The Winter Olympics are halfway done in Beijing. Keep an eye on these eight athletes over the last week of competition.

Owen Power, hockey 🇨🇦

When Power debuted at the world championships last spring, he appeared destined to ride pine. Coach Gerard Gallant played him for less than eight minutes in a dismal shutout loss to host Latvia. But by the medal games, Power was on the top defensive pair, checking top American and Finnish pros as Canada surged to gold.

Canada's Olympic staff didn't wait to trust Power in Beijing. The Buffalo Sabres star prospect and University of Michigan sophomore played 19:33, a team-high, as Canada routed Germany 5-1 to open the tournament on Thursday. Claude Julien - his broken rib and punctured lung sufficiently healed - ran the Canadian bench on Friday and sent out Power for 22:13 in the 4-2 loss to the United States.

Power's composure at 19 years old is preternatural. His fluid skating at 6-foot-6 has inspired comparisons to Victor Hedman. Defensemen Alex Grant and Maxim Noreau scored on point blasts in the win over Germany, but Power looked like the blue line's top creator, joining the rush and wheeling in the offensive zone to generate chances.

Canada plays China at 8:10 a.m. ET on Sunday to end the preliminary round. The real tests resume afterward. Depending on who makes the knockout round, Power might have to match up with David Krejci, shadow Russian star playmaker Vadim Shipachyov, or try to shut down Finland or Sweden's top line. No assignment has fazed him yet, which should delight the Sabres.

Hilary Knight, hockey 🇺🇸

The U.S. and Canada are close to meeting for gold at a fourth straight Olympics. Canada peppered Sweden with 56 shots to Sweden's 11 and sauntered to an 11-0 win in the quarters on Friday. The U.S. outshot the Czech Republic 59-6 and won 4-1.

The Americans have had problems finishing in Beijing. They outshot Canada 53-27 to end the preliminary round but lost 4-2. On 292 shots, they've potted 24 goals in five games - an 8.2% shooting percentage that pales to Canada's 17.6%. The event's top seven scorers are Canadian, led by Natalie Spooner's 13 points and eight goals apiece from Sarah Fillier and Brianne Jenner.

Knight has paced the U.S. with four goals and three assists, stepping up after Brianna Decker was injured against Finland. The United States' lone four-time Olympian, Knight's been a recurrent hero in international play. She scored the golden goal in overtime at the 2011 and 2017 world championships, but Canada held her pointless in 20:58 of ice time when they met this week.

Between goalies Ann-Marie Desbiens and Emerance Maschmeyer, Canada's save percentage for the tournament is .957. Eight Canadian forwards and three defenders have put up at least a point per game. The U.S. is capable of troubling them if the likes of Knight and Kendall Coyne Schofield capitalize on chances in the final. (And assuming both teams cruise through the semis.)

Jennifer Jones, curling 🇨🇦

When Jones plays against the world's best, she sometimes tears through tournaments undefeated. She didn't lose in 11 matches at the 2014 Olympics - the only time that's happened in the women's event - and reeled off 14 straight wins at the 2018 world championships, Canada's most recent gold-medal showing there. No wonder an expert panel TSN assembled in 2019 deemed her the country's greatest-ever female skip.

Jones won't run the table in Beijing. She started the round robin 1-2 against Sweden, South Korea, and Japan - the teams that medalled at PyeongChang 2018 - and next faces several more podium threats.

Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni has won back-to-back world titles. Alina Kovaleva's Russian rink took silver at worlds in 2021. Of Beijing's 10 Olympic teams, Eve Muirhead's British quartet ranks third-highest in the world right now, trailing Jones and Sweden's Anna Hasselborg. Tabitha Peterson, the U.S. skip out of Minnesota, beat Hasselborg for the bronze medal at worlds last year.

The field is prolific and no game is a gimme, though the last opponents on Canada's schedule, China and Denmark, aren't as decorated. Round-robin play wraps up next Thursday ahead of Friday's semifinals. Make it that far and Jones will outdo Rachel Homan's team's performance in PyeongChang.

Kaillie Humphries, bobsleigh 🇺🇸

Humphries was sworn in as an American citizen in December, ensuring she'd be able to race for the U.S. in Beijing. Interviewed by the Washington Post right after the ceremony ended, Humphries said she felt as if she'd won Olympic gold.

She knows the sensation. Born and raised in Calgary, Humphries piloted Canadian sleds to victory at Vancouver's and Sochi's Winter Games and won a bronze medal for Canada in PyeongChang. But she sued to be released from Bobsleigh Canada in 2019, alleging verbal and mental harassment from her coach, and has competed for the U.S. on the World Cup circuit ever since. (Humphries' husband is American and they live in California.)

Humphries is a podium favorite in monobob, the solo event that debuts at the Olympics on Saturday night ET. She's No. 2 in the world in that event and ranks fifth internationally in two-woman, which she'll contest in Beijing next weekend alongside brakewoman Sylvia Hoffman. U.S. pilot Elana Meyers Taylor ranks first in monobob and two-woman and exited COVID-19 protocol in time to compete in both.

In Humphries' stead, Canada turns to Cynthia Appiah and Christine de Bruin, the world's No. 3 and No. 4 monobob racers, respectively. Appiah used to push for De Bruin and Humphries and started piloting her own sled during the Beijing Olympic cycle.

Mark McMorris, snowboarding 🇨🇦

McMorris has nothing left to prove on the world stage. The 28-year-old from Saskatchewan is the Winter X Games' winningest athlete - his 21 medals eclipse Shaun White's 18 - and his consistency at the Olympics is laudable. McMorris has won bronze in slopestyle at three straight Games, including last weekend in China.

No Canadian snowboarder has ascended as many Olympic podiums, but teammates have overshadowed McMorris at different points of his career.

At PyeongChang, Sebastien Toutant overcame a back injury to win the big air event; Canada's first gold medal at these Games went to Max Parrot, who scored 90.96 in the slopestyle final. Su Yiming of China scored 88.70 to edge McMorris by 0.17 points. However, McMorris disputed that Parrot deserved the gold, telling CBC "I kind of had the run of the day" and noting his teammate missed a grab the judges overlooked.

Big air goes down in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday and presents McMorris with another chance to command the spotlight. He placed fourth in the event at January's X Games in Aspen but won the world title there in 2021, stomping a switch backside trick that elevated him above Parrot and Norwegian star Marcus Kleveland.

Like Parrot, who survived cancer in 2019, McMorris has authored his own compelling comeback story. Airlifted to hospital five years ago after he crashed in the British Columbia backcountry, McMorris recovered from fractures and internal injuries to dominate his sport again. Nabbing gold would be a storybook moment.

Eileen Gu, freestyle skiing 🇨🇳

Big air is supposed to be Gu's weakest event, but that's relative. Seeded fifth in the discipline ahead of the action in Beijing, Gu outshone the French favorite Tess Ledeux to win gold this week.

No freestyle skier has won three career gold medals before, much less three at one Games. Gu achieving this ought to be expected entering Sunday's slopestyle final and the halfpipe competition next Thursday. The prodigious 18-year-old won both of those events at the 2021 worlds - and settled for third in big air.

Gu's skiing for the home team after deciding a few years ago to represent China - not the U.S. - internationally. She's from San Francisco but her mother is Chinese, and Gu has declined to answer repeated questions about whether she's still an American citizen. When she nailed her first career 1620 to win big air, the outpouring of domestic fan adulation crashed Weibo, the Chinese social media platform.

Could any skier spoil Gu's dream Games? She's unbeaten in halfpipe on the 2021-22 World Cup circuit, but Estonia's Kelly Sildaru beat her in slopestyle and finished second to Gu in halfpipe at a recent stop in California. Canadian halfpipe specialist Rachael Karker has appeared next to Gu on three podiums this season.

Ester Ledecka, Alpine skiing 🇨🇿

The unexpected can happen on Olympic slopes, as Mikaela Shiffrin showed this week. The American superstar missed early gates and failed to finish the giant slalom and the slalom, her signature races. Shiffrin did complete the super-G, placing ninth, and remains a medal threat in downhill and combined.

She'll be out to salvage her Games next week. Meanwhile, Ledecka has an outside chance to make history.

The Czech athlete is the only woman who's won gold in two sports at the same Games. In 2018, Ledecka took snowboarding's parallel giant slalom crown and also won the alpine super-G by 0.01 seconds, an inconceivable result considering her best World Cup result to date was 19th. She looked dumbfounded at the finish line.

Ledecka defended her snowboarding title in China but settled for fifth in the super-G, skiing 0.36 seconds faster than Shiffrin and 0.13 seconds off the podium. She has two more shots to double up on gold, via downhill or combined. Ledecka won downhill bronze at a recent World Cup stop and is 13th-best in the event this season, suggesting she’s capable of surprising the favorites again.

Madeline Schizas, figure skating 🇨🇦

As Canada rebuilds following a slew of high-profile retirements, 18-year-old Schizas laid down the signature skates of her young career in the team event. Personal bests in the short program (69.60) and free skate (132.04) last weekend placed her third in both categories and helped power Canada to fourth overall.

Kamila Valieva landed historic quad jumps to dominate the women's skates. But it remains unclear if Valieva will be disqualified from the Games for testing positive for a banned heart medication at the Russian championships in December. If the Russian team's gold-medal performance is negated, the U.S. would be awarded gold, Japan silver, and Canada bronze.

Regardless of what happens, Schizas' Games continue this week in women's singles. The short program takes place Tuesday and free skates follow on Thursday.

Schizas only had to face one Russian in the team event, but the Associated Press predicted ahead of Beijing that Valieva, Anna Shcherbakova, and Alexandra Trusova would sweep the women's medals. Including them, 15 Olympians have posted better scores this season than Schizas did last weekend. The U.S.'s Alysa Liu, Japan's Kaori Sakamoto, and Belgium's Loena Hendrickx headline the next tier of medal hopefuls.

Canada's done well in the women's event at recent Olympics. Kaetlyn Osmond won bronze in 2018 right before she retired and Joannie Rochette managed the same result in 2010. Rochette and Osmond were second-time Olympians who finished fifth and 13th, respectively, in their Games debuts. If Schizas' trajectory mirrors theirs, pencil her in as a name to watch this week and in 2026.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

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