USA Hockey Upsets Team Canada

The United States hockey team, competing in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, upset tournament favorite and home side Canada on Sunday night, in a 5-3 thriller of a game.

A young American squad, led by three olympic veterans all scoring goals including defenseman Brian Rafalski, Chris Drury, and Jamie Langdenbrunner, fought off a Canadian side that tied the game twice and stayed close throughout the game.

Ryan Miller made 42 saves in a lights-out performance that included a bevy of incredible stops, including the save of the tournament in flurry of the dying minutes while the Americans were hanging on to a 4-3 lead before Phil Kesler whacked in the game-clinching goal on the empty net.

The Canadians seemed to be cruising through the first two periods, content with turning on the burners when they had to in order to tie the game through Eric Staal and again through Danny Heatley, who leads the tournament with 4 goals along with USA's Rafalski, who netted two in this game.

The Americans led at every intermission, 2-1 after the first period and 3-2 after the second, but the viewer always felt that the depth of talent on Canada's roster suggested they could turn on the pressure whenever they wanted to. Unfortunately for them, it came too late.

Canada began the third period needing to kill off three consecutive penalties and the U.S. capitalized making it 4-2 with just under 13 minutes left. The Canadian's finally kicked into gear and the firing squad escalated on U.S. goalie Miller. While one goal by Sidney Crosby did slip by, Miller was up to the task, however, and made several amazing saves to preserve victory for the red, white, and blue.

This border matchup was sure to be a bruiser and it didn't disappoint as the two squads made up entirely of NHL players left it all on the ice. There was hard skating, huge hits, and immense passion on display as the teams battled for the top slot in Group A.

The spoils of the game for USA, are a first round bye in the playoffs where they will meet the winner of a game between Switzerland and Belarus. Canada will face Germany for the right to face another arch-rival; the Russians.

2010 Winter Olympics - Men's Ice Hockey

While the 2010 Winter Olympic's opening ceremony was four days ago, the sport I've been waiting to see has it's first games being played today.

The men's ice hockey tournament begins today when teams in Group A face off against one another, including USA vs Switzerland and later Canada vs Norway. The teams in Group B are Russia and Latvia (who also play one another today), Czech Republic, and Slovakia while Group C is comprised of Sweden, Finland, Belarus, and Germany.

As a Buffalo Sabres fan I am excited to see Ryan Miller as the starting goalie for Team USA, as well as Henrik Tallinder (Sweden), Toni Lydman (Finland), Andrej Sekera (Slovakia), and Jochen Hecht (Germany). You Washington Capitols fans may have a harder time rooting for your home nation as both Alexander Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, and Semyon Varlamov are on the Russian roster. Other Caps competing are Tomas Fleischmann (Czech Republic) and Nicklas Backstrom (Sweden).

Olympic ice hockey is great because not only do you get to see great NHL veterans you wouldn't normally get to see play together, but you also are able to see emerging young talent from "across the pond" and former NHL stars who are now back playing in Europe such as Jaromir Jagr (Czech Republic), Sergei Federov (Russia), and Peter Forsberg (Sweden).

Here's the scheduled Group A games for the United States: Switzerland (Feb 16 at 12 pm), Norway (Feb 18 at 12 pm), and Canada (Feb 21 at 4:45 pm).