Wow! What an incredible game that was. I literally gave USA no chance of winning this thing. After Canada messed around and needed overtime to dispose of the Swiss 2 days earlier, I thought they’d come out like rabid dogs against the Americans last night. And why not, I mean Team Canada is basically a NHL All-Star team. The 4th line guys on this team are captains on their respective NHL teams. The talent level on this team is ridiculous, but when Rafalski put the US on the board at 41 seconds I thought, “oh boy, we may have a game here“.

What an understatement, this was a terrific game from start to finish. The entire schedule of games were amazing on Sunday with each hockey super power playing their rival. Russia VS Czech Republic, Sweden VS Finland, and of course USA, Canada. I absolutely love hockey, but especially Olympic hockey. As much as I enjoy the NHL, it simply cannot compare to Olympic hockey since the rules were changed to allow NHL players to participate. No team can ever duplicate The Miracle on Ice of 1980, even if we still sent college kids to the Olympics, due to the political and economical climate in America at the time. I say we continue to send professional players to the Olympics, so we don’t have to watch the Euro-pros gloat when they manage to win a game against our college boys.

Not only did Brian Rafalski have a great game, but Ryan Miller absolutely stood on his head and showed why he’ll get a few Vezina votes this Spring, plus Ryan Kesler scored what has to be the prettiest empty net goal ever. Also, it did my heart good to see Marty Brodeur look pedestrian. My guess is we may see Luongo in net for Canada after that display by Brodeur.

The only downside of the game for the Americans is that it happened while still in the preliminary round. No matter how great this game was, they don’t give out medals for winning the preliminary round. USA wins Group A, which earns them an extra day of rest and they get to play either Switzerland or Belarus as their reward, but they’ve done nothing to earn a medal yet.

Who knows, these two teams could see each other again for the gold medal next Sunday. Next up, we get to see if the Americans can keep it going, in the medal round, when it counts.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Fun, Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.