The Spin

Appropriately, given the location, it was as though an Iron Curtain descended across the Team Canada blueline.

Thou shall not pass.

And the Americans, scorers of 20 goals in their previous four Olympic matches, just couldn't figure out how to do just that. In the end, Carey Price delivered the goods with 31 saves in a taut 1-0 Canadian win, but he's had more quality chances to deal with in various five-minute segments this season with the Montreal Canadiens.

Team Canada was, quite simply suffocating. This was nothing like the 6-5 win in '72 or the 6-5 win in '87. This wasn't about Canadian firepower, but rather about Canadian committment to details and selflessness.

Team Canada has now won three straight games by one goal - 2-1 over Finland, 2-1 over Latvia and 1-0 over the Americans - and shown a remarkable level of defensive excellence along the way.

The Americans may have had 31 shots, but they didn't have many high-quality chances, the kind you need to beat the goalies you confront at the Olympic Games.

U.S. defenceman John Carlson - the same fellow who broke our hearts at the world juniors in Saskatoon a couple of years back - walked into the slot in the first period and forced Price to make a nice glove save.

And that might have been the best chance of the game for the Americans.

Jamie Benn, on a re-direction of a clever goalmouth shot/pass from Jay Bouwmeester, gave Canada a lead in the second. After that, it was as though there were two Canadian checkers to every one American attacker, backside pressure at all times, and the talented U.S. struggled desperately to make clean entries into the Canadian zone against a Mike Babcock-coached team that played a nearly perfect positional game.

Given that L.A. Kings goalie Jonathan Quick was dazzling in the American crease, and given that the Canadians couldn't come up with a second goal, that defensive effort had to be perfect. Even when Quick was pulled for an extra attacker in the final minute, the U.S. couldn't organize one clean, unobstructed scoring chance.

The victory secured Canada's 25th medal of these Olympics, as Team Canada is guaranteed at least a silver against the Swedes on Sunday. Over the past three days, however, there's been a gold rush for Canada, and with the Swedes going into that game without Henrik Sedin and Henrik Zetterberg, Canada will be favoured.

Price, meanwhile, has allowed only two goals in the Olympics, paying back the vote of confidence the Canadian coaching staff showed in him by giving him the No. 1 job ahead of Roberto Luongo, who had backstopped Canada to a gold medal in Vancouver four years earlier.

"I'm truly blessed to be where I'm at. I'm truly grateful for all the support," said Price.

The Canadian blueline pairs - Duncan Keith-Shea Weber, Drew Doughty-Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Bouwmeester-Pietrangelo - made few puck errors, while the defensive excellence of players like Benn, Jeff Carter, Patrice Bergeron and Jonathan Toews shone on the Canadian side.

Maple Leaf winger Phil Kessel had a few chances, but nothing great, and was forced to take a penalty late to difuse a potential Chris Kunitz scoring chance. The much-scrutinized combination of Kunitz and Crosby was goal-less for the fifth straight game, but they, along with Bergeron, were very effective in being able to sustain pressure in the U.S. zone.

The Canadian women's team, winners of gold in a historic comeback against the U.S. 24 hours earlier, left a note of encouragement in the Team Canada dressing room, and the avalanche of gold medals since Wednesday undoubtedly steeled the collective will of the Canadians that the semifinals would be a bad place to stop their Sochi tournament.

This is something different. After winning gold in 2002, Canada stumbled badly in Turin. Now, after winning gold in Vancouver, there has been no stumble, although there was a Latvian scare, to be sure.

Since NHLers started participating in the Olympics, no country has won consecutive gold medals. Now, Canada has a shot at winning back-to-back gold medals in men's hockey for the first time since the triumph in at the 1948 St. Moritz Games was followed up by gold in Oslo four years later.

Six decades have passed. Time for another back-to-backer, wouldn't you say?

Perhaps a third team of golden girls in less than two days was too much for Canada to ask.

It sure seemed that way.

After Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse started it on Wednesday and Jennifer Jones and her Manitoba rink continued Thursday in Sochi, the Canadian national women’s looked like they wouldn’t be able to finish the hat trick in the gold medal game against their hated rivals from United States.

After 56 minutes, Team Canada truly looked dead in the water.

And yet, this band of extraordinary women, dominated most of the year by the Americans, somehow pulled it off in style with a come-from-behind 3-2 overtime triumph, perhaps delivering what will come to be regarded as the most sensational Olympic hockey victory ever for Canada by a men’s or women’s team.

Marie-Phillipe Poulin tied the game with 55 seconds left in regulation, then won it with a power play goal at 8:10 of overtime to end an absolutely wild game.

“It’s the best feeling ever,” said Poulin. “It’s like a dream come true. Now we know what we worked all year for.”

Poulin had scored twice four years earlier in Vancouver when Canada had beaten the U.S. for the gold, and came through again for head coach Kevin Dineen, who only took over the Canadian women’s team o n Dec. 17 after he’d been fired by the NHL Florida Panthers and Dan Church had quit as the national team’s coach.

Poulin’s heroics were part of an unpredictable series of events in the crucial minutes. Just before she tied the game in the third, Canada had pulled goalie Shannon Szabados for an extra attacker. A linesman accidentally interfered with Catherine Ward, and the U.S. took a shot at the abandoned Canadian net.

And hit the left post.

Moments later, Poulin took a pass from Rebecca Johnston and beat Jesse Vetter in the U.S. to create overtime.

In OT, Szabados made a series of spectacular saves, and then Ward was penalized for cross-checking. Six seconds into the U.S. power play, however, the Americans were penalized for slashing the pads of Szabados, a decidedly weak call.

Just over a minute after that, 35-year-old Hayley Wickenheiser took off on a clear breakaway with the two teams playing with three skaters aside, and was tripped up from behind by American forward Hilary Knight.

Incredibly, the British referee did not call a penalty shot, but instead penalized Knight for cross-checking, off all things.

That was the opening Canada needed. After working the puck around, Poulin got the puck to the left of the U.S. net, and with Vetter too exhausted to cross the crease one last time, found the open net for the historic Canadian triumph.

Wickenheiser, almost certainly in her last Olympics after her storied career , won her fourth Olympic gold medal along with Caroline Ouellette and Jayna Hefford.

Canada had won gold over the Americans at the last three Olympics, but this time the younger, faster U.S. squad built a taut 2-0 lead in the latest clash between the world’s two best female hockey nations.

Too many penalties by the defending gold medallists and a crucial 5-on-3 Canadian power play in the second period that didn’t produce a goal looked to have Canada on the edge of defeat. The Americans defended tenaciously, but with 3:26 left in the third, Brianne Jenner roared down the left wing and bounced a shot off the knee of an American defenceman and past Vetter to key the Canadian comeback.

After Poulin tied it, the Americans had at least five good chances to win the game. But the bad slashing call ended their 4-on-3 power play, and then Canada capitalized when given the same chance.

Nobody, ladies and gentlemen, will be talking about kicking women’s hockey out of the Olympics again. Not after this. Not after a fabulous gold medal game followed an almost equally excited bronze medal triumph by Switzerland over Sweden.

This game has growing to do. But it made history – again – today.

Narrowly, just barely, Team Canada avoided the biggest hockey pratfall in our history today.

No wonder there will be no shortage of people suggesting the Americans will absolutely trample the Canadians when the two countries meet on Friday in the semifinals of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

The U.S., you see, have looked like the best team in this year’s Olympic tournament with Maple Leaf winger Phil Kessel leading the way, and they looked just like that again today in a dominant 5-2 victory over the Czech Republic.

Canada? Sidney Crosby and Co. were absolutely life and death to get past the mighty Latvians, and needed a third period power play goal from Shea Weber to produce a slender 2-1 win.

Actually, they needed some good defensive work after that, including a big shot block from Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, to secure the triumph.

It wasn’t like the Latvians played Canada on even terms. They were outshot 57-16 and outplayed in every facet of the game. But 21-year-old Tampa Bay draft pick Kristers Gudlevskis nearly etched his name into hockey history with a spectacular, gutsy goaltending performance.

What Vladimir Dzurilla almost did to Canada in ’76, Gudlevskis almost did today.

By the end, he was exhausted, looking more like a finisher at the Boston Marathon than a goaltender in an Olympic hockey game. Gudlevskis appeared to be suffering from either dehydration or some sort of rubber allergy in the third as the Canadians relentlessly pelted him with shot after shot.

Finally, with just under seven minutes remaining, Weber’s low, 50-foot slapshot eluded the Latvian netminder inside the left post, and Canada had managed to whistle past this particular shinny graveyard. Once again, all the big Canadian scoring guns were silent, including Crosby, who hasn’t scored a goal in Sochi.

Kessel, meanwhile, scored his fifth goal of the Olympics – Canadian forwards have collectively scored six – as the U.S. scored early and built a 5-1 lead against an unpredictable Czech team that would have needed much better goaltending than they received from Winnipeg Jets netminder Ondrej Pavelec to have a shot at a victory.

The Americans, of course, lost the gold medal game to Canada at both the 2002 and 2010 Winter Games. But they did beat Canada in the final of the 1996 World Cup, and while that was a long time ago and all the players are retired, there’s a similar feeling in some ways about these Olympics, as though the Amerks just seem to have their act together in a way Canada doesn’t.

But we’ll see. We’re down to four teams – Sweden and Finland will meet in the other semi – after the Russians went down 3-1 in ignominious fashion to the Finns.

Any of the Final Four could win it, including the Finns, who made the gold medal game in Turin eight years ago but lost to their arch-rivals from Sweden. Sweden came into Sochi as the favourite to many, but lost Henrik Sedin before the Olympics and Henrik Zetterberg after the tournament began.

Canada has had an awful time scoring in this tournament, while the Americans seem to have more than enough offensive firepower. On Friday, before what promises to be a massive international TV audience, that equation will have to change for Canada to have a shot at defending its Olympic hockey title.

More:

Team Canada edges Latvia, sets Olympic hockey semifinal date with U.S

Team Canada’s John Tavares to miss remainder of Olympics with injury

Russia’s early elimination in hockey makes Olympics a failure for hosts: Kelly

No Swiss nightmare for Canada.

Instead of dealing with a tricky hockey middleweight in Switzerland in the men’s Olympic hockey competition, Team Canada will instead face a featherweight in Latvia, coached by the always newsworthy Ted Nolan.

One suggests this turn of events will bring no complaints from Sidney Crosby and Company.

Latvia, 12 ^th in the last Olympic hockey competition, stunned the Swiss today by a 3-1 score in Sochi to advance to the quarterfinal round against Canada. Most had anticipated a Swiss victory and an intriguing collision with Canada after Switzerland had bested the might Canadians eight years ago in Turin and forced them to a shootout in the 2010 Games in Vancouver.

The Swiss, however, were a team that could defend but do little else, only scoring three goals in four games in Sochi.

The four quarterfinal matchups on Wednesday, then, will be Canada-Latvia, United States-Czech Republic, Sweden-Slovenia and Russia-Finland.

Extraordinary. Latvia and Slovenia are both Olympic hockey quarterfinalists in the same year.

The Latvians were led by 41-year-old defenceman Sandis Ozolinsh, who won the Stanley Cup 18 years ago with the Colorado Avalanche. Along with Buffalo centre Zemgus Girgensons and former Ottawa Senator forward Kaspars Daugavins, the Latvians scored twice in the first period on Swiss netminder Jonas Hiller, and that was all they needed to secure a chance to play Canada.

While there is lots of political history between Canada and Latvia – Canada never recognized the occupation of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union and was the first G-7 country to recognize Latvian independence in 1991 – there isn’t much in hockey.

The only Olympic hockey game between the two nations was in 1936 – Canada won 11-0 – and they have occasionally sparred in the world championships.

The Swiss had nine NHL players to only one for Latvia (Girgensons), but the favourites could only put one puck behind netminder Edgars Marsalskis. The top line of Daugavins, Girgensons and Martin Karsums was very good for Latvia, but Karsums went down in the third period with an apparent knee injury.

Nolan has been the head coach of the Latvian national team since August, 2011, and agreed to again become the head coach of the Buffalo Sabres earlier this season only with the condition he could guide Latvia at the Sochi Games.

A Memorial Cup champion and former NHL coach-of-the-year, Nolan never was asked to coach a Canadian team at any level of international competition.

Now he’ll take an exhausted Latvian team into an Olympic clash with the powerful, unbeaten Canadians.

All hail the new shootout king.

A terrific Olympic hockey joust between the Americans and Russians ended with St. Louis Blues forward T.J. Oshie dominating the rollicking, eight-round shootout with five consecutive attempts and six shots in all, scoring on four of them to give the unbeaten U.S. a 3-2 triumph.

This should spawn an interesting debate: which is better, the NHL style of shootout or the IIHF style? In the NHL, a shooter can only go once until all the players on his team have had at least one attempt.

Internationally, after the first three shootout attempts, teams can use the same player or players in whatever order they choose. Canadians might remember Jonathan Toews being used in this way one year to help win the 2007 world juniors. But he only shot three times.

Back at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, the Russians used Alex Ovechkin three times, but lost in a shootout to Slovakia.

This time, the Americans and Oshie took it to a whole different level. After James van Riemsdyk and Joe Pavelski each took an attempt, it was all Oshie all the time, while the Russians leaned on Pavel Datsyuk and former NHLer Ilya Kovalchuk. Truth be told, Oshie could have scored on all six attempts.

On one, he deked reigning Vezina Trophy winner Sergei Bobrovsky out of his jockstrap, but flip the puck over the net.

On the other miss, he made a great backhand move, but a lunging Bobrovsky, beaten again, just got the blade of his goal stick out to stop the puck going into the open side.

The four shots Oshie made we all beauties, including the five-hole shot to win it on Bobrovsky, who will have nightmares featuring the dynamic Blues forward. Given what Oshie did, it makes you wonder if anyone will want to get into a shootout with the Americans in this tourney.

Datysuk did score twice regulation on Jonathan Quick in the first really interesting game at the Sochi hockey tournament, and the Russians had the apparent winning goal waved off in the third period because the net had been knocked off its moorings.

Cam Fowler and Pavelski scored for the Americans, while Maple Leaf sniper Phil Kessel was held off the board after a three-point effort against the Slovaks to open the Olympics.

Ovechkin, who leads the NHL with 40 goals this season, didn’t score in regulation or OT and wasn’t used in the shootout, as the perplexing Olympic slump he first encountered in Vancouver continues.

Just as Canada looks to help Sidney Crosby break out, Russia needs to find a way to open up new possibilities for Ovechkin, who only scored in one game at the 2010 Olympics.

He did score Russia’s first goal in Sochi against Slovenia.

It would appear as though Bobby Lou has kept his job.

That could yet change, of course. But Roberto Luongo went to Sochi as the incumbent in goal for Canada's Olympic men's hockey team after being in net when Sidney Crosby scored his golden goal in Vancouver four years ago, and he's done nothing to surrender that status.

A shutout today in a blowout, 6-0 victory over a weak squad from Austria certainly didn't require perfection from Luongo, and Canada didn't need excellence in net to win. But Luongo stopped 27 shots, enough, one would think, to stave off a challenge from Carey Price for the No. 1 netminding position.

We'll know more when head coach Mike Babcock announces his starter for Sunday's game against Finland, and even then, it's worth remembering that it was Martin Brodeur's stumble against the Americans at the 2010 Winter Olympics in the third game that cost him the starter's job.

Which means Luongo would have to blow this now.

Certainly the Finns are scoring lots and lots of goals, and Canada will get tested by Finland in a way they have not been by Austria or Norway. Right now, Team Canada seems to be more defensively concious than previous teams featuring NHL players, having given up only one goal so far.

Jeff Carter had a hat trick against Austria, important for him seeing as how he went into the game having lost his right wing spot alongside Crosby and Chris Kunitz. Martin St. Louis went in for Carter and didn't do much more, which means the lone negative angle out of the first two games has to be the inability to find Crosby the right linemates so far to get him going.

He did pick up a nice assist on Carter's first goal of the night. But that's it so far for the world's best player, who also struggled early in the 2010 tournament while Babcock searched for the proper linemates.

Otherwise, it was all good news for Team Canada, which got two more goals from the defence - that's four in two games - and some good moments from Matt Duchene, who got the nod for this game in place of Patrick Sharp.

The best Canadian line might again have been the unit with John Tavares, Jamie Benn and Patrice Bergeron, athough Babcock played with different combinations all game and clearly has a lot of thinking still to do.

The blueline corps looks very good, but again, we'll get a much better sense of that against the Finns.

Sure, many would have preferred an old-fashioned blowout from Team Canada.

Something like Phil Kessel and the Americans delivered against Slovakia, you know? Or the eight goals produced by Finland in their Olympic opener.

But attention to detail and defensive excellence are probably worth just as much, or more, in this era in which scoring just one goal is akin to scoring a hat trick in other decades.

Composed and business-like, Canada squelched any and all Norwegian offence en route to a straightforward 3-1 victory in the first game for both countries at the Sochi Olympics. Other than a Canadian hiccup in the first minute of the third that allowed Norway to pot a power play goal, there wasn't really a great deal of push forward from the Norwegians.

So that's three practices and one warmup game down for Team Canada. Two warmups remain, one against Austria on Friday and one against Finland, before the meaningful stuff starts next week.

While Canada is a hockey powerhouse and Norway, most assuredly, is not, the Norwegians mostly defended, giving them very little chance to score goals on Carey Price or register an upset. Canada had to try to move the puck through five Norwegians parked in their own zone on sequence after sequence, a challenge at a time Canadians are still trying to get used to their line combinations and defensive pairings. Other than uber-aggressive Norwegian defenceman Ole-Kristian Tollefson, a former Columbus Blue Jacket player, the underdogs didn't have a whole lot to throw at Canada.

Two Canadian blueliners, Shea Weber and Drew Doughty, scored, a good sign for a team that will need to activate its defence as this Olympic tournament moves along.

Lars Haugen, Norway's goalie, was forced to make a lot of good saves, but for the most part, the Canadian forward lines didn't really seem to click, at least not yet. It'll be interesting if Jeff Carter remains with Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz against the Austrians, or if somebody else (Marty St. Louis?) gets an opportunity beside the Canadian captain.

Clearly, head coach Mike Babcock is still figuring out how he's going to use the weapons at his disposal. For the opener, Colorado Matt Duchene and Montreal defenceman P.K. Subban did not dress. Roberto Luongo backed up Price, but will get the start against Austria.

If there's a concern for Canada, it will continue to be the ability of the squad to be explosive offensively on the larger international ice surface. The last time the Olympics were contested on the big sheet, eight years ago in Turin, Canada was shut out by the Swiss, Finns and Russians.

A repeat of that, obviously, won't get Canada where it wants to go.