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Since I wrote about the U.S. hockey team last week, I figured that this week I’d write about something else, like the American four-man bobsled team’s success or NFL Draft coverage.
But then, halfway through my column, I flipped to the U.S. hockey team’s game against Canada and was mesmerized. If you didn’t tune in, you missed a doozie.
As I’ve said half a dozen times before, I’m not a giant hockey fan. I’m only just coming around to the idea that hockey isn’t simply a boxing match on ice. But I happen to live with a bunch of Blackhawks fanatics, so many non-Phoenix nights at my dorm have been spent watching our (can I say that?) favorite boys on ice. However, those first few minutes of the gold medal game absolutely sucked me in.
Aside from a few stoppages in play, the first 10 minutes of the first period could only be described as frantic. Canada came out determined to get revenge and the young Americans needed to prove that they were legitimate world contenders. But this game was so different from the last time the two faced one another. They seemed to have a real sense of rivalry, even dislike.
The fury with which the two sides played was something to behold. You didn’t have to be a hockey fan to appreciate the constant motion, huge hits and sky-high level of play. Both teams played with reckless abandon, passion showing in their every movement.
Even after Blackhawk/Canadian/semi-traitor Justin Toews hit a top-shelf goal 7:10 from almost parallel to the net, the emotion didn’t die down. Both teams kept skating, shooting and checking like madmen. At the end of the first period, defenseman Jack Johnson from the Los Angeles Kings laid Canada’s Sidney Crosby out after the horn had gone off, eliciting a mini-riot.
Then, in the second period, Canadian Corey Perry put a shot past star U.S. goalie Ryan Miller and the Americans lost some of their energy. The men from the north turned away power play after power play, and netminder Roberto Luongo (no relation to our Games of the Week writer … or so we hear) was an absolute brick wall. All of a sudden, things looked a lot bleaker.
But then Patrick Kane, the man who returned American honor to the Blackhawks through his colossal effort in the gold medal game, threw a pass to Ryan Kesler for a goal, then stole a one-on-one opportunity from Crosby a couple of minutes later, re-igniting the passion from earlier in the game. Still, Canada was able to hold off the pressing Americans, who seemed to always have a defender or two wherever the puck was.
Fast forward to the final two minutes of the game. The U.S., after going undefeated and stunning critics throughout the Olympic tournament, found themselves still down 2-1. They mustered up behind their goal for one final charge (I remember mentally suggesting that they whip out America’s secret weapon, the Flying V — it worked against Iceland right? Wait, maybe that was a movie … ). A frenzied barrage of shots pummeled Luongo, but he held strong until a shot by our old buddy Kane rebounded off of the goalie and straight into teammate Zach Parise with only 24.4 seconds to play.
The Canadian crowd went completely silent. As the two teams went into overtime, I got a feeling. The feeling that every sports fan feels at some point in his or her life, one that comes 100 percent from the heart and zero percent from the head: I just knew that the U.S. was going to win. This team would be the one to do the impossible, beat the Canadians twice in the same Olympics after 50-some years of failure, win the gold medal, put the U.S. at the top of the hockey world and win the imaginations of American fandom in a way so few sports teams had ever done before. Here, in overtime, this group of almost exclusively 20-somethings would make the whole country believe.
Of course, like so many other times in my life (2003 Royals), the sports gods did not look down upon my prediction and agree with me this time. The U.S. fired a lot of shots from a long distance in an attempt to capitalize on Luongo’s tendency to let a lot of rebounds through. But it looked more desperate than strategic. Then Sidney Crosby weaved his way through the American defense, passed the puck around and worked for the game-winner.
Well, that should serve as a lesson to having an angle on a column before the game is all the way over.
But as I watched the aftermath, I saw Miller, who ended up the MVP of the tournament, obviously hurting, and Kane’s boyish face echo the disappointment. I saw the hollow looks upon the faces of a team who stayed out on the ice, absorbing it all, waiting for the Canadians to finish their deserved celebration for postgame handshakes.
But I also realized that the end wasn’t really that different from the one that I had envisioned in my imagination. Sure, the U.S. came up a little short. But they still showed the world that U.S. hockey deserves to be held on par with the top-tier teams. And it showed fans back home that this team is here to stay and worth getting excited about.
Call me crazy (the sports gods obviously did), but in a small and strange way, I still have that same feeling. I think that everyone who saw that game, aside from witnessing a huge disappointment, may have seen one of the best and most important games to hit U.S. sports in years.
Nathan Lurz is a Sports Editor
nlurz@luc.edu
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