Draft Day Suit

It’s clear that the Olympics did nothing to mitigate general hockey hysteria. Now that the NHL regular season has resumed here’s a chance to show off your knowledge of NHL history.

At the end of each game, three stars are awarded to the game’s most important contributors. What’s the origin of the three stars? How are the three stars selected?

[ed. note: What do the stars even MEAN? Can we start there? Thanks. Carry on.]

Please leave your answers in the comments. Draft Day Suit bragging rights are on the line, currently held by our last winner, Melissa.

While my home team lost the gold medal in the men’s ice hockey final at the Vancouver Olympics, the game did serve one purpose.

It reminded me – along with millions of other people watching – why I love hockey.

You know how people say they love things like it’s their job? I could easily have a job loving hockey. A lifer Capitals fan who happily supported the late, possibly-lamented minor league Dayton Bombers when I lived in Ohio, one of the great joys of my life has been watching my home team rise to playoffs (and I believe Stanley Cup-contender) level since I’ve been back.

Today, while I rooted for Team USA to beat Canada in the Olympic gold medal game, I realized around about the middle of the second period when USA got off of its collective ass and made it a real contest that this is why people who love hockey so much know that it’s such a great game. This is why, no matter how much old-time hockey fans complain about bandwagons and newbie fans, I think it’s cool that so many people have been sucked in by a growing NHL and this well-played North American Olympic contest.

I got fired up. As a fan familiar with the varying tempos of games I felt the situation change from a back and forth snoozer to a toss-up in a way that got me up on the edge of my seat. I thought my team might have a win in them yet, and even if they didn’t it at least wouldn’t be a giveaway.

That feeling lasted through an exciting third period and a literally last-minute goal by Zach Parise that sent this already epic Olympic medal game into almost eight minutes of overtime until Sidney Crosby’s goal (she writes with great sadness) gave Canada the gold medal.

“A great player made a great play and found a way to finish us off tonight,” said U.S. head coach Ron Wilson. “I think both teams are winners, but more importantly I think tonight the game of hockey is the real winner.”

Both teams played a great game, but Canada won, fair and square, 3-2. We lost.

And perhaps most importantly to me, especially because my team lost so I’ve already had time to move on to the existential conclusion, hockey won.

I’m a sap and a sucker and I’m oddly pleased for Canada, although my required Caps fan disdain for Pittburgh Penguin Crosby makes me rather bitter about the vehicle.

(If you are new to all of this, just Google “Patrick Division NHL hockey” for the backstory on that. Also ask any hockey fan who is not from Pittsburgh, excluding the Canadians who are only now vowing not to talk smack about him ever again. I know at least one, and I believe she will crack in short order.)

Seriously, I believe in sports as a reflection of personal and local pride. In a classily-run and contested Olympic Games that saw its share of pain and loss, I think a hard-fought win for the host country in a sport that means so much there that it has its own national holiday is actually a beautiful thing.

As someone on Twitter said, a Canada loss would have been like the U.S. losing to Canada in football.

But for a few minutes there, there was that amazing Parise goal that put U.S. goalie Ryan Miller back into the net where he belongs and took it to overtime. My Twitter stream blew up. I exploded out of my chair and screamed in my living room.

And I said, “This is why I love hockey,” once I sat down and stopped screaming.

It is a maddening game and it can make you crazy if you care about it, really. It moves so fast. It’s  high-pressure and it can turn on a dime. It’s excellent if you’re into that sort of thing, and once you do get into it, just try to quit it, I dare you.

And on many occasions in my life when I’ve been watching great hockey, I know there’s nothing like it, and it’s just cool to enjoy something that much. The two U.S. – Canada games at the Olympics really were some of the most exciting hockey I’ve ever seen.

In the end the U.S. was the only team in this Olympics that was undefeated in regulation. Miller was named the MVP of the tournament, deservedly so, with 36 saves. The guys on both sides will head back to their NHL locker rooms today, while I bet a lot of Canadians are calling in sick from the looks of the streets in Vancouver after the game.

As for my team, they play the Sabres on Wednesday, so I’m hoping Buffalo gives Miller the week off. Otherwise I’m going to be a little confused, and more than a little nervous. He may have let the last one in, but this guy knows how to stop a puck.

Congratulations, Canada. Well-played, USA.

[Photos courtesy of Reuters]

[Source]

Tomorrow at 3:15 p.m. EST, the United States Olympic hockey team will take on the Canadian Olympic hockey team in the Gold Medal game. In case you didn’t know hockey in Canada is a BIG deal. It is the national sport. It is America’s baseball, basketball AND football, all wrapped into one. In Canada, they do not hope to win the gold medal, they expect it.

Nay, they demand it, eh?

All the same, the U.S. hockey program seems to be improving. Team USA did defeat the Canadian national team in the World Junior championships in January. The U.S. did defeat the the Canadians in the preliminary rounds of these Olympics 5 – 3. And the U.S. is far past the days of fielding (icing?) a team of true amateurs, as in 1980. This year’s edition features an entire roster of all NHL players. This team is solid. Brian Burke assembled a lot of fresh faces for these Olympics, focusing on young, high-energy and smart hockey players complemented by a few unflappable Olympic veterans. The U.S. is definitely deserving of being in the Gold medal game.

But make no mistake; the Canadian team is stacked. It features scoring leaders up and down the roster, on every line. It’s so deep Team Canada benched perhaps the greatest goalie of all-time when he lost the aforementioned game against the US and have responded by playing better. They are angry about dropping a game to the U.S.. They are upset their Juniors muffed their championship. They are hungry to secure a Gold medal on Canadian ice. They will be ready and they will be frantic.

Can the U.S. win? Sure. It won’t be easy, but it wouldn’t be a miracle either.

Photo by John Biehler

Yep, that’s what U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team captain Natalie Darwitz said when interviewed after her team lost to Canada in the gold medal game. I can sympathize with the sentiment. In Olympic hockey, you don’t win the silver, you lose the gold. I just wish she’d said that—”it sucks to lose the gold”, or just plain “it sucks to lose”—instead of “it sucks to win silver.” It feels… unsportsmanlike, somehow.

The game itself was a thriller, the exciting matchup hockey fans like me have been waiting for since the Games began. Canada and the U.S. are by far the strongest, fastest, most skilled teams in the world, and it showed on the ice last night. Even the refs couldn’t keep up with the speed and intensity of the game, missing several offsides calls and a few more serious ones as well. (The announcers chalked this up to the single-referee system, and the fact that the pool of competitive-level women referees is small. There’s more research and another post in there about why only women can ref women’s games—but calling offsides is the linesman’s responsibility, and there were two lines(wo)men at this game.)

Announcer A.J. Mleczko pointed out a few times that you wouldn’t be able to tell by watching this game that women’s hockey was non-checking, and she was right. It was intensely physical, and there were even a few punches thrown (though there were no gloves-off fights as in men’s hockey). There was more checking, both penalized and unpenalized, than I’ve ever seen in a women’s game before. I am not a fan of checking as it’s practiced on the men’s side and recently declined to join a women’s league that allowed checking, but honestly, the level of physicality in the U.S.-Canada matchup seemed appropriate for the skill level of the teams. If I could play that well and skate that hard, I wouldn’t mind going hard at an opponent or having an opponent come hard at me.

The disappointment of the evening for me (aside from the clunky pace of the bronze medal game, which I had planned to watch first but abandoned in the first period because I knew much better hockey was being played live) was that the U.S. didn’t manage to score any goals. Yes, they only lost by two—the smallest margin by far of any game Canada *or* the U.S. was involved in this tournament—but being shut out was a big, fat bummer. The U.S. women, used to being able to get traffic in front, make trick shots, and have passing lanes and players open at all times, ran into a disciplined Canadian defense—and a goalie with a seemingly magnetic glove—that kept almost everyone and everything out of the slot, even on a 5-on-3.

A.J. suggested that the American players stop shooting high on the glove side, which Canadian goalie Shannon Szabados totally had covered, but often that was the only shot available. When a low shot was possible, it was often blocked or otherwise turned aside, and there were few rebound opportunities.

Speaking of blocked shots, Julie Chu had several, including one where she knelt to block the shot, successfully blocked it, and then popped up, took the puck, and charged the other way. It was probably my favorite moment of the game. My favorite announcer comment—and I’m sorry to say that I can’t remember who made it—was, “wouldn’t you like to see a best-of-seven series with these two teams?”

OH YEAH.

In fact, until the rest of the world catches up, how about next Olympics we just have seven U.S.-Canada games to determine who gets the gold?