Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 2018: Previewing What to Watch For on Day 5

We've had U.S. snowboarders winning gold medals. We've had some figure skating and short track.

And yet in a way, this day—Feb. 14 in South Korea, Feb. 13-14 in the United States—feels like the first full day of the 2018 Olympic Games.

Barring a return of the high winds that forced the mountain events to be rescheduled, we'll finally see Mikaela Shiffrin. It's also the first day of men's hockey, which should be especially unpredictable given the lack of NHL players in the competition. 

Additionally, it's the first day of traditional curling with four-man and four-woman teams.

So you're less likely to have the occasional dead hour in your livestream viewing. Be prepared and keep an eye on these stories.  

To watch live Olympics coverage in real time, including the highlighted events detailed below, you can visit NBC's Olympics site anytime. Reminder: South Korea is 14 hours ahead of Eastern time, so an event that takes place Wednesday morning in Pyeongchang will be on Tuesday night in the U.S.

For all of the attention curling gets every four years as a fun, quirky event that invites viewers to second-guess shot selection and strategy, the United States has had a rough time at the Olympics in recent years.

The U.S. women finished last in 2010 and 2014, while the men were last in 2010 and next-to-last in 2014. You have to rewind to 2006, when Pete Fenson's group (including current skip John Shuster) took bronze, for a good U.S. performance. 

This year brought the debut of mixed doubles, but the U.S. sibling pair of Matt and Becca Hamilton couldn't get things done. After a promising rout over eventual bronze medalist Olympic Athletes of Russia, they lost their next four games on their way to a 2-5 record and a seventh-place finish.

The good news is that the Hamiltons now have plenty of practice on this ice going into the traditional four-player game. The U.S. men open against host South Korea (7:05 p.m. ET), while the women face Japan (12:05 a.m. ET). 

If the X Games wanted to take one figure skating event, it would surely be the pairs event. The female partner typically spends a lot of time off the ice, either held aloft or flung up in the air and asked to spin a few times.

The athletes will get the pairs competition underway with the short program (8 p.m. ET). 

China's Sui Wenjing and Han Cong are the reigning world champions. Germany's Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot edged them off the top spot of the podium in the Grand Prix Final.

Canada's Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford won two straight world championships and placed third in the Grand Prix Final. They posted the top score in the team event's free skate over the weekend but finished second in the short program to Olympic Athletes from Russia's Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov.

We'll also get another look at the inspiring Americans, Alexa Scimeca Knierim and Chris Knierim, who have recovered from Alexa's horrible illness that struck around their wedding date.

The Alpine postponements have subsided for now, and the slalom has less onerous weather requirements than faster events, anyway.

So we should finally get a chance to see Mikaela Shiffrin, and you won't have to wait long. She's third in the start order for the first run (8:15 p.m. ET). The skiers' finish in that run determines the start order for the second run (11:45 p.m.).         

A quick reminder of Shiffrin's resume in this event:

• Olympic gold: 2014
• World Championships: 2013, 2015, 2017 (held in odd years, so that's three straight)
• World Cup season titles: 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15, 2016-17 (she was injured in 2015-16 and finished fourth)
• World Cup, 2016-17 season: Six wins, one second place, one third, one did-not-finish
• World Cup, 2017-18 season: One second place, then five straight wins. Did not finish last race before Olympics.

Wasn't Shaun White supposed to be washed up?

The 2006 and 2010 gold medalist placed fourth in 2014, just as his run as perennial X Games champion was coming to an end. His injuries are piling up, especially after some training in New Zealand late last year.

But in January, he unleashed a run that drew a perfect 100—controversially, according to Chico Harlan of the Washington Post, but it was still a bit-time run.

Then, in Olympic qualifying, he went out and got a mere 98.50.

The final (8:30 p.m. ET) gives White three shots to make history with a third medal and/or a perfect score. Another gold is by no means assured. Ayumu Hirano won the X Games in White's absence last month with a 99.00. Australia's Scotty James (98.00) and the USA's Ben Ferguson (95.00) rounded out the podium. They joined White in the top four in qualifying.

So White might need to go big to win this.

It's an all-too-familiar sight now: Heather Bergsma, one of the most dominant speedskaters in World Cup and World Championship competition over the past decade, skating away from an Olympic finish line in abject disappointment.

Bergsma, the 2017 world champion in the 1,500 meters, was in the last pairing of that event this week. She started out fast then faded badly and finished eighth.

The good news: Bergsma also won the 1,000 meters in 2017. She was also the World Cup champion at each of those distances in 2016 and 17, and she won her most recent World Cup race at 1,000 meters this year.

Team U.S.A. speedskating will be hoping she can do it again in the 1,000 meters (5:00 a.m.), because after the men flopped in the 1,500 meters Tuesday, this is starting to look a bit like Sochi, where the long-track team was shut out.

We get it, Germany. You're really, really good at women's biathlon. Uschi Disl won nine medals. Kati Wilhelm won seven. Andrea Henkel (now married to U.S. biathlete Tim Burke) won four. They handed things off to Magdalena Neuner, who won two golds and a silver in 2010 and then retired.

Now Laura Dahlmeier has taken the lead and already won two gold medals in these Games to follow up on her ridiculous five-gold, one-silver performance in last year's World Championships.

Oddly enough, the 15-kilometer individual race (6:05 a.m.) has eluded the German women in the last two Games. Wilhelm placed fourth in 2010. In 2014, Dahlmeier was the highest-placed German but only took 13th. This is the most brutal event on the biathlon schedule. It covers the longest distance and also punishes missed shots not with a short ski loop but a full one-minute penalty.

The USA has still never won a biathlon medal in the Olympics. All eyes will once again be on Susan Dunklee, who was sixth in the event (and second in the pursuit) in last year's World Championships.

She had a rough start to the Olympics by missing four of five shots in the standing phase of the sprint. She lost out on the top-60 finish required to advance to the pursuit. But as teammate Lowell Bailey showed in the same World Championships, anything's possible when you have good ski speed and can shoot cleanly in this event.

Do you believe in...a bunch of players who aren't in the NHL?

The NHL opted not to release current players for this year's Games, so teams that don't have many players in the Russian KHL will be underdogs.

The U.S. team has a handful of KHL guys, but the name you may know is 39-year-old Brian Gionta, an Olympic veteran who has 289 career goals in the NHL. His teammates have been playing professionally in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the minor-league AHL. The team also has a few current college players.

The USA opens its Olympic round-robin play against Slovenia (7:10 a.m. ET).