Canada and Sweden haven't had a chance to develop much of a rivalry at this year's IIHF World Hockey Championship.

The two teams were separated by 1,000 kilometres for the first two weeks of the tournament and could only find nice things to say about each other after finally skating on the same ice surface here yesterday.

Swedish goalie Henrik Lundqvist went so far as to say that his team wouldn't be able to match Canada's talent during their semifinal game today (TSN, 5 p.m.). That's not to suggest he's conceding the result just yet.

"They have a lot of NHL players and star players," said Lundqvist. "In the lineup, yeah, I think they have a better team. But I'm not sure that they play better as a team. That's been our strength."

It was an assessment that Canadian coach Ken Hitchcock was fully willing to endorse.

He's eager to see how his players perform now that the pressure of getting to the medal round has been removed. The Canadians had a light skate at Le Pepsi Colisee yesterday afternoon and were briefed about what to expect from a Swedish team they had only seen on TV so far.

"The Swedes have the best team game going of the four teams left as far as I'm concerned," said Hitchcock. "They have the best continuity going and we're going to have to break that continuity.

"We think we can but we've got a big job ahead of us."

Russia plays Finland in the other semifinal today (TSN, 1 p.m.). The gold-medal game is set for Sunday.