It’s over.  After coming within one good shot of winning gold, it’s over.

I can’t say I’ve really felt this kind of sting from a sports loss since Super Bowl XLI.  Sure, the Cubs have broke my heart, but that’s what the Cubs do.  Getting bounced in the WCF last year sucked, but it ended with us knowing that the Hawks were going to be a juggernaut this season.  Tonight, finding that kind of silver lining has proven difficult.

The best perspective to put things in is the fact that our boys weren’t supposed to be there at all.  The gold medal game was supposed to be Russia challenging Canada.  The bronze was supposed to be Finland and Sweden.  I mean, with Russia bringing out superstars like Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, and Pavel Datsyuk, Finland coming off winning silver in Torino, Sweden the reigning Olympic champion, and Canada bringing a team that many in their country called their best ever, who would have thought an American team with Brooks Orpik, Ryan Callahan, and Tim Gleason had a chance to sniff the medal round?  Instead, we not only made it to the medal round, but on the way we beat the gold medal favorite in regulation, embarrassed one of those four powers, and took Canada to the brink on their own ice.  That’s something to be proud of, and I’m sure we will be.  But not yet.

Looking forward to Sochi is cool too.  Patrick Kane will hopefully have realized that being a 2-way player like he was today is pretty badass.  Zach Parise will be an even more explosive player.  David Backes will have destroyed a few more Canadian stars in the NHL.  And Ryan Miller will hopefully still be ridiculous.  However, it won’t really be the same.  In 2014, people will be expecting a repeat of this year.  This year, hardly anyone was expecting us at all, and that’s what made this run so awesome.  There’s just something about cheering for a team that everyone doubts.  We felt it last year with the Hawks, and we felt the last two weeks with this Team USA.

At the end of Miracle, the voiceover points out that soon after that is when we started using NHL players in the Olympics, and how Brooks found the term "dream team" ironic as it rarely gave us a chance to dream.  In 1998 and 2006, the piss-poor effort shown by the American squads made us think it would be a dream for us to expect our team to play hard, let alone win.  However, our team this year did just that and put forth an effort that every American should be proud of, while actually giving us the opportunity to dream about hearing the Star-Spangled Banner after the gold medal game.

Even though that dream may not have been realized, I still say thank you to the 2010 United States Olympic Hockey Team for giving us the chance to dream at all.

Now let’s see Kaner, Tazer, Dunc, Panda, Biscuit, and that other guy bring their outstanding Olympic play back to Chicago.

Oh, and Canada: We’ll see you Sochi!

I posted this as a reply to a fanpost from someone asking where the players lived.  The original fanpost was deleted.  However, since we lack interesting hockey today I'm reposting it. 

Feel free to post your own theories or make up goalie trade rumors.

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