Recapping Olympic Hockey: USA Claims a Tough Silver

That was fun, exhilarating, crushing, excruciating, and memorable all in one. Yesterday I live blogged the entire game, but for the entire Olympic hockey experience in Vancouver, it has been one great game after another. The Canadians and Sidney Crosby walk away with a Gold Medal that many expected them to win coming in to the tournament and few expected them to win after their first game against the Americans, returning hockey supremacy to Canada. For the US team, few expected them to even medal at the Olympics, but a great team effort (including "Shock on Ice") left them standing on the doorstep of victory. And while many will claim that it wasn't truly a loss for the United States, the truth is that they had every chance to take home the gold. But there would be no "Miracle" or even an upset when all was said and done. That being said, it was a great Olympics for the USA men and hopefully it was the wake-up call that the United States public needed to the great game of hockey--though the reality is that it probably is not. What it was, though, was a great hockey game that we will be talking about for a long time to come.

The United States team was built on young players who each fit a role on the team. The three Olympic veterans were Captain Jamie Langenbrunner of the 1998 team and Chris Drury and Brian Rafalski of both the 2002 and 2006 teams. The rest was a selection of hockey players from all over the NHL and the United States. The United States came into the gold medal game having gone a perfect 5-0 in the tournament, mostly due to their great goaltending and their relentless forecheck. That relentless forecheck seemed to tire the United States team to the point they looked like they were out of gas in overtime yesterday. Ryan Miller more than deserved to be the MVP of the tournament, having lost only this one game and putting up a minuscule goals against average of 1.35 that took the United States record away from "Miracle on Ice" goalie Jim Craig (2.14). But on the 50th anniversary of the 1960 "Forgotton Miracle", the United States couldn't finish the deal against the Canadians.

This was a Canadian team built to win gold on home soil. While the United States built their team on role players, the Canadians built an All-Star team of top scorers and Stanley Cup winners. That strategy came back to bite the Canadians in the first match-up between the two teams as the overconfident Canadians got surprised by a quicker, tougher United States team. Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger, and the rest of Team Canada came out ready to play and ready to deal with the United States forecheck. And things looked great for Canada as they skated to a 2-0 lead that seemed insurmountable.

But the United States team fought back with the same fight that had gotten them to this point. The United States tipped in a goal to make it 2-1 against a very shaky Roberto Luongo (I know many will say he was great, but he really was far from it). The United States kept on going for it in the third, leaving the other end open where Miller was brilliant, stopping Sidney Crosby on a breakaway, making a few other great saves and getting the benefit of two posts. Finally, with Miller pulled and hope fading away from the United States team, a lose puck in front ended up on the stick of New Jersey Devils' forward Zack Parise who buried it in the back of the net.

It looked like momentum was on the United States side as the crowd at Canada Hockey Place (they had to get rid of the GM endorsement for the Olympics) was dead silent and the Canadian team looked shaken. But the United States was unable to get any pressure on Luongo in overtime (who seemed like he wasn't confident in goal). Worse, the United States looked out of gas, giving away sloppy turnovers and losing their ability to get the puck deep against the Canadians and work the boards. And then a loose puck ended up on the stick of Sidney Crosby and the man who had won a Stanley Cup less than a year ago buried one to send Canada to victory, sparking a country's celebration.

And while the Canadian team was expected to win on home soil, the United States team is still shutout from gold on foreign soil (both the 1960 and 1980 wins occurred in the United States). Canada is a hockey-mad country and while a win will probably have kids dreaming of becoming Sidney Crosby, scoring that game-winning goal in overtime to give the country a gold. The US is a mostly hockey-agnostic country with many people having no interest in turning on a game. Many more eyes were focused on this game than even NBC was expecting. This was the same network that put the original USA/Canada match on MSNBC and seemed genuinely surprised by the interest from the American public. NBC made up for it yesterday with a great broadcast with Mike "Doc" Emrick leading the way and the United States and Canada didn't disappoint those who turned in (though it fell short of megalomaniac Jeremy Roenick's prediction that it would be "the biggest game in the history of hockey").

Now here's some questions with my opinion:

• Will more people tune in to hockey after the Olympics? Who knows. After the 1980 Miracle, hockey ratings went up, but the American public didn't necessarily fall in love with the sport. The bad part of this is that people newly tuning into hockey expecting to see the same level of play as in the Olympics may be disappointed (because the NHL talent pool has been diluted by overaggressive expansion--a topic for another day) and may not have the attention span to continue watching through an entire season plus playoffs. That being said, FOX News wrote that there's momentum for United States hockey that they haven't had since the thrilling 1994 finals between the New York Rangers and the Vancouver Canucks. I couldn't agree more, but what the United States public does with that momentum is yet to be seen. Jingoism is one thing; being a hockey fan is a totally different game.

• Will the NHL end up back on ESPN? Oh I hope so. The NHL has had a great season for ratings between these Olympics and a great Winter Classic at Fenway Park, and if there's an exciting, highly-watched Stanley Cup playoffs, it could really boost the chances. Adding to this is that the NFL and the NBA have a chance of heading toward work stoppages. With all those factors combined, I hope it means that the NHL leaves Versus (whose broadcasts need to stop ASAP) and heads back to ESPN, where real sports belong.

• Is it better to have amateurs or professionals in the Olympics? The 1980 team is romanticized because they were a group of college kids who came together to beat a bunch of veterans. Now? It's a bunch of professionals. The United States team is made up entirely of NHL'ers and even the Slovakians have a team mostly made up of professionals so it's much harder to feel that anyone was as big of an upset as the 1980 team. That being said, the professionals playing makes the level of play so high that it makes it totally worthwhile. It just was never going to be an upset on the 1980 level as NBC and the rest of the media kept on hyping.

• Which loyalty ran deeper--country or NHL team? It's a tough argument here and why having professionals play in the middle of an NHL season is a little tougher than many are making it seem. Does Brooks Orpik--the heavy hitter for the United Stats team and the guy who put Dany Heatley into the US bench--go after his Penguin teammate, Sidney Crosby, when he knows that Sid The Kid is his best chance at another Stanley Cup? I don't see how. But then again, WFAN's Brian Monzo tweeted: RT @BMonzoNHL660: no nhl loyalty here.  pavelski just decked boyle. And picture proof backs up his claim .So maybe I was wrong, but if you're a fan of the San Jose Sharks and a proud American, are you happy about this? I don't think so. Although I got invested in the USA Men's Olympic hockey run and I was really upset by the ending (especially Crosby, who I really, really don't like, scoring the game-winner), I was much more upset a few years back when Chris Drury scored a back-breaking goal for the Buffalo Sabres against my NHL team, the New York Rangers. That all being said, I found myself rooting for guys like Parise who I would never root for under a normal circumstance because of his affiliation with the Devils. But because of that Devils hatred, the failures of Marty Brodeur on Team Canada were made that much sweeter.

• Lastly, what does this mean for individuals/teams?A Sidney Crosby was forever going to be remembered in Canada, but this just increases his legacy. Unfortunately, Sidney Crosby is to Wayne Gretzky what Kobe Bryant is to Michael Jordan: a great player who will always be compared to the former but never will live up to expectations--and is generally hated by other fans around the league. Ryan Miller was the great hope for the United States team and for his team in Buffalo but this will both increase his profile and increase his wallet (and a big high five from me to Miller for being a big enough man to attend the closing ceremonies). Teammates who played well together in these Olympics include Drury/Ryan Callahan (who were amazing on the penalty kill), Parise/Langenbrunner (who helped form a very good first line for the US), Corey Perry/Ryan Getzlaf (Ducks), and Dan Boyle/Dany Heatley/Joe Thornton (Sharks). I think that those teams now have better bonds between their players. 

That brings a close to an exciting Olympics filled with Curling failure, Wikipedia bombings, unintentional homoeroticisim, Shock On Ice, Canadian shame, and ended with Canadian pride once again. The United States has nothing to hang their heads on--except for the fact that they didn't come away with the gold medal in the end. And while the silver certainly counts, it's just short of where they could/should have been. The Canadians are celebrating from coast to coast (as you can see by today's newspapers). But the game of hockey is the big winner here. Many people I know, who have no interest in hockey normally, tuned in for what I consider the best game to watch on both TV and in person and saw a hockey game for the ages. Today we'll get back to talking about baseball spring training, basketball, and the NFL draft, but for one day in US sports, hockey was king.

Picture from Getty Images via USA Hockey