America is Back on Top of the Hockey World
- Tristan Adams
- Feb 22
- 3 min read
WHAT.
A.
GAME.
With the game of the century coming to close about 2 hours ago, I figured I would give a few thoughts on it and break down the roller coaster of a mental state that it took me on.
Before I get into it I want to make sure that the person who decided the Gold Medal Game would be scheduled for 8:10 AM EST gets put into prison for the rest of their life. This caused all of us North Americas to start our mornings with a beer rather than a coffee, which in retrospect may not be the worst thing in the world if I'm honest.
First off, I'll start with the netminder of the winning team, Connor Hellebuyck. This man has cemented himself as America's big game goalie. He stood on his head the entire game, with his only slip up being on a Cale Makar snipe from a dangerous spot on the ice. Canada reigned down hellfire on Helle with 42 shots through 3 periods and a bit of overtime where he stopped 41 of them, earning him an unbelievable 0.976 save percentage. In those 41 saves, he not only stuffed solo breakaways from Connor McDavid and Macklin Celebrini, but he made one of the greatest saves I have ever seen on a golden chance for Devon Toews which was given to him on a silver platter by Mitch Marner with a perfect tape to tape pass.
Now a goalie can only do so much for a team, and when goals needed to be scored, Team USA answered the bell. Early in the first, USA was looking real good and getting sustained offensive pressure on the Canadians, causing them to dump and change at every opportunity. On one of these dumps, Quinn Hughes got the jump on the puck and was able to swing it wide to Auston Matthews along the boards who kicked it out to Matt Boldy for a 1-on-2 breakaway. Boldy sauced it to himself and tipped it up out of midair to keep the best pair of defensemen in the NHL off the puck, and once he got clear, he deked right to pull Binnington over and slid the puck just left of him to give the United States their first goal of the game.
After this there was a bit of a lull in scoring, with the next goal being scored by Cale Makar late in the second period, assisted by his pairing Devon Toews. After a battle down near the faceoff circle, the puck popped out to Toews in the corner, where he made a simple cross-ice pass to Makar, who proceeded to dive toward the net and bury a disgusting shot under the blocker of Hellebuyck to even the game.
Following this, USA seemed to be playing on their heels with Canada firing on all cylinders. They were being outshot, and outplayed, making me worry if we would even make it to overtime where the boys would get a chance to rest and come back fresh. By some miracle Team USA held out until overtime and right when I realized that we had made it, I also realized that we would be playing 3-on-3 against arguably the scariest Canadian team ever assembled.
The overtime intermission felt like a decade and when it finally came around, me and every hockey fan in North America were sitting up in our chairs like we were the last man alive in search and destroy.
After a breakaway by McDavid where he almost sealed the game, Jake Sanderson ran a give-and-go with Zach Werenski and almost gave up a 2-on-0 chance but was able to chip it past Makar. It floated into a dead zone in the offensive zone, and Werenski was able to fight for it, giving him the opportunity to feed Jack Hughes for a slot chance and he did not disappoint.
Not only did Jack score the golden goal to give the United States their first Olympic Hockey Gold in 46 years to the day, he was able to do it next to his brother Quinn Hughes, who embraced him with the rest of his team to celebrate. I should also mention that late in the third period Jack caught a stick to the mouth by Sam Bennett, breaking his front tooth, but when thinking back to this game, I'm sure that's not the moment he'll remember.
USA USA USA USA USA
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