U.S., Canada square off for gold (3)
Fifty years ago Sunday in the small resort town of Squaw Valley, Calif., the U.S. men’s hockey team won its first-ever Olympic gold medal by capping an unbeaten tournament with a victory.
This year’s team will look to repeat that moment in U.S. history when they play for the gold medal against Canada in Vancouver, as the nation’s third-ever men’s hockey gold is on the line.
The United States is the only unbeaten team in this year’s tournament, having outscored their opponents 22-6 in five straight wins — the longest an American team has gone without a loss or tie in an Olympic tournament since the 1960 squad.
Few people expected this kind of success out of this particular squad, as unlike some of the other teams in the tournament, the U.S. has only three players with previous Olympic experience, and had to rely on its young talent like Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane.
“A gold medal would be unbelievable,” Kane told Sports Illustrated Friday. “It’s something you see so many athletes work so hard for. For me personally, I know I’m pretty young at 21, and I hope I’ll have a couple of more opportunities. … You mention the Olympics, you get one chance every four years. To do it this year in my first opportunity would be very special.”
“We’re very excited about the opportunity we’ve been given, with so many of us at a young age,” Jack Johnson told the magazine. “This is the most unselfish team I’ve ever played with. Every single guy on that team will lay it on the line on Sunday. Diving headfirst into shots. Getting pucks out at the blueline. No one cares who scores the goals.”
But standing in the way of perfection and the gold medal is the host Canadians, who were heavy favorites coming into the tournament and feature three Hart Trophy winners on their talent-laden roster.
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Related:
Canada will win 5-3, predicts Don Cherry
Notes:
The game begins at 3:00 pm EST — twenty minutes from now.
Update:
7:40 pm EST, February 28th, 2010 — Canada Beats United States 3-2 in Overtime in Men’s Hockey
Popularity: 7% [?]
The White House called for a “simple up-or-down” vote on health-care legislation Sunday as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Obama’s chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers.
SANTIAGO — The death toll from a massive magnitude-8.8 earthquake that hit Chile Saturday has increased to 708 and could rise further, President Michelle Bachelet said in a televised speech on Sunday.
The Russian army is embroiled in an embarrassing scandal after 200 of its tanks were found abandoned near a forest in central Russia, unguarded and unlocked.
While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand-new, even-more-unsustainable entitlement at the health-care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen — because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is farther upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter Seventeen or Eighteen.
WHEN Barack Obama took office last year he was compared to Superman, even joking at a dinner that he had been “born on Krypton and sent here … to save the planet Earth”. Last January he appeared on the cover of Spider-Man.
For those fans of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?, here is your pop quiz for the morning:
With a whiff of nostalgia, I can imagine the old time journalist with the smell of coffee and cigarettes wafting through the click and clang of the typewriter. Fifty years ago, a “journalist” had the ring of a dispassionate, creative, honest, fair, and trusted detective/storyteller. Fifty years ago, if you graduated from an accredited journalism school, you were presumed “unbiased.” Much as the physician takes an oath that she will “first, do no harm,” the “journalist” title meant that you were first, unbiased and balanced. Neutrality in the story was as necessary as it was assumed.
Male, retired and the rest is of little interest to anyone. The site keeps me busy and if it helps others to stay abreast of daily events then my time is well spent.
