Before we get to a couple quick points about Olympic Hockey so far, check out ( / rewatch) this clip of Pavol Demitra’s shootout winning goal in Slovakia’s 2-1 win over Russia last night (click on the pic below to watch – Demitra comes on at 1:55, but be sure to check out the amazing super slo-mo at 2:41):
Some thoughts on the first few Olympic games:
– During NBC’s postgame of Canada’s shootout win over Switzerland, one of the analysts (forget who) waxed poetic that Mike Babcock’s decision to re-use Crosby in the shootout was his statement to Crosby that “you’re gonna be the one who has to carry us to Gold.” I understand that Crosby’s become the personification of Canada’s ravenous Gold medal addiction, but the idea that Crosby or anyone else has to carry the goddamn Canadian Olympic Team — a squad comprised of 15 or so of the world’s top 25 players — is hilarious, and foreshadows exactly how bad the anti-Crosby firestorm is gonna be if this team loses in the Elimination Round.
For this reason, while I’d love to see the U.S. go all the way, I’m thinking it’d just be a lot easier on all of us if Canada wins so we don’t have to deal with a 3.8 million square mile chunk of land pissed off at the Penguin captain for the rest of eternity. The East Coast of the U.S. is plenty big enough.
Moving along…
