Sidney Crosby's Canadians Clean Up On Winter Olympic Ice To Complete Hockey Sweep

Don't think a black man can't love hockey.  If ice wasn't so cold, we might have already taken over that sport as well.  I spent quite a few nights playing some intense roller blade variety of the sport, so I relate to it very well.  My oldest daughter chose roller hockey over basketball, and I am a basketball coach.

With that being said, hockey is still a marginal sport to some degree.  It relies on the playoffs and the Olympics to promote the game, especially in America. Here in Denver, if the Colorado Avalanche are not really in contention, they become a bit less than background noise.  Right now, they are not only in contention, my Avalanche represented the best of the NHL in the Winter Olympics.

The Russian's may have won the most medals in the winter Olympics, but men's hockey wasn't one, as Avalanche goalie Semyon Varlamov and the Russian team fell outside of medal contention.  The Americans and Av's forward Paul Stastny, made a strong push for a medal but couldn't overcome a bitter semifinal loss to win the bronze medal match either.

When the gold medal match arrived, my heart was rooting for Avalanche Gabriel Landiskog and the Swedish team, but my head knew that they had a juggernaut to overcome in the eventual gold medal team from Canada.  Matt Duchene may not be the best Avalanche player even though he is getting a lot of votes in the (non-black) barbershop as such.  After his team dominated the gold medal rush, he will certainly have best of the world bragging rights for the next four years.

The story line if any other Olympic Av had won the gold in hockey would have been so much less predictable than another Canadian victory.  To their credit, they certainly faced the kind of competition that challenged their hockey dominance.  The Canadian team played the game the right way and got better with each shift.  No, really.

By the end of this tournament, the Swedish team that Canada faced played well enough to win the gold themselves, but it was like all of those teams that lost to Jordan and the Chicago Bulls; Sweden was simply outmatched in speed, desire and chemistry.

After a crushing defeat to the women's Canadian hockey
team, the men had to win a "loser takes Justin Beiber" bet.

Most important to this gold medal run was the power of agreement at work for this team.  They simply agreed to trust in the immense level of talent and grind harder than any other team.  When you know that every player on your left or right is just as talented and driven as you are, there is a dynamic stronger than chemistry; there is a synergy that occurs.  Both the American and the Swedish goalie played amazing hockey.  Truly amazing, because the Canadian onslaught demanded it.  No, really.

In hindsight, I am not sure how the Canadians did not win both the semifinal and the final game by a larger margin than they did.  They simply continued to get better when every other team squeezed their potential to its maximum.

I am totally glad that at least one of my Av's players will get to show off a gold medal around the locker room, I just wish that Justin Beiber wasn't an additional reminder of our defeat.