Hockey again shines on the Olympic stage

It was no Miracle on Ice, no Lake Placid - there will never be another - but an American hockey team shocked some folks Sunday night at the Vancouver Olympics, beating host nation Canada 5-3 in as riveting a hockey game as you'll see if you think a hockey game can ever be riveting.

The gorilla on Canada's back just put on another million pounds.

And we were all reminded just how cool Olympic hockey can be.

So what if the National Hockey League couldn't find its way to true marketing success in America if it had a flashlight? It hit on something when it decided four Olympics ago to interrupt its season every four years to send its very best to the Winter Games. It's the only major sports league to do so.

So, naturally, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman isn't so sure his league will allow its employees to head for the Olympics in Russia in 2014. That figures. Thanks, commish.

The NHL can't generate publicity like this. Nor can hockey in general.

It takes the Olympics.

No, it doesn't mean people are going to start filling NHL arenas, least of all the one the Tampa Bay Lightning play in.

But, boy, this is good stuff.

In what was dubbed the "Super Sunday" of Olympics hockey, Alex Ovechkin and Russia beat Jaromir Jagr and the Czech Republic, and defending gold medalist Sweden beat defending silver medalist and archrival Finland - and we're not even to the medal round.

Yowza.

But the big one, at least on this side of the ponds, was the U.S. stunning Canada, which really has to be feeling the pressure now. There is no place for second place north of the border. It's win or bust. So Sunday night was a shot to an entire nation's solar plexus.

Maybe it was payback, slightly, for Canada coming down and beating the United States for the gold at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Whatever, it was, it was positively electric.

The U.S. got two goals from Brian Rafalski and otherworldly goaltending from Ryan Miller of the Buffalo Sabres, who clearly outplayed Marty Brodeur, who is only the best goalie ever.

Down 4-3 in the final minutes, Sidney Crosby and Canada stormed the Americans down the stretch, only to have the U.S. put it away on maybe the greatest empty-net goal in hockey history -- a hustling, diving one-handed beauty by Ryan Kesler, miracle on ice enough.

But let's not go nutty here - this isn't Lake Placid.

This is a young American team in relation to the other 11 Olympic squads in Canada, but it's nothing - nothing - like the college kids who stunned the Soviet Union's big red machine (professionals!) in upstate New York 30 years ago today.

These are NHL millionaires, the U.S. players included.

These are some of the best of the best.

Plus, who hates Canada, other than them being hockey snobs?

They are friends, allies. These guys on these teams all know each other.

You can't begin to re-create the world of 1980 - Soviet troops in Afghanistan (uh, we're there now), the Cold War still raging, hostages in Iran. It was an emotional time. Not that these days aren't filled with stuff like that for America, with two wars going at once, with terror threats everywhere, with the home economy teetering.

But it isn't Lake Placid.

Maybe if we'd beaten a Taliban hockey team, a real arch-enemy.

There's a reason why Lake Placid will always be Lake Placid.

I don't know about you, but I still get goose bumps when I watch replays from Lake Placid.

I didn't feel that way Sunday night, but those U.S. players, including Lightning forward Ryan Malone, were giddy as hell over beating Canada.

It was wonderful sport, the kind that an Olympics can produce. The kind hockey can produce. If only the Olympics came every year, the NHL might really amount to something.

If Bettman pulls the plug on the NHL participating in the Olympics, over travel time to Russia or lack of prime-time coverage, or squawking from NHL owners, this league should just fold its tent.

Every four years, the NHL goes with the flow.

It goes and it goes and it goes.

That doesn't mean it always empties into Lake Placid, but it's a really good show. One worth keeping.