In about an hour, Canada and U.S. will be dropping the puck in the women's version. These teams have already met in Sochi where the Canadians took home their first victory against United States in the last five tries. This reestablished the dominance of Canada in women's hockey. Some people saw it as even though Canada lost many exhibitions games to the U.S., Olympics are a different animal. It has become like the men where Canada put its hands all over the gold medal. They have won in 2002, 2006 and 2010 beating United States a couple teams along with one victory over Sweden. They are the cream of the crop when it comes to international women's hockey and can the United States end its reign of dominance?
Signs point to yes even though Canada notched a victory against the Americans earlier in Sochi. It is a contrasting style game with United States being more of a finesse team and Canada having a bruising style to them. There is no telling what will actually happen in this one. Gold medal games along with World Cup final and other international team competitions are truly unpredictable. It could go as expected with some of the stars of the team like Amanda Kessel and Brianna Decker, or something out of the ordinary ends up happening like what happens at the bronze medal game early today.
As for the men, the importance of United States and Canada is very high and quite possibly bigger than people might give it credit for right now. The narrative today is United States might have a record-long streak of Stanley Cup winners with their organizations, but a majority of their players are Canadians. Look Chicago Blackhawks, the recent Stanley Cup winner, they have Patrick Kane, sure, but most of their star players, Johnathan Toews, Patrick Sharp and Duncan Keith are all Canadian. 52 percent of the NHL is filled with Canadians with about 22 percent being Americans. If United States were to win this game and then take home the gold, it could have an impact on the youth of America moving forward maybe pushing more children into ice hockey. 1980 had that sort of impact, and it is hard not to look past the slight comparisons with Lake Placid.
Yes, both of these teams are loaded with professional athletes. Yes, there is no sort of political element to the it. But when it comes down to it, Canada is the impossible opponent. United States struggled in the last decade against them in international competition, and even if they beat them, one time like The Little Giants speech, this would be huge for United States hockey. The eerie thing is U.S-USSR was a semifinal game where they took on Finland in the gold medal game. The same could happen in 2014 if the Fins were able to take down the Swedes in the other semifinal game Friday.
If U.S. can score two wins against Canada, our neighbors to the north might explode as hockey is their life blood. They could probably take the U.S. winning one, but if they were to complete a sweep plus the Ice Dancing gold for United States, Canada might go into a state of catatonic shock. Either way, it is an exciting time to be a resident of North America.
Charlie.
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