What stood out to him most about that suffering was the genesis of the Capitals’ losing streak, specifically December 2nd’s game in Dallas. I wrote a file succinctly titled ‘Zebra-Screwed‘ the morning after that loss — in which a John Carlson game-tying tally in the game’s final 10 seconds was waved off, and it was a seminal moment in this Capitals’ season for the general manager.

“That game in Dallas where I felt the referees took the game away from us . . .  I remember telling Bruce [Boudreau], ‘This is how losing streaks start.’  It’s hard for players to react [to that kind of loss]. If they didn’t play well, they pull their socks up and play better the next game. But that was different. You feel like in some ways you were robbed.”

Of that robbery I wrote, “The most egregious and insufferable shortcoming with hockey’s officiating occurs when a zebra makes a judgment call, through a maze of bodies, that undoes late-game heroism. It’s a moment when an official, rather than world-class athlete(s), determines a game. We fans pay good money to see special athletes thrill us, occasionally surmounting enormous obstacle and odds to triumph. Their doing so affords us sports’ most indelible images.”

If McPhee’s right about the extraordinary impact that judgment call in Dallas had on his team — and I think he is — Dan O’Rourke did far more than cost the Capitals a hockey game. He damn near cost a good man [Bruce Boudreau] his job. That was the heart of McPhee’s reflection: an isolated loss due to deficient performance is part and parcel of athletics, from which athletes bounce back in a reasonable amount of time, but the psyche of the elite competitor can’t reconcile as well excellent effort, culminating with heroism, that is overturned by error. Sometimes we hate referees for good reason.

* * * * *

McPhee called the Winter Classic “maybe the most fun I’ve had as a manager, and maybe the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”

“It was sort of a ‘Field of Dreams’ thing.”

On the Red Out of Pittsburgh last weekend: “Even on the ride home to Washington on Sunday, I drove my family back, it was Caps’ fans all the way back, at toll booths, the gas stations, restaurants . . . Every time you turned the corner in Pittsburgh someone was wearing a Caps’ jersey. I think the popularity [of the Caps] is unprecedented.”

* * * * *

The Capitals this season are getting quality contributions from a half dozen rookie performers. The World Juniors in Buffalo (which apparently was annexed by Canada late in 2010) sent this message to Caps’ fans: Ready yourself for another wave of impact youth.

Ron Wilson was mightily impressed by Capitals’ center prospect Evgeny Kuznetsov, and so was McPhee. In fact, McPhee liked an awful lot of what he saw from a bevy of Caps’ prospects in Buffalo over the holidays.

Kuznetsov was “one of the best players [of the WJC], and [Cody] Eakin was the best player on the ice” in the gold medal game, the Caps’ GM said.

“It sure is nice as a manager to go to a tournament and see talent like that. Especially where we’ve been picking [in the Entry Draft]. We’re gonna have another wave of good players coming to the team.” Reporters asked McPhee about the preponderance of centers in the Capitals’ development pipeline. He acknowledged that, but he also pointed out that the transition from center to wing is not a difficult one, whereas most wings cannot effectively move to the pivot. And so we should expect to see one or two young centers make the move. Eakin for instance has blazing speed that could be effective outside. McPhee expects Eakin to go straight to Hershey once his junior season is completed. The Bears are heating up, and Eakin will be a special reinforcement.

* * * * *

The Americans at these World Juniors played only one poor game, but it was when they could least afford to — in the semifinals against a revenge-minded Canada. Still, they won bronze, earning their first-ever World Juniors medal on home ice and winning consecutive medals in this tournament for the first time ever. The signs of lasting American emergence in international play are everywhere, and the 2011 World Juniors offered additional evidence of it. The Yanks were legitimate gold medal contenders. Favorites, actually.

Think back just to last February and Vancouver, and the near universal sentiment going in that the American Olympic entry, laden with youth and inexperience, was a likely 4th or 5th place finish outfit. The Americans got great goaltending from Ryan Miller, but they also got beyond-their-years play from young rearguards — Erik Johnson especially. That silver medal showing in Vancouver justifiably led to some gold medal game forecasts for the Americans in the Sochi games. These last two World Junior American clubs are likely to feed notable talent to that team. Both John Carlson and Cam Fowler are viable Calder candidates, for instance. We might even see a Californian or two on that Olympic team, and down the road a bit, maybe a Washington young gun who made the trip to Pittsburgh with his father last weekend for the Winter Classic.

Conventional wisdom was that the Americans not only would make a formidable defense of their 2010 WJC title — won in blissfully shocking fashion thanks to Captain America — but that this year’s entry could actually be stronger. They may just be. At least one member of Sweden’s WJC entry believes the Americans, and not the Canadians, are the tourney’s toughest team. But that was before the Americans lost front-line forwards Jeremy Morin and Brock Nelson last night. Morin’s shoulder injury is believed to have cost him the tournament.

The Caps were on Comcast’s second channel last night, which is broadcast in Morse code, so it was very easy for me to get sucked in to the high definition coverage of U.S.-Finland over on the NHL Network. Here’s what I saw from the Americans: lots of speed, conspicuous cohesion by a band of brothers assembled together just since December 17, excellent defensive zone coverage, and a power play polished and poised so as to make Caps’ fans envious.

Is isn’t just that the United States National Development Team Program is working like a well-oiled machine, luring some of our nation’s finest athletes to Ann Arbor and broadening the geographical base from which our national teams’ skaters originate. There is elite ability behind the bench as well: Keith Allain is the bench boss for this American WJ club, and in his day job he guides the no. 1-ranked team in all of college hockey — Yale. When you’re no. 1 in any major sport at an Ivy League institution, that’s seriously getting it done. Allain is assisted by Phil Housley — merely one of the most accomplished American hockey players ever.

Last night’s tourney opener for both the Americans and Fins went to overtime, but it took remarkable heroics by Finnish netminder Joni Ortio to get the Fins there. Jeremy Morin scored what appeared to be a power play goal that would have given the Americans a 3-1 lead well into the final frame, but Nick Bjugstad was ruled to have had a toe touching the outermost crease coloring in front of Ortio. Totally ticky-tack call. The Fins counter-punched in deliberate fashion as all their national teams do, and scored the equalizer with just over 6 minutes to play. In OT, Bjugstad pounced on a Finnish turnover in the nuetral zone and became the game’s hero, besting Ortio just 1:52 into extra time.

This will be yet another very fun American national team to watch. The Morin injury is huge, but Kyle Palmieri can still dangle with the best of this tourney’s forwards. And the American roster is deep: 9 first-rounders, six more from round 2. The Americans will have to avoid any additional injuries, and they will need netminder Jack Campbell to live up to his 11th overall draft status to get the U.S. a medal in hockey’s greatest tournament.

Meanwhile, at the developmental level, the news is big and bold and boundless: great young hockey players are coming from all across the country, including two Californians tabbed in the first round the the NHL Entry Draft this past June.  A couple of years ago I was seated next to an NHL scout up in Hershey at a Bears’ game, and this scout — a Canadian — told me that if the U.S. ever expanded its talent base to population-rich, athlete-generating factory locales like California and Texas, all bets at the biggest international tourneys would be off. Late this summer I’m wondering: are we at that dawning?

More: two new clubs are debuting this fall in the United States Hockey League, the Dubuque Fighting Saints and the Muskegon Lumberjacks. That brings the 9-year-old Tier I league up to 16 teams, scattered throughout the heartland, each playing 60 games through fall and winter. Last season, the 14-team league boasted nearly 250 players already committed to NCAA Division I  schools, with 35 NHL draft picks on league rosters. It’s where the United States National Development Team Program showcases our country’s best under-20 players. The USHL is the nation’s foremost producer of junior hockey talent, and it’s growing in size and prestige.

Christopher Heimerman is the brand new communications director and broadcaster for the Lumberjacks, and earlier this summer he reached out to us with some kind words for the blog and an interest in sharing the startup team’s terrific story. Muskegon, long a home to minor-minor pro hockey, is set to host a big upgrade in the quality of on-ice product.  Take a look at what the Muskegon Chronicle reported about a tryout camp the team hosted back in June:

“Mike Hastings has been so impressed by what he’s seen the first two days of the Muskegon Lumberjacks’ tryout camp, he just might alter his travel plans to stay one more day. Hastings, an associated head coach at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, would like to stick around for the all-star game at 8 p.m. today. After three days of scrimmaging, the 104 players will be pared down to about 40.

“Out of all the camps I’ve seen so far, this has been the most impressive as far as talent,” Hastings said.

Muskegon, located at about the knuckle of your pinky in the left hand’s acknowledgment of the state’s layout, has a rich hockey heritage. Pro hockey has been played there for 50 years, since 1960, until the IHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks disbanded earlier this year, in the IHL’s merger with the Central Hockey League.  To honor minor pro hockey’s 50-year history in Muskegon, Josh Mervis, the owner of the new USHL club in town, decided his franchise would retain the Lumberjacks’ team name, which honors the huge number of sawmills that characterized the city back when it was known as the ‘Lumber Queen of the World.’  The Lumberjacks represent the first Michigan franchise in the USHL.  They’ll be coached by Kevin Patrick, a former defenseman and captain of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

The team will play in L.C. Walker Arena, an old-school bowl of a building perfect for puck, built in the 1950s, placing patrons right on top of the action. The rink holds 5,000-plus for this community of 40,000 and has been home to all of Muskegon’s hockey teams over the years — the Zephyrs, the Mohawks, the Lumberjacks, the Fury, and then the Lumberjacks again. The Lumberjacks name has emerged as the durable tribute to the town. Ownership and management of the USHL club are taking pains to make the transition of teams as seamless as possible. Heimerman told me that the USHL team’s uniforms will bear a striking resemblance to its predecessor.

“This community has had teams come and go, and the hockey fans here are understandably resistant to change,” Heimerman told me. “Beginning next month the quality of product they’ll see on the ice will be fantastic. We very much want a familiar look and feel in the building and in the colors and crest our players wear.”

Heimerman also stressed the involvement his players will have in the Muskegon community. The players began arriving in town for fall camp this past weekend. All of the players will be attending Muskegon Community College or Grand Valley State University, and they’ll be conspicuous in their presence in the community. “They are going to be role models here,” Heimerman told me. “They’ll be treated like stars, but they’ll oblige every request for autographs.”

And they’ll have a special coming out party. The team’s first-ever game, in the preseason, will take place September 12 in Detroit, at Joe Louis Arena, when the Lumberjacks square off against the Chicago Steel.

American kids, playing great hockey in a hockey town, making up a big chunk of the town’s fall and winter entertainment. A few of them will make careers of hockey. All will get a college education out of the arrangement. What’s not to like?

Well, Head Coach Bruce Boudreau all but confirmed that Karl Alzner and John Carlson will start the year with the big club.

“Karl and [John] were our two best players . . . I would venture to guess that I think they are ready for the NHL full time.”

Gabby’s statements are a ringing endorsement, considering that the rest of the D-pairings, sans Tom Poti, thoroughly underachieved in the postseason. Carlson and Alzner provide a stay at home presence and an offensive threat in one pairing. Even though they are young and will make mistakes, they are Washington’s two  best skaters on the back end.

Together, the two provided pretty impressive stats. While Alzner only played one game, he managed to stay on the positive side of the +/-, something he couldn’t do during the regular season. Carlson was perhaps the team’s best player, with the exceptions of Ovechkin, Backstrom and Varly. He went +6 in the series, with three assists and a goal. Not only that, but he also earned himself the nickname Captain America.

What is most notable about the duo’s play in game 7 was when Boudreau decided to put them on the ice together. Both spent time on the penalty kill, and Carlson was featured on the power play. Not only that, but inside of five minutes remaining last Wednesday night, Boudreau threw Carlson on the ice and double-shifted him. He wasn’t double-shifting Mike Green, he wasn’t double-shifting Jeff Shultz, it was the young rookie Carlson who was getting a shoulder tap to take the ice and remain on it.

Faith is one of the most things a player can earn from his coach, and it sure seems that John Carlson has earned that already from Bruce Boudreau. As has Alzner. Mike Green showed he certainly isn’t a star in the postseason yet, and now he may not even be the team’s best defenseman. Quite a lofty statement, but with Carlson on the team, Green will certainly be challenged for the top spot. And that can only help the Caps. 

While it was only one game, Alzer and Carlson had speed, chemistry and even a bit of a scoring threat while on the ice together. Inevttably they will form the Caps’ top pairing once they have more experience in the NHL. After the last three playoffs disappointments, there obviously needs to be some change on the back end. Bringing these two up for good may just be the centerpiece of that change.

One last thing to remember about Carlson and Alzner is that not only are they good, but they are winners and leaders. Both have won a Calder Cup in Hershey, and Carlson of course delivered gold for the Americans at the most recent the World Juniors. Alzner served as captain for Canada in the World Juniors. There is high-end skill and high-end leadership in this pairing.

Forget Shlutz and Green, bring on Alzner and Carlson. The new era for Washington defenseman starts now, and it starts with the two young guns that were featured in Game 7. Despite the loss, Washington can’t forget that the future is very bright, and bright on the back end.  And while the hockey season ended way too prematurely in Washington, both John Carlson and Karl Alzner are partnered again and playing hockey this spring, up in Hershey. Their pairing there offers a terrific preview of one we’ll see in D.C. come fall.

He also told Hillary that he “admired” Sidney Crosby, but don’t let that dissuade you from taking in an illuminating exchange.

Wyshynski attended his first NHL game since the Vancouver Games ended this past Monday night, for the visit to Verizon Center by the Dallas Stars. Vancouver was his first Olympics experience. It made quite an impression on him.

Wyshynski and more than 50 of his Yahoo colleagues made the trip across the continent to cover the Vancouver Games, in their entirety, an extraordinary allotment of personnel and resources in this resource-constrained era. Even a few of the mightiest and most prestigious of news organizations couldn’t match that.

“There was enormous pressure in the beginning to make sure [the investment] was warranted, but that’s what I do every day. I get to do this for a living. I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself and the blog to do well because of that,” Puck Daddy told me before the Capitals-Stars game on Monday.

“I was proud of the work we did. The numbers were great. Then there was encouraging comments by [our] peers. And then there was the totality of the work you do when you’re on site — we did some really great stuff. Some of the angles for the stories we did were different, and were not things that necessarily would have been written about had we not been there.”

Was he affected at all by the enormity of the sporting stage, aware perhaps of watchful, suspicious eyes of the IOC’s media flacks upon new media?

“I think it was just going to Vancouver and doing my own thing,” he said. “I don’t know if the blog necessarily did anything different than we would have normally done.”

Puck Daddy, Greg Wyshynski

Wyshynski never experienced any sense of being out of place among world-recognized media in Vancouver. Perhaps that’s because Yahoo today is very much a world-recognized media outlet, particularly for sports, particularly because of Wyshynski’s success there.

“The fact that you’re on site [covering the Games] is enough — there’s never a feeling of ‘Why are you here?, why are you asking that question?’ he told me.

When I expressed skepticism that any media outlet, even the most esteemed over the longest period of time, could possibly harbor suspicion that a writer for Yahoo would be credentialed for the Olympics, Wyshynski detailed a stratified credentialing process.

“For certain events, you had to get a special ticket in order to get in the press box for it. Like [for] the Canada-Russia game, the U.S.-Canada [hockey] games. You couldn’t just show up with your credential, you had to go through USOC and get a special ticket.”

For almost the entirety of his coverage time in Vancouver Wyshynski had reliable access to an Ethernet jack and could work without fear of wonky WiFi service. But for one hockey game — a semi-final one at that — Wyshynski and his Yahoo colleague weren’t seated at a media table. He was supposed to live blog and had no Internet access. That situation got resolved. Otherwise, though, the entire Olympic experience was smooth sailing in terms of generating work product.

When I pressed Greg again about his comfort level with engaging the Games with his characteristic (and endearing) irreverence, he pointed out that Yahoo’s coverage mission overall was to cover the Olympics as largely a straight news story, but he also reminded me that his inner Puck Daddy tossed off his red mittens at times.

“The article that I wrote after the Canada-Russia game was complete id — I tore the sh*t out of Russia,” he said. Indeed!

“Russia’s 7-3 loss to Canada in its Olympic hockey quarterfinal game is one of the most definitive, declarative and emphatic emasculations the sport has seen in decades . . .

“The defense was pathetic. Unable to move Canadian players from Nabokov’s sight line. Unable to defend odd-man Canadian rushes. There may be a “D” in “forward,” but there sure wasn’t any in these tentative, meandering Russian wingers.

“The non-NHL players were pathetic. The Russians have nine players on the roster from their native Kontinental Hockey League. There were a combined minus-9 with two points, getting outclassed and outcompeted in every zone. They were warm bodies, background players to Canada’s stars.”

Yahoo wasn’t alone as a dot-com entity in Vancouver, Wyshynski noted. Fox Sports.com was there, and there were a few other web oriented outlets, almost all North American-based. One particular caliber of new media reporter — “the Dan Steinberg types,” Greg called them — wasn’t present, and that he felt was a detriment to the overall coverage.

“There were a lot of columnists, a lot of old school shoe-leather types, let’s say,” he noted. “I think the [Olympic] gig demands a versatility. For the first few days I was there, I was doing the ‘Man about town’ [feature-y files] before going straight into covering hockey.”

There were hardships to Greg’s tour of Olympic duty. He’s an expecting father, and he was a full continent away from his family for more than half a month.

“I’m not a beat writer, I don’t leave [home], I’m a homebody, and I hate leaving,” he said, “so the first week was beyond anything I was used to.”

“The Olympic experience, at least with the winter Olympics, is like a Roman orgy. It is Mardi Gras. It was unbelievable, the level of revelry that existed in that city for a month. For a month!

“Vancouver is split up into different neighborhoods, and a lot of these neighborhoods are very concentrated with bars and restaurants. Every night tons of people would be there. There was a street called Granville Avenue where every single time you walked past it the street would be filled like a concert in Central Park.

“Girls kissing . . . the U-S-A fans chanting against the Canadian fans. . . ”

I pressed him for more details on the kissing girls. That sounded rather Roman to me.

Did hockey’s most famous blogger encounter any evidence of a condom crisis in Vancouver?

For a lot of the Games’ athletes, Wyshynski noted, “there’s nothing else to do” besides fornicate, outside of competing. You have literally thousands of extraordinarily fit young men and women encamped together in a sequestered village for weeks, he noted. Some athletes find the competitive portion of their Olympics participation over literally within hours of the Games’ start.  That’s a lot of free time around very fit bodies before the closing ceremonies. Hence, 14 condoms per athlete, and with these particular Games, that volume barely lasted beyond the first week.

The Olympics are unifying in this regard.

As for the PR hits Vancouver initially took, Wyshynski said a lot had to do with the opening day tragedy of losing a luger, and the Olympic torch not working at the Opening Ceremony, but beyond the somberness of the first day or two, for those actually attending the Games, “you never got a sense of [anything negative]. It was an overwhelmingly positive vibe, because it’s an overwhelmingly positive city.

“Being an American, in that building, and watching the USA beat Canada, on their home ice, and then losing in overtime in the gold medal game, was mind-blowing.”

That initial defeat of the Canadians, Wyshynski suggested, “was a lot like the World Juniors — you had [Canadians] questioning their existence. I mean if you remember what happened right after World Juniors, you had people writing columns about, ‘Well we need to rethink our entire system!’ And it was like that with the Canadian [Olympic ] team, except it was ‘Well, we need to rethink this entire team — where is Stamkos, where is Mike Green? We can’t work the power play.’

The Canadians ended up rethinking things rather thoroughly — overhauling their lines. The Canadian team the Americans faced in the gold medal game was a markedly different team from that of a week before.

“Canada 2.0,” Wyshynski called it. “Totally professional, assasin-like.”

“The loss in the gold medal game, and walking around town as an American, made me feel like an atheist in the Vatican.”

Roman orgies and a seeming visit to the Vatican, all in one Olympic Games. The NHL better go to Sochi.

Suddenly I want to grow a mullet, and dates girls with tattoos! Patriotism is alive and well in Pittsburgh. And how!

This is beyond amazing. For one thing, it’s highly suggestive to me that something extraordinary, something culturally distinctive, indeed happened to hockey with the Vancouver Games. Part of the aura of the Miracle on Ice 30 years ago was the cultural backdrop against which Herb Brooks’ college kids fashioned their heroism: rampant and spirit-sapping American malaise. I wonder, given the increasing angst that’s being acknowledged across the country today, and which is manifesting itself in sporadic bursts of electoral outrage, if something akin to ’80 isn’t already in place?

Did a highly unheralded band of hockey players, led by an afterthought of a head coach, shoulder aside the sport’s giant on its home ice once in Vancouver and then nearly do it again in the title game, and in the process inspire and wonderfully distract a beleaguered nation? The television viewership numbers certainly suggest so.

And, did Pittsburgh, a town that’s been economically depressed — ravaged, really — and attempting (with some success) to re-engineer itself out of tough times, take none too kindly to the outcome?

It’s unassailable: at its most basic, Tuesday night was an adverse reaction by a home crowd against its Cup deliverer!

Well, leave it to Big Media in Steeltown to have none of it. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette went foaming at the mouth at the reception for Sid.

“Many fans actually booed Sidney Crosby when he was acknowledged. Wow. Way to be xenophobic Pittsburgh.”

“Xenophobic”? Really? At least there’s no precedent among any big city American newspapers for rashly and reflexively labeling racist motives upon behavior or actions with which they disagreed.

Very hypothetically speaking — because it would require the Russians to be able to actually defend their own end — were Alexander Ovechkin to have scored an overtime strike against Team USA in a gold medal game, can you imagine the Red Army back in Verizon Center turning on him? I can’t. And consider that Verizon Center is home to no irregular display of nationalistic sensibilities — most regularly with most home games when men and women wearing our nation’s uniform are introduced and acknowledged for their heroism.

The difference may well be that while Sidney Crosby is very well appreciated in Pittsburgh, Ovi is absolutely adored in D.C.

Then again, we are in very troubled times, and hockey heroics from the guys wearing our colors have demonstrated a gluing effect on this nation in times of strife.

Incidentally, yesterday also brought word of Sidney Crosby’s appearance on the cover of the new Sports Illustrated. Think the jinx is alive and well?

“Sunday afternoon’s USA vs. Canada gold medal hockey game, that NBC’s Bob Costas called, “One of the greatest sports events I have ever seen,” was the most-watched hockey game in 30 years.  Canada’s epic 3-2 overtime victory (3:20-6:13 p.m. ET) drew an average viewership of 27.6 million, the most watched hockey broadcast of any kind since the USA vs. Finland 1980 gold medal game in Lake Placid on Feb. 24, 1980 (32.8 million).  For historical comparison, the “Miracle on Ice” USA-Russia semifinal game that aired on tape delay on Feb 22, 1980 from the Lake Placid Games drew 34.2 million average viewers.

Imagine if NBC had actually branded hockey on its primary outlet during the first 10 days of the Games.

Andrew

For the U.S., these Olympics were anything but a failure — across the board and most particularly in hockey. Not only did the Yanks push the gold medal game into overtime after battling back from a two-goal deficit on the host’s home sheet, but they won a medal in a Games in which hardly anyone figured they could. This was supposed to be a “rebuilding” Games for the  U.S., a silver medal perhaps plausible in four years’ time in Sochi. The youngest team in the tournament almost shocked the team that wasn’t supposed to lose. Even with the loss, screaming at the top of my lungs was some of the most fun I have had on a Sunday in a long time.

As for the NHL in the Olympics: Having NHL players in the Olympics is something that should never end. Not only is there nothing but pure excitement in the Olympics when the world’s best hockey players are competing, but often it was NHL stars like Ryan Miller, Sidney Crosby and Patrick Kane who were taking over important portions of games. Losing NHL talent in the Olympics would be a massive marketing mistake. To be on Twitter early Sunday afternoon and to read all the hosanas hockey in this tournament generated was to realize that no other event could brand hockey quite like the Olympics can.

Alexander

It had to be Sidney Crosby who delivered for the red-clad Maple Leaf and their 30 million supporters in the gold medal game on the closing day of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Watching this tournament and the inspired play from so many nations at the Games cemented my firm belief that a hockey game can be won by virtually any team. I hate to recognize it as my prediction, but I honestly believe no. 87 will be the most successful NHL player in any competition over the next 15 years — even moreso than Alex Ovechkin.

One learns over time to recognize key characteristics and attributes of players. Chris Drury will always be seen as a clutch player. Nicklas Lidstrom will always be remembered for having phenomenal plus/minus ratings. Crosby has the total package of speed, puck-possession brilliance, and a clinical finish at opportune moments — even if that five-hole OT winner came after almost two periods of Canada sitting on their lead and playing mind-numbingly boring hockey to the equivalence of Italian soccer. Team Canada shrugged off 2006 and squeezed out triumph on home ice in 2010. Credit Zach Parise, one of the most underrated talents in the NHL, for scoring to tie the game with 25 seconds to go in regulation, and Ron Wilson for managing one of the youngest teams at the tournament to the silver podium. It’s too bad gold isn’t judged on effort, because Team USA would be recognized as the best team in the world right now. Ron Wilson said as much Sunday evening: The Americans were the best team at the tournament bar none.

2014 better be a different story for Team Russia, and hopefully for Team USA. Although Gary Bettman’s bureaucratic nonsense will last another couple of years until the new CBA is signed, I, like many of you, believe NHLers will be present at Sochi with the sanctioning of the owners. I love the Winter Olympics, but to be fair to Bettman, I don’t believe it is hockey’s stage. European football’s seasons last from August to late May, yet during the summer athletes still play in the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship, both of which last about a month. I don’t see why the NHL can’t do something similar to FIFA and UEFA in scheduling their international competitions. Neither the World Cup of Hockey nor the Canada Cup has not been contested since 2004. Although I don’t know the details of the tournament, 2011 will see the next World Cup. Like many folks, I don’t like the two-week break from NHL action because — to some degree — it re-balances all 30 teams in the run-up to the playoffs. The NHL needs more international fixtures to raise the profile of the sport in the nations that make up the league so that international fans get more excited about their country’s best NHLers. The 2011 World Cup of Hockey is the right lunge toward an NHL-sanctioned and prestigious competition for internationals in the greatest league on Earth. Hopefully it will catch on.

OrderedChaos

The 2010 Olympic Games’ hockey tournament should make it clear to the NHL, and all, that players can and should represent their countries on the world’s biggest stage—er, rink—even though, in Vancouver, the rink was NHL-sized. One wonders how much that contributed to NHL players’ success over their European counterparts . . . but I digress. The point is, NHLers in the Olympics is something the players want and something most hockey fans want. NHL owners and the league must find a way to make it work, and they really need to start figuring that out soon since Sochi is just a bit farther away than Vancouver.

I don’t just encourage Olympic participation because the Caps’ biggest star (and Sochi ambassador) will undoubtedly be in the 2014 Olympics, with or without permission. Key NHL players may decide that it’s better to play for a year or two in the KHL, or their home countries, if that’s the only way they can participate in the Olympics. Stonewalling players from Olympic participation would be a practical and political nightmare, and one the NHL cannot afford. Perhaps owners can strike a deal with the IOC . . . I don’t know, something like shortening the NHL season by 5 games or so in return for promotion/publicity at the Olympics.

I don’t have the solution; but the NHL must find one in the next few years.

On a side note, not even Team USA’s loss at the hands of Sidney Crosby rivaled the disappointment that Rush was part of neither the opening nor closing ceremonies. D’oh, Canada!

Gary

These Olympic games were wonderful with respect to hockey. Though a much anticipated Russia/Canada matchup failed to meet expectations, a United States/Canada matchup did not. Twice. Yesterday had a Super Bowl vibe to it with much more at stake. National Pride. It was, as Badger Bob Johnson would have said, “a great day for hockey.” A great day, indeed. You may not have enjoyed the outcome of the Gold Medal Game, but who can say they did not enjoy the game? Canada may have gold, but hockey was the winner.

Fast forward to Sochi in 2014. Will the NHL be there? I think they will. The league has been mum because this will be a barganing chip in the owner’s pocket for the next CBA. I believe the players will want to be there. I believe the owners want to showcase their sport. Will there be issues to solve? Sure there will. But timezone’s shouldn’t be one of them. Salt Lake City and Vancouver sit in time zones that for the most part are Washington/New York/Toronto friendly. Sochi sits four hours ahead of Greenwich time. Torino and Nagano? Plus one and plus nine respectively. If Torino and Nagano is doable, so is Sochi.

DC Sports Chick

If nothing else, these Olympic hockey games were full of surprises.  Who would’ve thought that the U.S. would beat Canada on Feb. 21, that Russia would exit the Games so early, or that the U.S. team would be playing for a gold medal?  What surprised me the most was how it seemed like EVERYONE was watching the gold medal game yesterday, even folks whose hockey knowledge was limited to “The Mighty Ducks.”  The sport was definitely the big winner yesterday; here’s hoping some of those casual fans are intrigued enough to want to learn more about hockey.

As for 2014, NHL players have to be there.  Would yesterday’s game have received that massive level of attention if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wasn’t there?  It still would have been a big game, but not on the same level.  Whether Gary Bettman likes it or not, having the NHL at the Games is a crucial part of pushing hockey into the mainstream.

pucksandbooks

After I recovered from the sudden-death gut-punch by him, I was able to place this gold medal hockey game in its proper context. It was a game Canada survived, while for the Americans it was one serving noticed that they’d arrived. Two weeks ago, conventional wisdom was that these Games were a formality for the continuation of the Canada-Russia rivalry. By Sunday night, hockey’s top rivalry had been recast. Looking ahead, considering the prevalence of elite, under-25 talent at all positions for both Canada and the U.S., it seems certain to be a rivalry to endure. And ripen! The Americans this year have served notice at both the World Juniors and the Olympics that they’re big players on the biggest hockey stages.

photo by Reuters

Will there be NHLers in Sochi? The debate was made moot by the two U.S.-Canada games in Vancouver, in my opinion. How could the NHL possibly stand in the way of a renewal of this drama? I know that there’s a World Cup of Hockey scheduled in a couple of years. I’ll watch that, too, and it’ll be great hockey as well. But there’s no substitute for the luster of the Olympics. Gary Bettman and perhaps a plurality of NHL owners may not recognize it, but the rest of the world does. When you get past all the sliminess of the IOC, all of the pomposity and pimping out of the Games’ heritage, in its essence the Games continue to showcase the greatest feats of athletic endeavors the world knows.

“While in Washington recently, I ran into a woman who drives an hour each way every day just to watch the Capitals practice,” The Hockey News’ Ken Campbell wrote at Vancouver’s conclusion. “She spends $2,500 on season tickets. She told me she knew absolutely nothing about hockey before the 2006 Olympics, but saw Alex Ovechkin playing and learned he played for the local team.”

More locals were converted to hockey in the past week by what they saw.

“I think (the Olympics) is great for hockey and we have to give back to fans everywhere,” USA coach Ron Wilson said after the gold medal game. “We do a pretty good job of stealing players from every country and we owe their fans an opportunity to witness a tournament like this one.”

My father rang me in the office during the Americans’ 2-0 quarterfinal win over Switzerland this week. He was dismayed at the cheering and jeering he was hearing against the Americans, on the part of the large contingent of Canucks in the crowd. “It’s just . . . really bad,” Dad told me. I agree.

At their worst, a conspicuous vocal majority will sully the Star Spangled Banner before big international games featuring the U.S. Like Dad, I’ve been jarred by the anti-American sentiment too often exhibited by our cousins to the North. It hasn’t arrived with these Olympic Games, either; far from it.

As best as I can tell, the genesis of the souring in our hockey relations dates back to the onset of America’s military action in the Middle East in 2003. The incidents of disrespect have been most pernicious in Montreal over the years. There have been incidents with our anthem’s playing before 2003 up in Canada, and some of Canadian hockey’s leading personalities and commentators have attempted to tamp it down, but in terms of this ongoing and durable disdain, it seems premised on American foreign policy of the past decade.

What a shame. As if boorish behavior before and during a hockey game can effect change in American foreign policy. All it does is allow 10- or 12,000 really rude people to cast America’s best friend in a very dark light. It’s really, really poor form.

It needs to stop. And today would be the perfect day for a clean break from a bitter recent past. Today of course is the 50th anniversary of America’s first miracle in Olympic hockey. The moment should be acknowledged at today’s game. Respectfully and warmly. But today is also a celebration of a wonderfully renewed hockey rivalry, and it takes place in the ultimate competitive showdown of the Olympics. It is a great thing for hockey, I think, that the U.S. and Canada can meet in multiple international competitions and deliver great game after great game. Great hockey fans, of which there number at least 10 million in Canada, ought to savor this development.

Canadians are known for wanting the best possible hockey showdowns on hockey’s biggest stages. It’s a wonderful trait. Rooting for Norway or Switzerland, against the U.S., certainly runs counter to that.

There was no wretched rancor from Canadian hockey fans with either of America’s first two triumphs in the Olympics, and there should be none today if the Yanks triumph.

Our two nations are not just allies but the friendliest of neighbors, and in the warmest sense. Our daily commerce with one another traffics in the billions of dollars; we share a great deal of common cultural confluence; America has known no greater ally in its largest and most serious military entanglements. My favorite story about the greatness of Canada as a friend and neighbor is with its remarkable hospitality in the hours and days after the September 11th attacks. Tens of thousands of Americans were stranded in Canada from diverted flights then. Scores of Canadians then opened their homes to strangers from America, of course asking for nothing in return. I wasn’t surprised by the reception, but the scope of aid needed then was remarkable, and the Canadian response matched it.

Canada also played a pivotal role in the liberation of six American diplomats in Iran in 1979. America has no greater friend, and yet when billions of people around the world watch us compete in events like today’s, they’ll imagine us bitter foes.

We are lucky to be neighbors. Our differences are modest and idiosyncratic and endearing. And when it comes to high-stakes hockey and our two nations are vying for glory, the camaraderie between us should never be greater, the party never grander. Policy spats and trade quarrels of course will ever emerge, however at our games — especially at our biggest games against one another — we should put them aside and remember how well we have loved one another for about 200 years.

I’d have fans treat today’s gold medal game as I am. I want another heart-stopper, a classic, with both teams playing magnificently. And I want my guys to win. I have a friendly wager with one of my favorite Canucks, Kevin Kaminski. The loser will pick up a beer tab up in Portland, Maine, next summer when Killer runs his annual hockey camp for kids. One of us today will be greatly disappointed by the gold medal game outcome; both of us will be smiling widely when next we meet.