The N.H.L. general managers meetings ended yesterday with one major rule change – a rule to penalize blind-side hits to the head.

A unanimously approved resolution from the G.M.s will be presented to the Competition Committee later this spring for approval. If it’s approved there, then the Board of Governors would have to give it the final approval. If it gets approved (and it should), the rule will be enforced beginning next season.

Here’s what the resolution says:

“A lateral, back pressure or blind-side hit to an opponent where the head is targeted and/or is the principal point of contact is not permitted. A violation of the above will result in a minor or major penalty and shall be reviewed for possible supplemental discipline.”

A few days ago, I argued that the G.M.’s needed to ban these type of hits from the game. While I didn’t think a penalty would go far enough, this seems to be a step in the right direction. While the final language of the rule isn’t set, the rule above seems comprehensive. But there are some words in the rule I can’t agree with.

The first part of the rule I don’t like the fact a “minor” penalty can come from one of these hits. Only giving players a two-minute minor for a dangerous hit would be ridiculous. The possibility of a minor penalty shouldn’t exist. Don’t let the officials be subjective in these rulings. If a player hits another player with one of these blind-side hits, they should be put in the box for five minutes. No argument, no subjective calls. Blind-side hits to the head should only be five-minute majors.

The second part of the rule that I don’t agree with is the “possible” supplemental discipline. If a player decided to complete one of these hits, they’re clearly not worried about playing time or the consequences of their actions. The league should institute a mandatory, two-day suspension for blind-side hits to the head. Put this in context of the recent Matt Cooke – Marc Savard situation. Cooke delivered one of these hits to Savard, giving him a Grade II concussion. Savard was put on a stretcher and taken off the ice. The Bruins center, who was important to the Bruins playoff push, will probably miss the rest of the season. But Colin Campbell let him off without a suspension, which is ridiculous. By instituting a mandatory suspension, these hits will virtually disappear from the game. There still might be a blind-side hit to the head here and there, but it wouldn’t be so prevalent as it has become.

Overall, the G.M.s took a step in the right direction. However, they shouldn’t stop here. By making these two subtle changes, they can strengthen the rule and eliminate these dangerous hits from the game. I think Brian Burke says it best in the following quote:

“You can still hit this guy, you just can’t target his head,” Burke said. “Hitting in our game — it’s part of the fabric of our game. It’s what’s distinctive about hockey in North America. Anywhere else on the planet you go, there’s not as much hitting as there is in our game. We want to keep that, we want to preserve that. But we want to take out a dangerous hit where a guy targets a guy’s head. He can still reef the guy; he just can’t target his head.”

Hitting is a great part of the game. The G.M.s need to tweak the rule and strengthen it to preserve player safety. By doing that, hitting can still continue, but dangerous hits will be gone from the game. And that’s what all players, G.M.s and fans want. [runningwiththedevils2]

I must give credit when credit is due.  It appears Pittsburghians aren't total assholes and are in fact fellow true patriots.

Via the Freep:

Buffalo Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller (Michigan State) received a standing ovation in Pittsburgh tonight for leading the United States to an Olympic silver medal — cheers louder than those given the Penguins’ own Sidney Crosby.

Or maybe they were cheering Miller for the Hat Trick he allowed to Crosby back on February 1 in a 5-4 Penguins win?

Nope. They're not great big douchers.

Via SportsNet:

Some Penguins fans admittedly were conflicted, enthused by the United States' successful tournament -- the Americans were unbeaten before losing to Canada -- but too loyal to Crosby to boo the player who led Pittsburgh to the Stanley Cup last spring. {...}

[...] There was a mixed reaction when a replay of Crosby's game-winning goal was shown on the Mellon Arena scoreboard, with some cheering but also audible booing. Later in the game, when the replay was shown again during a break in play, there were noticeably more boos than cheers.

Good for Pittsburgh.

... Now back to hating them/being bitter about last year's Cup again.

Wow, it's already March! I can't believe the playoffs are a little over a month away. I hope everyone is (getting) over their Olympic hockey hangover because we're currently in the midst of the NHL trade deadline. The deadline is coming up on us on Wednesday, March 3 and some teams are expected to start announcing trades as soon as today.

Unfortunately, watching Olympic hockey has made me realize just how faulty the NHL actually is. It pains me that I haven't felt as connected to an NHL game (exluding Game 6 of the Bruins/Canadiens game in 2008) than I did watching either the USA or Germany. Maybe I'm still reeling from the games themselves, but you can tell there is definitely something missing in Gary Bettman's NHL.

The sad thing is, you can tell Bettman doesn't even care about the product in front of him because it doesn't present any green backs. During the US/Finland game, Bettman was interviewed by NBC and basically stated (paraphrasing) "We're a little bummed that it cuts into our schedule." That's about it. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I took away from his stupid interview.

The biggest thing I hope Gary takes away from these Olympic games is the commercial-less periods. The NHL has way to many commercials, interjecting ads during game play or missing out on some spots because they're running a commercial. Is Gary, the NHL and it's television partners aware of how irritating and frustrating it is as a fan to watch that? The reason the Olympics worked so well is because there was a visible ebb and flow of the game that was not interrupted by multiple car or Subway ads.

Unlike the Olympics, if a puck is iced or heads into the stands (especially on Versus) the television station will rattle off 2-3 commercials and interrupt the viewing experience. Why can't the NHL state "This period is brought to you with limited commercials by Subway" much like they did on NBC? Hell, you want some advertising, throw the Subway logo into the score ticker.

I also enjoyed the no-touch icing, but that isn't as important as the commercial-less periods.

There are many things that the NHL could do to improve its product (commercial-less periods, eliminating four teams, removing the trapezoid, etc) but all of this will once again fall on deaf ears. The NHL's problem begins at the top and slowly trickles its poison down the tree.

Hopefully Gary was paying attention to the 17.6 overnight Neilsen rating it received on NBC, because his league hasn't come close to that number in God knows how long.

"But it's in the middle of our schedule..."

So, I had this blog post all worked out ahead of time. A nice little gimmicky "Winners and Losers" column that I had pretty much written in my head over the weekend, pending the results of the fantastic Gold Medal Game. Then I go to write it and what do I see: Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports doing the same gimmick. For F^&k's sake.

Wait... did he do this for the Olympics, or hockey players at the Olympics? Hmm just the Olympics themselves? Well I guess I can go ahead and wirte about the Hockey Winners and Losers can't I? So I'm doing it. so here's your Hockey Winners and Losers of the Olympics.

Loser: Russia
No real way to sugar coat this one for the Ruskies. They looked awful. And not just against Canada. They beat exactly one good team in the tournament: The Czech Republic. FYI: The Czechs were the second most underwhelming team of the tourney. Losses to Slovakia and the debacle against Canada must have officials scratching their head.

Winner: The NHL(Part 1)
The NHL stars shown brightly this tournament, and NBC even decided to air a few of their games eventually.  Besides now having Ryan Miller and Zach Parise to bank on, they even got Sidney Crosby scoring the OT Gold Medal winner. Hell if Betteman were involved there would be cries of conspiracy from everywhere.

Loser: Gary Betteman
And doesn't that make everyone a winner? Seriously how in the world can Betteman even possibly justify trying to keep NHL players out of the Olympics in 2014? That 2 weeks of free advertising on a television show  more popular that American Idol is somehow bad for the league because... why? Between the positive energy of this tournament, and the Russians desperately wanting to atone for this debacle, the only reasonable way he can push for not using NHLers as Olympians is as a bargaining chip to be traded away. If he has any real intentions of not letting NHLers play he's an idiot, which is what everyone fears.

Of course Russ McKeon makes the argument anyways, and just look at how absurd it is. (Hat tip to cfCollision for the heads up on the article) He goes on for 7 paragraphs about how great this tournament was, and then finally gets to his first argument; that there could never be a once-in-a-lifetime upset like the Miracle on Ice. Of course even if we used amateurs, there's no communist countries using defacto professionals and the political tension of the cold war has long sense passed, so a Miracle on Ice couldn't be replicated for any number of reasons, the Amateurs aspect is about 15th on that list. Besides, if a team like Germany, Belarus or Latvia win the gold one year, you could still have that miracle, just not for the US.

McKeon also says this:

The NHL product has suffered, and will suffer more this season because it accommodated a long break to shut down its business in the middle of the season. The regular-season schedule has been compacted on both ends of the break, and that’s led to more injuries and less aesthetic pleasure when watching on many nights.

This is one of those statements that people keep repeating so much that everyone just believes it's a fact, when in reality this is an unsubstantiated opinion. How has the play suffered at all? In fact this year has been one of the best seasons of NHL hockey I can remember. There's a 5-way dogfight out west for the final playoff spot. Washington had a 300 game winning streak. The Coyotes and Avalanche have had rebound years that have been exciting. And the rookie class is among the best rookie classes in a long time, other than the year Ovechkin and Crosby came into the league, which was the equivalent of 2 rookie classes because of the lockout.  I also seriously doubt there's been more injuries this season than last season, or the season previous to that.

The Argument against using NHLers in the Olympics is ludicrous.

 

Winners: The NHL (Part 2)
Mike Babcock and Ron Wilson were 9-0 against every coach who didn't coach in the NHL. And they severely out-coached all of them, except maybe Slovakia. In which case Babcock only mildly out-coached the Slovak coach. Much is made of the talent disparity between the NHL and other leagues, but the coaching disparity is even greater, and that was out there for the entire world to see.

Losers: The KHL
KHL President Medvedev had the funniest line of the entire Olympics after Russia's loss to Canada, when he said "Maybe we didn't use enough KHL players" That's just tip-top comedy right there folks. I'm assuming he also said "Maybe the Titanic was too unsinkable" and "Maybe the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was too stiff." Russia's top league wants so badly to be the NHL's competitor that they will do anything to try and maintain the illusion that it's a comparable league. The Olympics were a disaster for that, and no amount of propaganda from the KHL president can overcome that harsh truth. The Russian KHLers were awful. Even the one's who could play in the NHL at a high level, like Alexander Radulov, were completely invisible. The only positive memory anyone from the KHL has from the Olympics is the Latvian team taking the Czechs to overtime. The three medal winners were 2 of all NHLers, and one of mostly NHLers and all NHL or former NHLers.

Before the Olympics I thought the KHL was somewhere above the AHL but below the NHL, nw I'd sure like to see how the Calder Cup winner fairs in a best-of-seven with the KHL winner. And while we're at it, KHL coaches looked to be second class compared to NHL coaches or even coaches like the Swedes.

Winner: Slovakia
Took Canada to the brink and beat the Russians. Their 4th place finish is their highest ever. They probably are disappointed at not medaling, but they have nothing to be ashamed of. Well played tourney for them. Blowing that 3-1 lead in the Bronze game probably will still hurt for a long time.

Winner: Sidney Crosby
The NHL's poster boy scored the defining goal of the tournament, forever cementing his legendary status in Canada and his reputation as clutch. This was on the heels of an awful tournament for him (and he didn't play well all tournament). That goal covered a lot of warts for him this tourney.

Loser: Alexander Ovechkin
What kind of personal transformation overcame Alex the Great at the games. I guess he was trying to be more business-like, but he came off surly, arrogant, and most of all like a poor loser. Shoving Camera's out of people's faces and being downright disrespectful of the non-Russian media is going to have effects. I love the way OV plays the game, and I even like his antics sometimes, mainly because it comes from within and it's genuine. But this will make people question whether it's all an act, and if this is genuine Ovechkin. As a global superstar, he needs to realize that he's always a representative of the game of hockey.

Winner: Ryan Miller
Most outstanding player of the tournament, and if any one player gained enough credibility to breakthrough as a household name... he's the guy. By the way, if anyone doesn't think this performance will influence Vezina voting they are downright crazy That trophy is his to lose now.

Winner: Shea Weber
The guy shot the puck THROUGH THE DAMN NETTING! To go along with his gold medal he also received an over-sized stuffed animal that he gave to his sweetheart.

Loser: Brian Rafalski
For the same reason Crosby is a winner, Rafalski is a loser. Brian Rafalski is a great American Defenseman who was overshadowed by his Hall of Fame teammates (Lidstrom, Stevens, Neidermeyer) for so long that no one appreciated how good he is. He also had a brilliant tournament and was the USAs best skater in their win over Canada in the prelims, and likely the tournament.

But whenever I hear Rafalski's name from now on, All I'll be able to remember is his miserably failed clear that led to Toews goal. Or his putrid pass to Kesler on the powerplay that symbolized the struggles America was having in Yesterdays game. Or His inability to track Crosby leading directly to Crosby's goal and America's defeat. Or one of the other 35 turnovers he had yesterday. It's not really fair, because Rafalski was great all tourney and had his worst game (ever, not just in the Olympics) at the worst possible time. But he was USA's worst player Sunday. Luckily his defensive miscues were subtle enough that he's not going to be blamed for the loss like Scott Norwood or Bill Buckner. But he was directly responsible for 2 goals against in a 3-2OT loss. Still "Rafalski" is going to conjure up yesterdays kick-to-the-gut feelings every time I hear it.

Winner: Zack Parise
One of 2 breakout players of the tournament. He may be able to parlay this success into some endorsement opportunities, and hopefully the NHL will realize they have a cupboard full of stars other than Crosby and Ovechkin and star marketing them as well. He's even in the Eastern Conference.  He, teamed with Langenbrunner and Paul Stastny, were the best line in the tournament, and it really wasn't close. He was outstanding. Naturally NBC has no Devils games scheduled for the rest of the season

Loser: The Trapezoid
Why are we restricting goalies access to the puck again? There were a ton of goals caused by goalies being unable to play the puck. Martin Brodeur (whom the trapezoid is essentially named for) and Miikka Kiprusoff were particularly awful. If goalies handle like that it's time to ditch the rule.

Winner: Jonas Hiller
Sensational tournament for the Ducks goaltender. The Swiss are a dangerous team, almost solely because of him.

Loser: Martin Brodeur
I said it after the game, but it bears repeating: Marty's last two big games were USA and Game 7 vs CAR. He was the weak link in both of these. Do you know who was never the weak link in two consecutive big games: Patrick Roy. His claim to "Best of all time" is weaker now than before the Olympics.

Winner: Teemu Selanne
He might just have the best international career of all time. The Finnish Flash probably isn't getting the due he deserves, but he went out with a hard-earned Bronze.

Winner: USA Hockey
The youngest team in the tournament played nearly flawless hockey for two weeks. Before the tourney there were two tiers of teams: The top tier was Russia, Canada and Sweden and the second tier was USA, Finland and the Czechs. Now USA is unquestionably in the top tier, and every team will fear playing them. I'm betting Canada wants no part of Team USA anytime soon. USA Hockey looks set for a long time.

Winner: Canada
Yeah so this one is self-explanatory, since they actually, you know, won and all.

Jibblescribbits blogs about the Colorado Avalanche over at his self-titled bloguin blog: Jibblescribbits

A fantastic overtime period ended suddenly when Jarome Iginla while falling put the puck towards the net and Sidney Crosby scooped up the puck to beat Ryan Miller.  Despite allowing the gold-medal winning goal, Ryan Miller is the tournament MVP.

Congratulations to team Canada on joining the ranks of nations defending the home soil with a hockey gold medal. [olympichockeyhblog]

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Game Thoughts

It took overtime, but Canada avenged their only loss of the tournament topping team USA in the gold medal game and putting a blemish on the record of America's otherwise outstanding netminder.

Ryan Miller played phenomenally. But in the end the spotlight was more a glare. The tournament MVP carried his team to the gold medal game. He kept them in the contest as they fell behind early. But in the extra time, the light shined brightest on the face of the National Hockey League and if you weren't paying attention, that Sports Illustrated cover jinx is dead.

In Pittsburgh he's the most popular player since his boss, Mario Lemieux. Sidney Crosby has a Stanley Cup. He now has a gold medal. And as if it was ever in doubt, he'll drink for free at every watering hole in Canada for the rest of his life. That's what Gold Medal Winning goals mean.

An even sixty minutes was extended for another 7:40, but the difference was Crosby who took a beautiful pass from Jarome Iginla and slid it under Ryan Miller's pads. Pandemonium ensued as the crowd at Canada Hockey Place

The victory meant that Canada would join the United States as the only nations to win the Gold Medal on their home ice. Team USA had won gold medals when the games were held in Squaw Valley, California in 1960 and more famously in 1980 in Lake Placid's Miracle on Ice. Canada denied America the honor eight years ago when they took home the gold in the Salt Lake City games.

Scoring Summary

• 7:40 Sidney Crosby from Jarome Iginla

Penalties

No Penalties in the Overtime

Shots

Canada 6
USA 4

Joe Tetreault blogs about sports, culture, business/technology and current events at TetreaultVision in addition to being the Editor for Bloguin's Olympic Hockey Blog.

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Gold Medal Game: USA vs. Canada - February 28, 2010 12:00pm PST - Canada Hockey Place

The gold medal matchup comes down to a rematch between Team USA and Team Canada. This is a game for bragging rights for both the players and their fans. This game is so big that NBC will air this game live. Canada would like to apologize to people that our country is shutting down for three hours between 12pm and 3pm as we will be tuned in to watch the game. Even if you don't like hockey, you should be watching it as this may turn out to be one of those games that we talk about for a long time. This may also be the last hockey game in the Olympics that the NHL participates in.

Only 7 minutes into the third period of the Canada vs. Slovakia semi-final on friday night, the home crowd chanted "We want U-S-A" and they got what they wished for, it's a Canada vs. USA gold medal game.

Brian Burke said that "A gold medal immortalizes your team," and he's right, no matter which team wins today, they will be remembered. Americans want a "Millercle" and Canadians expect nothing but gold, tough stakes there for either team.

"It's fun," said Luongo to Canwest. "You come out on the ice, you see everyone screaming and wearing red. It's fun to be a part of that and it's an experience you probably won't ever get to live again.

"I'm just looking forward tomorrow and the craziness in the building."

Both teams will most likely have the same game plan coming in to this game with both teams to coming out hard in the first 10 minutes to set the tone for the rest of the game. The first goal scored may end up being the most important one. Depending on what happens after the first 10 minutes we may see both teams tighten up and play a more responsible game.

Team USA brings on two things to todays game: an excellent goaltender and speed in their young players. Brian Burke has been saying that his team was the underdog coming into the tournament icing the youngest team, but can you really consider them the underdogs today? They have won all their games, already beaten the Canadians and thumped the Finns in the semi's to advance to this game. The US have gotten better, especially now so that Patrick Kane scored 2 goals in the last game.

Team USA will be home team in the game, so they will have the advantage of last change. They will also have an edge with regards to having the same start time throughout the games with today's game starting at 12pm. As many hockey players a creatures of habit, being adjusted to eating breakfast before the game for the last 2 weeks may help the Americans.

Crosby has had a quiet games so far, but even if his effort doesn't show up on the score sheet, you can see that he's doing his part. His line with Staal and Iginla will draw the top defensive pairings to try shut them down. The good thing about Canada is that they don't have just one great line, they have four. They have had scoring come from their Sharks line of Heatley, Thornton and Marleau or from their line of Getzlaf, Perry and Morrow. And their line of Toews, Nash and Richards have been shutting down top lines as well as contributing the odd goal. Team Canada will be the away team, so expect Babcock to try to matchup the defensive pairing of Niedermayer and Weber against the Parise line of the USA.

In the Olympics having a great goaltender in net who is hot can be the key to winning. If Ryan Miller can win tonight's game with a hot goaltending performance he is poised to become a household name in the US. At the other end of the rink, Roberto Luongo looks to cement his place in Canadian hockey history. A win tonight will silence the Luongo critics (and he has many of them) and prove that he is an elite goaltender.

Never before has a host nation won so many gold medals in a Winter Games. Going from a country who has never won gold at home, last night with a win in men's curling ,Team Canada matched a gold medal record for countries at the Winter Olympics at 13 gold medals. Canada is now poised to break that record with a gold in hockey, it's kinda poetic if it happens in the men's hockey game. The fans of Team Canada will live and die by each moment in the game, and if they lose, may drown all their sorrows in beer. As a precaution to curb the open consumption of alcohol, the city of Vancouver is having liquor stores in the downtown area close at 2pm.

The hometown advantage of the crowd will obviously go to Canada today shouting "Go Canada Go" and cheers of "Louuuuuuu" every time Luongo makes a save. But Team USA had the home crowd when they played in Salt Lake City in 2002, and they ended up losing to Team Canada. The Americans would love to do the same to Team Canada tomorrow.

May the best team win.

 

Vancity Canuck writes about the Vancouver Canucks at Benched Whale and the Tampa Bay Lightning at The Hockey Bay Blog in addition to her work on Bloguin's Olympic Hockey Blog.

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Roberto Luongo will have the nation's hopes for a gold medal on his shoulders today. This is the biggest game in his career thus far. Back in Salt Lake in 2002 Martin Brodeur was the starter in goal for their gold medal win. This time round, Brodeur was expected to be the goalie for Team Canada again. He had the chance but he crumbled. In a 5-3 loss to the United States, Brodeur put Babcock in a position where he had to make a goalie change. Luongo was tapped on the shoulder and told he would be the starter for Team Canada.

Luongo now faces the pressure and expectations of his whole country to play a better game than Ryan Miller.

Luongo is no stranger to being a starter for Canada as he has won gold before in World Championships in 2003 and 2004, and silver in 2005. But an Olympic win with Team Canada on home ice will cement a legacy of Luongo being an elite goalie for Canada.

Luongo has had his faults, like that Visnovsky goal by Slovakia on Friday night. Canuck fans know that Luongo is a better goalie than that, he should have been right up against the post to stop that goal. Or last year in the playoffs against the Chicago Blackhawks, Luongo let in 7 goals in a 7-5 loss in the sixth and deciding game of the series. Three of those goals came from Team USA's Patrick Kane. Luongo was then interviewed on camera following the loss where he became teary-eyed. Anger from the fans and ridicule from hockey media and opposing fans soon followed after that video was aired.

Some critics think Luongo is overrated as a goalie, overpaid, and has not been able to win a big game.

Now is Luongo's chance to erase all that. If Luongo and Team Canada can win tomorrow's game, Luongo will begin a legacy. He was given a chance to step out of Brodeur's shadow when he got to start against Team Germany. In the game against Russia, Luongo did not have to do much with Russia not being able to create offense against the Canadians. But in the game against Slovakia, he let in a terrible goal from Visnovsky but came back in the final minute of the period to make an amazing save with his glove on Demitra that, with a win tomorrow could be looked at as the save of his life.

So Luongo now has the chance of his life. He doesn't have to be perfect in tomorrow's game. He doesn't have to get a shutout, no one expects that. He does have to elevate his game and makes the saves when he needs to.

Vancity Canuck writes about the Vancouver Canucks at Benched Whale and the Tampa Bay Lightning at The Hockey Bay Blog in addition to her work on Bloguin's Olympic Hockey Blog.

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Coming off the heels of Scott Van Pelt having an embarrassing and somewhat inappropriate interview with Howard Stern prankster Captain Janks, MSNBC has now followed suit with an interview with who they believed was USA Goalie and budding star, Ryan Miller.

There were a couple tells such as the callers voice and him mislabeling the opponent from today's game as "Russia", yet the prank caller was smooth enough to get through the call without blowing his cover. It was only later that MSNBC brought on the real Ryan Miller and apologized for the improper vetting of the previous caller. Below is video footage of the incident.

The incident may only add to Miller's new-found star power. Previous to the Olympics Miller was a well respected goalie, but buried in Buffalo of wasteland for mainstream notoriety. Miller's prolific net-minding for the Red, White, and Blue has extended his reach to a larger base of fans outside of hockey.  He now sits a win away from potentially entering the very small club of elite hockey players that star power cross over.  He'll have to earn it though as he'll have to defeat a loaded Canada team for the second time in a week, a task worthy of all the spoils that could come with a possible win.

In a game that had been talked about being a possible gold medal matchup, Team Canada destroyed the Russians tonight 7-3. With two star studded teams going head to head tonight, it was a meeting between the teams where no matter who lost, they would be going home to much criticism from their countries. But instead of these two superpowers who were hyped to be a one of the most exciting games between two teams thought to be fairly even in strenghts, the game was anything but even. The game was exciting, yes, if you were cheering for Team Canada.

The Canadians came out hard in the first period with strong forechecking, physical play and shots...lots of shots. The Canadians outshot the Russians 21 to 12 in the first period, getting their first goal only 2 minutes and 21 seconds in to the game. It was set up by Dan Boyle after he walked in to the Russian zone undressing the Russians and from behind the net passed to Ryan Getzlaf for the goal. By the end of 20 minutes, Team Canada was up 4-1 with goals from Getzlaf, Boyle, Nash and Morrow.

Nabokov was pulled in the second period after letting in Corey Perry and Shea Weber's goal. Nabokov had let in 6 goals on 23 shots in 24 minutes of play. There is no doubt that Nabokov was less stellar, far from that, he was terrible but he was only part of Russia's problem. His defence looked overwhelmed by the waves of the Canadian offense, the KHL players looked out of place and their NHL superstar forwards were pathetic. By the time that Bryzgalov went in net, the score was already 6-1 and there was little hope that the Russians could come back.

There was plenty of things that Canada did right in this game. The checking line of Nash, Toews and Richards shut down Ovechkin's line  restricting him to just 2 shots on net. Nash brought his physical game against Ovechkin and Shea Weber had a huge hit on Maxim Afinogenov. They outshot the Russians 42 to 28 and got a powerplay goal. Roberto Luongo played average with some of the goals he let due to a screens set up in front of him, but he came up with some key saves when he needed to.

Canada will now face the winner of tonight's last quaterfinal of Sweden vs. Slovakia on Friday at 6:30pm PST in the semifinal

Vancity Canuck writes about the Vancouver Canucks at Benched Whale and the Tampa Bay Lightning at The Hockey Bay Blog in addition to her work on Bloguin's Olympic Hockey Blog.

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Early on, we declared that America's medal hopes rested on the shoulders of East Lansing, Michigan's Ryan Miller.  He's proving worthy of the challenge.  His 19 save effort in the quarterfinals kept a gritty Swiss team off the board and gave his teammates enough time to rally and put the puck in the net.

Jonas Hiller, Switzerland's fantastic goalie complicated that latter task.  He was nothing short of brilliant in fending of US scoring opportunities for 42 minutes.  He stopped 42 of the 43 shots he faced and kept his nation's hopes alive to the very end of the contest.

To solve Hiller Team USA needed a man advantage.  They got one less than two minutes into the final period.  With Philippe Furrer banished to the box for tripping, the US went on the attack.  Zach Parise scored his first goal twelve seconds into the power play.  Brian Raflaski (where have I heard that name before) and Paul Stastny assisted on the score.

As time ran down, and fans edged closer to the action, the one goal lead seemed far too little.  The Swiss were pressing, desperate to force overtime when four on four hockey meant a more open style of play and one fewer American throwing himself into a check.  They yanked Hiller as time bled out.

But Parise made the Swiss pay for their daring.  With twelve seconds to go, he iced the game, putting the puck in the unguarded Swiss net.

The complexion of the game was almost altered with time expiring in the second period.  Team USA was skating circles around the Swiss for much of the game.  It appeared that Team USA had scored in the waning seconds.  But the goal was disallowed with the officials saying time had expired before the puck crossed the goal line.  Could have been a much different game if the goal had not been disallowed. Another .02 and it was probably a goal, it was that close.

Switzerland put up a good fight but they just didn't have anywhere near the offense necessary to beat Miller and the US.

Crafting a shutout has been a challenge for US netminders.  Miller snapped an eight year drought by stopping 19 shots and holding the fort.  It was two Olympics ago in Salt Lake City in the quarterfinal round when Mike Richter blanked Germany.  That US team went on to win the silver, losing to Canada in the gold medal game.  This year's entrant can do no worse than play for a medal. 

To earn the right to play for Gold, Team USA must topple the winner of the Finland-Czech Republic game set to begin at 7:00 pm in Vancouver (10:00 pm eastern time).  We'll have a preview of the semifinal matchup posted tomorrow.