This is it; the gold medal game between Team Canada and the US of A! There couldn't be a better match up going into the final game, not to mention the story line of the US beating the Canadians in the preliminary round. I'm a US citizen but am hoping for a Team Canada win. I honestly want Canada to win in Canada with the goalies putting on a show. I want a close game with no more than a 2 goal differential with a generous smattering of breakaways and blocked shots. I want Drew Doughty to shine. I want Dustin Brown to smash people. I want Jack Johnson to answer my texts. I want Michael Handzus to get some rest before Tuesday's game. I want Jonathan Quick to do the same actually. Go hockey on a world stage!!

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Also, here is an update on the Wayne Simmonds bobblehead giveaway! (If you need a refresher on what's going on, here's the original link). Thanks to everyone for getting in on the action so far. Needless to say, I've eliminated RudyKelly because, well... you know. I've charted out what's been going on to date so everyone can see where they place. I'm going to give everyone until Sunday 11:59pm PST to get in their comments for his or her chance at the big prize.

Wayne Simmonds Bobblehead Giveaway Tally

Team USA faces Finland today at 12:00pm PST. Of the four teams left, one squad will leave Vancouver without a medal around its neck. At 6:30pm PST Canada and Slovakia take the stage when the ice is apparently in its crappiest state. I have zero sympathy; these are (almost) all NHL players left in the tournament. They can handle a little bad ice.

Overall for the US, Zach Parise has been the offensive standout when the team actually scores. In their last game against the Swiss, only two goals were scored, one of which was an empty netter. So I'm not expecting a huge blowout like Russia saw against Canada. That was a glorious game for the Canadians and a huge slap in the face for the Russians. Today the Americans are not facing a weaker goalie (by much). I'm actually much more confident facing Miikka Kiprusoff than I was with Jonas Hiller in the last game. Is it because the Kings see more of the Anaheim Ducks than the Calgary Flames? All I know is I've definitely seen more Kiprusoff meltdowns than Hiller meltdowns.

Here are two charts laying out how the Kings are doing thus far! Obviously Jonathan Quick hasn't seen a sniff of play, but neither has Tim Thomas so I'm not crying here.

Los Angeles Kings: Skaters

Los Angeles Kings: Goaltenders

Lastly, the US team is 6-3-2 all time against the Finnish team.

Drew Doughty looked great in the Canada/Russia game today. I loved it when he completely took out Alexander Ovechkin as Ovie was streaking into the Canadian zone. This was similar to when the Washington Capitals came into Staples Center and Doughty stepped up to AO like it was nothing. It was sick for those who don't remember.

So what do we think? Does Doughty deserve to be at the Olympics? Damn straight. With all the talk that everyone on the Canadian roster is the captain of his respective team, I have a feeling those talkers have overlooked Doughtnuts. That being said, I'm positive he'll wear at least the "A" soon enough. The "C"? Perhaps? I love Dustin Brown as the captain and I don't see Brownie losing his captaincy anytime in the near future. Conclusion? Drew Doughty will have a great future regardless of whether he wears the "A" (or "C") in his career.

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The game, by the way, was a killing spree by the Canadians. Evgeni Nabokov had his mind elsewhere and let in the worst goals I've seen in these Games yet. Granted I haven't watched every single game, but man! Ilya Bryzgalov should have been switched in after the third goal against the Russians.

Also, Rick Nash is beast.

I started this post after Brian Burke's comment last week that if the US wins gold it's a victory on a par with 1980. Little did I realize that beating Canada in a pre-lim game was going to be touted as "Miracle 2.0." (I just heard someone on ESPN radio characterize the U.S. team as not even expected to make it out of the preliminary round. Really? By whom?)

Anyway, Miracle 2: Miller Time. There are so many ways to pick that apart, but I'll just stick with this:

The 1980 US team was a bunch of college kids, playing not only against grown-ups (which is usually mentioned), but against the Red Army, elite professionals in everything but name, trained and funded by the Soviet military, hockey division. Everybody knows it was the height of the Cold War and the Soviets were the enemy, but just paying lip-service to that doesn't give us (or me, anyway) any sense of magnitude. To get that, you have to see it from the Soviets' point of view.

It would be as though the U.S. Marines had a football team, not a college team, but an elite all-star squad with the very best football players from across the country, NFL players, and they ruled the world and virtually never lost over several decades of competition (by the way: the all-time Olympic win/loss record of the Soviet national team? 62-6-2). Imagine such a team. Now imagine it's 2002. And we lose in the Olympics to the the team from Afghanistan, made up entirely of Taliban prep-school kids.

No matter what happens to Canada or Russia or the US in this Olympics, it's not going be as bad as that.

Because I don't think there's really much of a chance of any upsets, I'm going to take a slightly different look at the brackets: completely ignoring tomorrow's "qualifier" round. Yes, I know. It's glib and unfair. I can't help it. There's nothing for me to do with those games. I don't care what strategy Canada needs to employ to "bounce back" against Germany. So I'm moving past it, to the quarter-finals, where the fun begins. Wednesday. And it will be:

• Switzerland v. U.S. (12PM PT)
• Czech Republic v. Finland (4:30PM PT)
• Sweden v. Slovakia (7PM PT)
• Canada v. Russia (9PM PT)

(Game times are from the NBC site and are completely unreliable.)

The thing that jumps out at me about those match-ups: while it would be easy to make some educated guesses re outcome, each game really could go either way. Yeah, the favored teams probably will prevail in some, or even most, of the games, but in all of them? And in the case of the bottom two pairs, I don't think you can really say there's even a favorite.

From Puck Daddy:

"Jagr talked about the hit after the game: 'Guys, before you asked me the question, I know I make a mistake. It was a big mistake. The hit, I don’t really care. But the mistake was the turnover I made, they scored a goal. that hurt me the most. I don’t care how I feel. If something hurt, it’s always healed. But the mistake is not that easy to heal.'" (Ovechkin earns gold for open-ice Jagr destruction; was it legal? - Puck Daddy - NHL Blog - Yahoo! Sports)

According to the undisputed hub of all human understanding, Wikipedia, "Finland is regarded as the home of Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus, living in the northern Lapland region." Wikipedia also reveals Santa's actual address:

Santa Claus

Santa Claus Village

FIN-96930

Arctic Circle, Finland

This is supposed to be the third in my ad hoc "series" of primers on the countries I don't know anything about. But, frankly, I'm too disoriented by this whole Santa of Finland thing to be able to give Finland its due. But what do they care? They have Santa.

Here's some Finnish tidbits I turned up [everything from Wikipedia] before the brain freeze, and a few things I actually knew:

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I heard Ray Ferraro on Jim Rome this week, talking about the "angst" in Canada over the possibility that Team Canada won't win gold. The gist of it was (maybe an exact quote, but I'm going from memory), "anything less than gold is a catastrophe for Canada." I get what he's saying, and certainly we've all heard it in various forms a million times over the last few months. Canadians care more about hockey, they expect more from their hockey program, they expect to be better than everyone else and they will feel horrible about themselves and/or Canadian hockey if they aren't constantly validated as the absolute best in every way into perpetuity in all the universe amen.

I love Canadian hockey. I'm from Michigan, which may as well be Canada. There wouldn't be hockey in the US without Canadian hockey. Before the US gold in 1980, I don't think there were more than 20 Americans playing in the NHL. I remember trying to count them in the back of The Hockey News, and coming up with something like seventeen. There weren't even very many playing in college. That's how my home town in Michigan found hockey in the first place. It was a college town and Canadian kids came to play for the college team, set down roots, raised little American kids and coached the local youth league teams. Some of those kids I grew up with went on to play college (unheard of), then the US Olympic team (insane) and finally played long careers in the NHL. As an American hockey-playing kid growing up in the 70s, thinking you could grow up to play in the NHL was only slightly more practical than thinking you could grow up to be a Jedi.

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