Well, the Hockey Gods couldn't have written a better ending -- or more marketable one -- with Sidney Crosby scoring the overtime goal to beat the U.S. 3-2 and give Canada the gold medal.
Jonathan Toews opened the scoring with almost seven minutes left in the first, knocking in a Rick Nash rebound. It was the only goal in a first period of fast end-to-end hockey.
Both teams came out hard in the second, but Canada looked confident and incontrol on the power play and penalty kill. Corey Perry (above) beat American goalie Ryan Miller from the slot, to put Canada up 2-0. Luongo's Vancouver teammate Ryan Kelser put the U.S. on the board, with just over seven minutes left in the second, to tighten the hometeam crowd's collective sphincter to just shy of diamond production levels.
That lasted the entire third period, as Canada seemed to back off and play protect-the-lead. Then! New Jersey Devil star Zach Parise shocked the deafening crowd by tying the score with 24 seconds left in the game, after the U.S. pulled Ryan Miller to have the extra attacker.
Canada switched back to offensive mode for overtime, until Crosby won it all.
With this win, Canada earns its 14th gold medal of the 2010 Winter Games, setting an Olympic record for most gold medals won by a single nation in the winter Olympics.
Then finally, the Canadian men's hockey team decided they wanted to up the collective pulse of a nation in a closer-than-it-needed-to-be victory over giant-killer Slovakia.
After the 7-3 drubbing of Russia on Wednesday and the American's 6-1 destruction of Finland this afternoon, you might have excused Canadian fans for looking ahead to Sunday a tad premature. It wasn't quite "gorillas out of a cage," but tonight Canada booked its place in Sunday's gold medal game with a 3-2 semifinal win over Slovakia.
The Canadians jumped to a 2-0 first period lead, on goals by Patrick Marleau and Brendan Morrow. Ryan Getzlaf made it 3-0 with three minutes left in the second.
By midway through the third, the crowd was confidently chanting, "We want the USA!"
But just as Canadian fans may have been thinking "foregone conclusion," Lubomir Visnovsky put the Slovaks on the board at 8:25, then Michal Handzus added another at 4:53, bringing the game to within a goal and creating the first real tension of the game. The Slovaks, energized, continued to press hard right down to forcing a game-saving stop by Roberto Luongo in the final seconds.
The Canadian short-track team of Olivier Jean, Guillaume Bastille, Francois
Hamelin, Francois-Louis Tremblay and Charles
Hamelin took home the gold tonight in the short-track 5,000 m relay.
It was a great relay that saw Canada dominate for much of the race (even with a near-slip by Charles Hamelin towards the end), as Canada never really saw too much competition or challenges from race-favourites South Korea or USA.
The Koreans held on to their second position near the end to grab the silver, while the USA was able to finish third.
Canadian Charles Hamelin has won gold and teammate Francois-Louis Tremblay took bronze in a wild short-track speedskating 500-metre final at the Vancouver Olympics on Friday.
The 25-year-old Hamelin, from Ste-Julie, Que., was leading until he was overtaken by Sung Si-Bak. But the South Korean slipped in a wild finish that saw Tremblay also go down.
Upon review, the referee disqualified the USA's Apolo Anton Ohno after it was determained that Ohno caused both Sung and Tremblay to fall.
Sung was boosted to silver with a time of 41.340, while Tremblay, with a time of 46.336, was third.
Cheryl Bernard of Canada took Sweden's Anette Norberg to an extra end but was unable to make the shots she needed to pull off the victory.
The Canadian squad lost by the score of 7-6 to give Sweden its second consecutive Olympic gold medal in women's curling.
Bernard had opportunities in both the 10th and 11th ends against
defending Olympic champion Anette Norberg to clinch sport's biggest
prize
Bernard was up 6-4 in the 10th end and had to make a
routine takeout with her final stone. The crowd rose in anticipation of
the win, then gasped as Sweden's stone stuck in the rings, leaving
Norberg with an easy takeout of her own to force an extra frame. She
didn't miss.
China, the current world champion, beat Switzerland yesterday for the bronze medal.
