VANCOUVER — The puck was behind Ryan Miller, and suddenly it was over, in a flash, a game and a hockey tournament you will remember until the day you die. We often take great liberties with perspective in the immediate aftermath of unforgettable games, so it would be silly to declare this the best hockey game of all time, or the third-best, or the eighth.
This is enough: You will always recall the way your stomach was grinding like a frozen cocktail blender in those frantic final moments of the third period, and you will surely recall your reaction (A shout out the window? A scream down the bar? A joyful fist against the wall?) when Zach Parise tied the game with less than 25 seconds left in regulation.
This is enough: You will always remember the sinking feeling of seeing that puck leave Sidney Crosby’s stick, elude the Americans’ brilliant goalie, and settle in the back of the net, freezing the scoreboard forever at Canada 3, USA 2. There is nothing quite so sudden as sudden-death hockey, when an entire season — or an entire Olympics — comes to a screeching, permanent halt.
PHOTOS: CANADA BEATS U.S. IN OVERTIME, 3-2
And you are left feeling one of two ways:
Like Crosby, the kid who now has a Stanley Cup ring and an Olympic gold medal in his collection at the advanced age of 22, who delivered the only possible outcome to a starving Canadian populace, who had to bashfully request a truncated standing ovation so he could receive his medal and they could get on with the playing of “O Canada” with 18,000 voices strong providing the lyrics.
“There are things you dream about,” the kid said, “but you don’t dare ever talk about out loud. But this is pretty dreamlike.”
Or like Miller, the goaltender who before this week was a distinctly parochial treasure in the city of Buffalo, yet who yesterday single-handedly kept the U.S. within shouting distance, who in the second-and-a-half after Crosby’s goal split his pads and shook thunder from the ceiling at Canada Hockey Place looked dazed, almost as if he hadn’t fully grasped what had happened.
“No,” Miller said, “I knew we lost. It felt like [garbage].”
As he spoke, you could sense there were tears lingering just beyond the words, tears he already had shed on the ice, as much for the instant camaraderie he and his American teammates had forged and now must abandon as by the disappointing ending.
But, then, who’s to rate what’s a good ending and what’s bad? It’s all in the eye — and the rooting interest — of the beholder. It’s unlikely people look at replays of Mike Eruzione’s goal the same way in St. Petersburg, Russia, as in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Crosby’s will draw disparate responses in Manitoba and Minnesota.
And why should that matter?
“I think we will all know, years from now, that this was an important game to be a part of,” Canada’s captain, Scott Niedermayer, said. “I think it was an incredible game for the Olympics but also for the sport of hockey, which I don’t think has often reached the level that was reached out there tonight.”
It is all too easy to overlook hockey during the endless grind of an NHL season that features too many showdowns and slowdowns between the Panthers or Predators or Ducks and the Blue Jackets or Thrashers or Hurricanes. It’s only when the chaff is separated from the wheat — late in the Cup playoffs, late in the Olympic tournament — when you remember how glorious a game it really can be.
Even if you end up on the wrong side of the hyphen.
Even if you — on your couch, on your barstool, listening on your car radio — felt every ounce of what Parise described as his own bipolar fate yesterday.
“You score that goal, and it’s exhilarating, you know we’re back in this, we have all the momentum . . . and then, it’s over. Boom. I got to tell you, it stinks.”
The feeling, possibly. Not the game. Certainly not this game. This one you will recall, and remember, because the great days in sports are ones you want to wear like a medal so they can be close to your heart forever.