February 28, 2010 — For our friends to the north, today is their day of reckoning. The oh, so polite Canadians have had a week of seething to reach this point, and will now let it all go at once as their national pride will be at stake for today’s gold medal hockey game.

Hey, it’s bad enough living next door to us — until they need to use one of our power tools or want a cup of sugar — but putting up with us in their country for the past two weeks, particularly the past week since a certain hockey game for Canadians has been the equivalent of Al Czervik visiting Bushwood Country Club.



I’m trying to be polite here, but when are they leaving? Eh?

Right after our hockey team beats your hockey team for the second time in a week, and you have to give us our gold medal.

The only reason we’re here anyway is maybe we’ll buy it. I bet they'd love a great shopping mall right here! Condos over there! Plenty of parking.



Easy now. The chances of the United States beating Canada twice in the same week, in Canada no less, are not good. To this naked hockey eye, at least, it would appear the Canadians, regarded to be one of the two best teams in the world, seem to have found themselves, having dismantled Russia, the team regarded to have been the other best team in the world, two rounds ago.

Of course it wouldn’t be fair to sell the United States team short. While this has been far from Miracle on Ice, what Team USA has accomplished has been nothing short of remarkable. Honestly, did you expect to be watching the gold-medal hockey game today? Well, over 30 million of us will be and for once, Canada’s obnoxious neighbors to the south will come together as a hockey nation.

And then you know what happens Monday night when the NHL season resumes after its two week Olympic hiatus? Same thing that happened three Mondays ago. We’ll tune in to Big Monday or Family Guy, or House, or The Bachelor, or How I Met Your Mother, or Law and Order, or whatever, but certainly not VERSUS for the Red Wings and Avalanche.

Which is why there is growing belief that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will pull the plug on the NHL stocking the Olympics with its players and referees. The league loses too much money when it takes two weeks off at the height of its season. And around here, what a great season it’s been so far with the red-hot Capitals and the defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins having great seasons once more.

There is an unusual amount of hockey interest in this area, and despite what those considerate people who run Atlantic Broadband believe, the Penguins are not the only hockey team of interest here. Now of course, in real hockey towns such as Detroit and Buffalo, and to a fair degree others, the NHL can’t get re-started soon enough. But just as big-dreaming soccer never overtook all other sports for out hearts and affections, hockey can do only so much in the United States and Bettman knows it.

Would a United States win today be a huge boon to hockey interest in our country? If Miracle on Ice wasn’t how can this be? Yes, it would be a remarkable thing to see and to experience (not to mention funny as hell), but this can’t even compare to 1980, which had more to do with the Cold War than hockey anyway. Miracle on Ice remains one of the defining moments in American sports history because it was accomplished by such an unheralded Team USA. These are NHL players we’ve been watching the past two weeks, and there’s no reason to believe we’ll be watching them too closely after today.

Do the Olympics create interest in the game? Of course, while the games are going on and while the United States is doing well, such as in 1980, 2002 when the U.S. took both silver medals, and now. But does it create an interest that will build and build and build? ‘Fraid not.

But let’s not rain on their parade. Today is hockey’s day, and if the United States can pull it off one more time it will be a wonderful day in American sports history. It could be a significant day in world history as well, because a U.S. win today might just trigger another Cold War.

Better get our leaf blower back. They might not be speaking to us for awhile, eh?

Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Write to him at mburke@times-news.com