THE HOCKEY HEIST
The best team didn’t win Olympic gold
By James Merilatt

Somebody has to be the ugly American; it might as well be me. This morning, the sports world will still be buzzing about the final event of the 2010 Winter Olympics – an epic gold medal game in men’s hockey. But not me. In my mind, Canada’s 3-2 victory over the United States is a sham.

The best five-on-five hockey team in the world left Vancouver with a silver medal, not the gold they deserved. Nobody played the real game better than the Americans, which makes the fact that they don’t have the top Olympic hardware in their hands all that much more shameful. Instead, the Canadians are on top of the hockey mountain because they’re the best at a pickup version of the sport – a hokey four-on-four version of sudden death.

Does this make sense to anyone? After 42 games of great hockey, why on earth does is the gold medal game concluded under different rules? What moron made this decision?

It’s not like this was a meaningless Coyotes-Hurricanes game on Tuesday night in December, where the most important factor in determining the best overtime rules is finding a conclusion in time to get the kids home for bed. It was the freaking championship game in the Olympics! Would anyone have been angry if this had gone on for four, five or six periods?

The fact of the matter is that the gold medal should be determined playing under the same rules as the entire tournament. To scrap the five-on-five in favor of four-on-four gives the team with the best individual players an advantage, which wasn’t the case for the majority of the games played in Vancouver.

This is the equivalent of settling the gold medal in basketball by playing OT with only eight total players on the floor. Since that would clearly favor the Americans, a team with great individual players like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, that would be unthinkable. But one that sticks it to Uncle Sam and helps the home team win? That’s all good; after all, this is the Olympics, a place where athletes getting jobbed is always part of the story.

At least we weren’t subjected to a shoot-out, which would have been a bigger travesty. That would have been like settling the Super Bowl with a field goal kicking contest. Shockingly, that too would have favored Team Canada.

As a result of this idiotic overtime format prevailing, however, the Canadians have the gold. It should have come as no shock that Sidney Crosby got the game-winning goal; he’s the best player on the planet. So playing under rules that promote more free-wheeling, open-ice tactics, he had a chance to shine.

But is that really fair? Should the Americans, a team that was built to win as a team, been punished for having to go into overtime in one game?

The best way to answer that question is to ask another one: Did the best team win? Look at the evidence:

During the men’s hockey tournament, Team USA finished with a 5-0-1 record during their six games, outscoring their opponents 24-8 during that run. That single digit in the tie column for Team USA cost them a gold medal, as it was the regulation tie against Canada that turned into a loss because of asinine Olympic rules. But, I’m not counting it as a defeat. Nor should the Americans. They should follow the lead of the ’72 basketball team and refuse their silvers.

Canada, on the other hand, was upset in an early-round game to the U.S., losing 5-3 last Sunday. They also won two games in overtime – needing a shoot-out to beat a Swiss team that finished eighth out of 12 teams and then getting the sudden-death victory over the Americans yesterday.

The Canadians struggled mightily on their home ice, while the Americans dominated on foreign soil. Heck, the Most Valuable Player of the entire tournament was Team USA’s goalie, Ryan Miller. What does that say about which team really played the best during the entire Games?

The best hockey team at the Olympics didn’t win the gold medal; the second best did. So while the Canadians can celebrate their “triumph,” they should also take shame in the facts – in straight-up hockey, the Americans outscored the Canadians 7-5 and finished 1-0-1.

Team USA simply wasn’t as good at pick-up pucks. They weren’t as talented at the version played on ponds when not enough kids showed up to play. That’s the reality. If pointing that out makes me an ugly American, so be it. Screaming from the highest mountaintop about injustice is what we do best. And in the world of Olympic hockey, the four-on-four format for overtime in the finals is an absolute joke.