The opening round couldn't have come out any better than the US. Canada, Russia, and Sweden are all on the other side of the bracket, so they'd only have to play a maximum of one of them (in the gold medal game, if they get that far). Considering that those are arguably the three most talented teams on paper in the tournament, the US winning the top seed into the quarterfinals is huge. They will play the winner of Switzerland/Belarus on Wednesday (they will either way be heavily favored and have already beat Switzerland in the opener), and if they win that they will probably face either the Czech Republic or Finland in the semifinals. I think they are at least as good as either of those two, so the US really does have a legitimate chance of playing for a gold medal.