USA Loses, Hockey Wins

Good morning Fackers. Well that was one hell of a heartbreaking loss yesterday no? Team USA looked like destiny's darlings when they tied it up with just 24 seconds to go, but Sidney Crosby's goal in OT gave the gold to the Canadians. Congratulations to Canada. They had an incredibly deep team and were under a tremendous amount of pressure to take gold on their home soil. Even in the disappointment of defeat, it was quite something to hear the entire arena sing O Canada as the Maple Leaf was raised over Canada Hockey Place.

As for the U.S., as tough as it is to come so close and take home silver, they should be very proud of what they did. Coming into the tournament they were considered a long shot to even reach the gold medal game. Instead, they rolled along and never even trailed at any point until Canada took a 1-0 lead yesterday afternoon. They were the youngest squad in the tournament, and it looks like this new batch of players will be worthy heirs to the Leetch-Richter-Chelios-Modano-Tkachuk-LeClair-Hull-et. al. group that set the bar so high through the 1996 World Cup and 2002 Olympics. That is of course unless the NHL pulls the plug on player participation in 2014 Games.

Even in defeat, Team USA earned honors. Goalie Ryan Miller was named Tournament MVP; Brian Rafalski earned top defenseman honors, and forward Zach Parise joined them on the all-tournament team.

Beyond that, we were treated to an outstanding two weeks of hockey that I hope will have impact that lasts beyond the heightened interest of the past several days. For all those who have made comments to the effect of "now I can stop caring about hockey for another four years", please realize that what we've witnessed over the past two weeks is not unique to the Olympics. The level of intensity shown throughout the Olympics is no different that what's on display for two full months each year during the NHL playoffs. The advent of widescreen televisions and HDTV has made hockey on television better than ever but it's no comparison to hockey in person. For my money, no sport is so markedly better in person than on TV than hockey. Do yourselves a favor and find out for yourselves.

And with that, I'll stop talking about hockey again and we'll get back to baseball. Spring Training games start Wednesday. Soon we'll have something resembling real baseball to talk about.

Photo credit: USA Today

Going For The Gold

The outstanding Men's Ice Hockey tournament will wrap up this afternoon with the Gold Medal Game between the U.S. and Canada. These two squads met last Sunday, with the U.S. taking a 5-3 victory to finish group play undefeated.

Since then, the U.S. beat Switzerland in the quarterfinals Wednesday and trounced Finland in the semis on Friday, scoring six goals in the game's first fourteen minutes. Team USA continues to get superb goaltending from Ryan Miller, who bettered Switzerland's Jonas Hiller and Finland's Mikka Kiprusoff, the only other goalies in the tournament who have come close to Miller's level of play.

As for the Canadians, their loss to the U.S. and the point lost via a shootout victory over the Swiss in group play left them with the sixth seed. With Roberto Luongo replacing Martin Brodeur between the pipes, they beat up on Germany 8-2 on Tuesday, and then faced Russia on Wednesday. What many predicted to be the eventual Gold Medal Game entering the tournament was reduced to a quarterfinal game, and the expected heavyweight match between the two deepest teams in the tournament was a laugher, with Canada winning 7-3. In the semis on Friday, Canada jumped out to an early 2-0 lead over Slovakia, then withstood a late rally to take a 3-2 victory.

Last week's match up came one day short of the thirtieth anniversary of the Miracle on Ice; today's game comes on the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. winning gold at the 1960 Games. This is also a rematch of the 2002 Gold Medal Game, when the Canadians took gold on American soil. The U.S. looks to return the favor today.

It's tough enough to defeat a team like Canada once in this tournament, let alone twice. It's even tougher to do it when the gold medal is on the line and the entirety of the arena is behind the Canadians. But this U.S. team is talented, has had an outstanding run through this tournament, and has the best player at the most important position. That'll go a long way towards evening the odds, and anything can happen in a single game. Puck drops at 3:15 EST. Let's go USA!

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today

Good morning Fackers. Believe or not, I was planning on running this post this morning even before last night's Team USA win over Team Canada in Vancouver. Last night's game was certainly an upset. But personally, I don't believe it's as big of an upset as many are making it out to be. Either way, it's certainly not half the upset as the one that took place in Lake Placid, NY thirty years ago today.

This is the fourth Winter Olympics featuring NHL players, and the fifth featuring professional players. Hockey wise, we're so far removed from the 1980 Miracle on Ice, that it's easy to lose sight of just how massive an upset that game was.

The Soviet team was easily the greatest assemblage of hockey talent on the face of the planet in February of 1980. With the Iron Curtain still firmly in place, the NHL was still nearly a decade away from importing its first Russian talents. The Soviet National Team featured the best players of - at worst - the second most hockey-crazed nation on the face of the planet. They trained and played with, literally, military precision. They had gone 3-4-1 against the NHL's best Canadians in the 1972 Summit Series, dominated lesser WHA talent 4-1-3 in the '74 Summit Series, and more recently had gone 2-1 with a +5 goal differential against a squad of NHL All-Stars in the 1979 Challenge Cup. For all intents and purposes, the Soviets were a professional All-Star team competing in an amateur tournament.

On the flip side, Team USA was an assemblage of American collegiate talent led by University of Minnesota head coach Herb Brooks. Brooks was the final player cut from the 1960 US squad, a team that went on to win gold in Squaw Valley. Heading into the 1980 Games, that was the final time the Soviet didn't win men's Olympic gold. Brooks' captain was former BU Terrier Mike Eruzione, the team's oldest player at 25, who was three years removed from his collegiate days and toiling in the minors at the IHL level before joining the Olympic squad. Less than two weeks prior to the Miracle on Ice, the Soviets had crushed Team USA 10-3 in the final pre-Olympic warm up.

Something similar was expected on the evening of February 22, 1980, part of the round robin medal round. Instead, on the strength of a goal from Eruzione that proved to be the game winner, the US beat the Russians 4-3. A win against Finland in their next game clinched the gold.

As I compose this post, the post game coverage on MSNBC is declaring last night's game the biggest upset since the Miracle on Ice. It's not even close. It's not even in the neighborhood. The forty skaters to take the ice last night are all high caliber NHL players. Not all are superstars, but all are professionals playing in the best league in the world. Yes, the Canadian roster is absolutely stacked. Yes, perhaps maybe just three or four of the US players could crack the Canadian line up. But in a short tournament - hell even on any given night in the NHL - anything can happen. For a pumped up Team USA to come out and beat Team Canada last night is an upset, and is impressive. But, without even considering the socio-political climate of 1980, last night's game is worlds away from the Miracle on Ice.

That said, yesterday was a great day for hockey. The Big Six all paired up in a trio of good match ups: Eastern European powers Russian and the Czech Republic in the afternoon, the Battle of North America in the evening, and Sweden and Finland in a Scandinavian Showdown for the night cap. We'll see all of them again in the medal round.

As nice as it was to see the US win last night, I was hopeful they would save their upset for the medal round. Canada and Russia are loaded, and with both teams being upset this week, I don't know how good the chances are that they both lose again before it's all said and done. As exciting as it was to see the Swiss push Canada in to the brink in a shootout loss on Thursday, part of me was relieved that Canada pulled it out, postponing their upset for another day.

Still, who knows what will happen over the remainder of the tournament. Perhaps the US can recapture a bit of the Miracle from 30 years ago. Their roster features two defensemen with ties to the 1980 team. Ryan Suter is the son of 1980's defenseman Bob Suter, and my former classmate at Boston College, Brooks Orpik, is named after the coach of the '80 team. Come this time next week we'll know if this is their time. I'm going to enjoy watching it all unfold.