While the Stanley Cup have eluded Canadian teams, the Canadian men's hockey team has now won a gold medal in 3 of the last 4 Olympics.
Carey Price continued his perfection streak in net and 3 Canadian forwards each added their first goal of the Olympics as Canada downed Sweden 3-0 to win the gold medal in men's hockey.
Jonathan Toews took a Jeff Carter pass in the 1st period for the initial goal. Sidney Crosby scored on a breakaway in the 2nd period. Chris Kunitz added a one-timer in the 3rd period.
Carey Price posted his second straight shutout, stopping all 24 saves. Henrik Lundqvist stopped 33/36 shots for Sweden.
Any fears that Canada would let up in the 3rd period disappeared quickly. Canada outshot Sweden 13-4 in the final period. If your team is down by 3 goals, 4 shots means you will lose.
Canada never trailed in a game in the entire Olympics tournament.
The Canada men's team was the first to go undefeated since the Soviets in 1984 in Sarajevo. And this is the only team in the NHL era to repeat as champs. Canada won for the first time on international size ice since the 1952 Olympics in Oslo, Norway.
Previous coverage:
CanadianCrossing.com Olympics coverage
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Carey Price: Olympic gold medalist. Price finishes the Olympics with 2 straight shutouts and carries a 164:19 scoreless streak lasting over 8 periods of play. The goal against Latvia came on a well-executed trick play, and that was the last goal against Canada in the 2014 Olympics.
Roberto Luongo added a shutout over Austria. Price didn't surrender more than 1 goal in any game.
Price finished the tournament with a 0.59 GAA and a .972 save percentage.
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The Canadian team had 7 NHL captains and 2 of them scored in the gold medal game. Jonathan Toews and Sidney Crosby did get goals, but contributed so much more beyond scoring and even assists.
Gold medal experience mattered. The fact that Toews and Crosby also scored in the gold medal game of the Vancouver Olympics speaks to that experience.
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Hopefully, Chris Kunitz had no idea what fans were saying about his Olympics play. Kunitz got a great pass off a turnover from Sidney Crosby and rifled a shot near Lundqvist's right shoulder for Canada's 3rd goal.
The reaction I saw on Twitter (and I was a part of it) was that if Kunitz could get a goal, the game was truly over.
Kunitz was part of a plan that was difficult to see early on in the process. As we saw in the last 2 games, the plan made more sense.
Mike Babcock has 2 straight gold medals, and we don't. His only loss in the 2 Olympics was in the opening round in 2010 to the United States.
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The Canadian men's team almost became 2 different teams in this tournament. The first team had trouble scoring from their forwards and the defensemen had to take the bulk of the offense.
Canada scored 4 goals in the final 2 games: 0 from defensemen. 7 of the first 13 Canada goals came from the blue line.
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Fans watching in Toronto who also wanted to drink got a reprieve. The Toronto city council approved a change to the liquor laws, allowing bars and cafes in most of the city to serve alcohol at 6 am. No word on how Rob Ford celebrated Team Canada's win on Sunday.
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Steve Yzerman will leave his post as Team Canada general manager on top. Yzerman was in charge of picking Team Canada that won back-to-back gold medals for the first time since 1948 and 1952.
Someone else will have the thankful/thankless task of selecting Team Canada for the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
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Phil Kessel (Toronto, United States) was named the best forward of the 2014 Olympics; Erik Karlsson (Ottawa, Sweden) was named the best defenseman, and Price (Montréal, Canada) was named the best goalie.
Speaking of Ottawa, we do need to say "I told you so" to the U.S. men's hockey team for not selecting Bobby Ryan from the Senators for the squad.
Yes, the U.S. team led the tournament in goals after the first 4 games. But the team was shut out for the last 2 games, including a 1-0 loss to Canada. The U.S. team needed Ryan on Friday and Saturday.
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40% of Canada's gold medals came in hockey and curling. 4 of the 10 gold medals were spent in the two iconic Canadian sports.
What is more impressive in that statistic is that 2014 was the first time Canada pulled that off in the Olympics. And Canada almost did it in 2010, only the women's curling team in an excruciatingly tough loss to Sweden threw off perfection.
Canada went perfect in 3 of the 4 sports. The men's curling team had 2 losses in round-robin play: Sweden (5-4) and Switzerland (7-6) were the only countries to beat Canada.
Canada also won more freestyle skiing medals than any other country.
And Canada became the first country to sweep curling in Olympics in the modern era.
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Canada finished 4th in overall medals with 25: 10 gold, 10 silver, and 5 bronze. That 10th gold medal in men's hockey gave Canada one more gold medal than the United States. Canada finished 3rd in gold medals with 10.
Russia was tops in medals with 33 followed by the United States (28) and Norway (26). The U.S. team has 12 bronze medals; men's hockey would have been 13.
Canada won 26 medals in Vancouver in 2010.
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If you watched the men's bobsleigh team, you might have recognized the name Jesse Lumsden. The former CFL running back with Hamilton, Edmonton, and Calgary was in his 2nd Olympics in bobsleigh for Canada.
Lumsden and his crew (pilot Justin Kripps and team members Cody Sorensen and Ben Coakwell) didn't win an Olympic medal, but were able to walk away after a horrible crash.
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"I'm afraid I realized something about you that's disturbing and you've been keeping it from me."
"Oh, really. I don't think so. I've been completely above board with you. What is that, Stephen."
"You did something. You tried to hide it from me. But you can not hide it anymore. You … are a Canadian."
"It's true. I'm sorry. But how could you tell?"
"Well, you seemed a little gay."
"It's true."
Buddy Cole decides to go undercover as a homosexual to "penetrate Sochi's gay underground." Stephen Colbert did a spit-take in response.
Cole's underground adventure went into Cafe Mayak, a gay nightclub in Sochi.
The light-hearted exchange played on the ongoing theme where Stephen Colbert is convinced Buddy Cole is straight but can spot gay people. The secret isn't that Cole/Scott Thompson is gay (they are), but that both are secretly Canadian.
A nice way to attack the anti-gay laws with humour: kudos to Cole/Thompson and Colbert.
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Women's hockey alternate captain Hayley Wickenheiser was elected to the International Olympic Committee's athletes commission. But if you watched the NBC feed, you missed that ceremony.
Bad enough to get the ceremony tape-delayed, but to get selective editing screams for streaming or letting "Americans" watch an alternative.
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photo credit: Streeter Lecka // video credit: Colbert Report
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