switzerland would be a more favorable matchup than the Czech Republic or Canada. Expect them to be posted in the Swiss locker room before Wednesday's game.

"I said the Swiss, on paper, is the weakest team," Gustafsson said. "I stand behind that. That's a fact."

Switzerland beat Canada and the Czechs earlier in the tournament, but didn't look like a medal contender in tying Italy 3-3 — two days after also tying Germany.

The Swiss' tying goal in the closing minutes against a team ranked 19th in the world came only after a bad giveaway in his own end by Italy's Mario Chitarroni, who broke his stick in frustration moments afterward.

Still, the Swiss didn't apologize for playing so poorly, almost sounding like a team that didn't care if it won. Hey, isn't that what the Swedes were supposed to be saying?

"There was no point killing ourselves," Swiss forward Martin Pluss said. "We got a point so we should be happy. If we had used all our energy today, we would have no energy tomorrow."