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Canada is once again on top of the hockey world as they have defeated the United States 3-2 in overtime in the gold medal game at the Olympic hockey tournament.

Sidney Crosby was the overtime hero as he beat Ryan Miller mid-way through the extra-frame.

“I just shot it,” Crosby said afterwards. “I didn’t really see it to be honest.”

While Roberto Luongo was criticized prior to the tournament for his lack of big game experience, he has likely silenced those doubters as he made 34 saves in the victory.

Jonathan Toews and Corey Perry also scored for Canada, while Ryan Kesler and Zach Parise responded for the United States.

The win secures Canada’s 14th gold medal at the Games, setting an all-time Olympic record.

Along with the gold medal, Canada was also able to regain bragging rights on continental supremacy after the Americans beat them 5-3 earlier in the tournament.

It was a particularly stinging defeat for Miller who was heroic for the Americans throughout. He was named the tournaments most valuable player, along with the best goaltender. Miller also made the final tournament All-Star team alongside teammates Brian Rafalski, Zach Parise, Canada’ Toews and Shea Weber and Slovakia’s Pavol Demitra.

It is a jam packed house at Canada Hockey Place that was littered with Canadian-born celebrities like Neil Young, Michael J. Fox, Bryan Adams, William Shatner and Prime Minister Stephen Harper sporting his Canada jersey.

They were treated to a fast-paced and hard-hitting encounter between a pair of rivals who know each other very well.

Canada drew first blood as Mike Richards separated Erik Johnson from the puck with a strong forechecking effort. Ryan Miller kicked out Richards shot but Jonathan Toews was there to bury the rebound for his first of the tournament to send a packed house at Canada Hockey Place into a frenzy.

The bad blood nearly boiled over at the end of the period as Jack Johnson drilled Perry into the boards after the final buzzer. Ryan Getzlaf did not like that one bit as he went back at Johnson. The referees had to break up a skirmish as both teams headed to the dressing room with Canada holding a one-goal advantage.

Perry got his revenge on the scoreboard, adding to Canada’s lead in the second period. After killing off a penalty to Eric Staal, Canada went on the attack as Getzlaf lofted a backhander at the American net. Miller kicked out a rebound directly into the path of Perry who hammered home his fourth goal of the tournament, giving Canada a two-goal advantage.

That would be short-lived as the Americans were able to respond late in the period thanks to the quick hands of Kesler in front as he tipped Patrick Kane’s shot past his Vancouver Canucks’ teammate Luongo to pull the United States within a goal.

With all the momentum behind them, the Americans buzzed around Luongo’s net with Ryan Suter coming close to equalizing with a backhanded effort that just trickled wide.

Canada came out flying in the final frame, nearly adding to their lead with less than a minute in as both Shea Weber and Chris Pronger’s drives beat Miller but found iron instead of glory.

The Canadians continued to heap on the offensive pressure as Dany Heatley had a great chance to give Canada a two-goal lead, but was denied twice by Miller at the side of the net.

Crosby had a great opportunity to salt this one away with just over three minutes remaining as he was sprung on a break. Miller was equal to the task once again to keep his team in this one.

With just over a minute remaining, American head coach Ron Wilson called a time-out to rally his troops and pull Miller from the net.

The gambit paid off as Parise was able to beat Luongo to silence the crowd and send this epic encounter to overtime.

Canada had the better chances in overtime, but once again Miller continued his stellar play, robbing Jarome Iginla and Rick Nash on great scoring opportunities.

But Miller’s luck ran out as Crosby was able to shovel home his fourth of the tournament to secure the victory and give the country the golden moment they had been waiting for.

The relief on their faces was palpable afterwards. The moment of panic was over; the realization had gradually sunk in – that Canada’s men’s Olympic hockey team would be playing for the gold medal on Sunday.

 Moments earlier, Canada’s men’s Olympic hockey team appeared to be cruising to victory in methodical if unspectacular fashion. They had opened up a three-goal, two-period lead against a heavy underdog, Slovakia, and it only seemed a matter of time before they put the finishing touches on the victory.

 In the end, Canada did squeeze it out – but not before getting a major scare in the third period, during which the Slovaks scored twice and almost forced overtime in the final seconds.

 Goaltender Roberto Luongo preserved the victory by deflecting away a shot from his Vancouver Canucks’ teammate Pavol Demitra – who looked as if he were facing a wide-open net – in the dying seconds, enabling Canada to emerge with a heart-stopping 3-2 victory and a date with the Americans in Sunday’s gold-medal game.

But it wasn’t easy, not by any stretch of the imagination.

The final moment was frantic, with the Slovaks putting on constant pressure, with goaltender Jaroslav Halak on the bench for a sixth attacker.

 ”It just comes down to making plays and not throwing puck away,” said defenceman Duncan Keith, who along with his partner Drew Doughty, was out there for the entire time, trying to nail the victory down. “I thought we were throwing it away too much. The ice is chippy; the puck is bouncing every where; and it’s tough to make plays. The Slovaks had nothing to lose there, so they were putting all the pressure on.”

 Added Doughty: “That’s going to be the difference in the tournament – Lou (Luongo) making that huge glove save at the end.”

 Up until the third period hiccup, Canada had played a methodical game. Ryan Getzlaf underlined his importance to Canada’s efforts by scoring a second-period power-play goal, which stood up as the eventual winner.

 Getzlaf was aided and abetted by two members of Canada’s supporting cast, Patrick Marleau and Brenden Morrow, both of whom picked the right time to produce their second goals of the tournament.

Obviously, we took a different route than the U.S. to get there,” said Getzlaf. “But the bottom line is, we’re both there and we’re both excited to be there.”

 Canada and the U.S. met earlier in the preliminary round, with the U.S. earning a 5-3 victory over Canada, on the strength of an exceptional goaltending performance from Ryan Miller.

 But since then, Canada has run up the score on two opponents – eight against Germany, seven against Russia – and produced a handful more against the Slovaks last night, who hung around the game probably longer than the Canadians would have liked. Slovakia played it close and tight-to-the-vest for 40 minutes. Right around the time the capacity crowd at Canada Hockey Place demanded ‘We want the U.S., we want the U.S.,’ the Slovaks scored two quick goals – by Lubomir Visnovsky and Michal Handzus – to set up the dramatic finish. The Canadians were on their heels for most of the third; unable to recapture the momentum once it was lost.

 ”We’re going to have to tighten up defensively,” said Getzlaf, of the upcoming showdown with the United States. “They skated at us pretty hard. We maybe weren’t mentally prepared for that as much as we needed to be. Now, we’ve had a look at them and we know we’re going to be up against a good skating hockey club – and we’re going to have to be ready for it.”

 In the end, it was Getzlaf’s power-play goal with 2:16 remaining in the second period that stood up as the winner. It was a nice bit of work, given how Getzlaf set up shop in the high slot, just out of Zdeno Chara’s reach – no mean feat considering Slovakia’s best player and the reigning Norris Trophy winner stands six-foot-nine. But Getzlaf waited patiently until the puck squirted free to him, at which point he lofted a backhander Halak to give Canada that needed three-goal cushion.

 A Canada-U.S. final will feature Canada’s potent attack, currently No. 1 in the tournament, against the stingy U.S. and the top goaltender statistically thus far in the tournament, Miller, who has a remarkable 1.04 goals-against average for the U.S., who are a perfect 5-0 thus far.

 As expected, Canada couldn’t quite achieve the same emotional level as it did against Russia playing Slovakia, who’d won four in a row coming into the tournament, and dispatched defending champion Sweden in the quarter-finals.

 About the most that could be said for the game was that Canada did as much as it had to against a Slovak team that boasts some impressive weapons – including an efficient power play and Chara, who set the physical tone early by taking a long run at Jarome Iginla deep in the Canada zone.

 Marleau, the San Jose Sharks’ player who’d been flirting with the NHL goal-scoring lead all season, had had a quiet tournament offensively until Friday night, but it was his goal 13:30 into the opening period that broke the ice and turned the tide in Canada’s favor.

 With his stick held waist high, Marleau tipped a point shot from Shea Weber down and between the legs of Slovak goaltender Jaroslav Halak. Under International Ice Hockey Federation rules, Marleau’s stick needed to be level with the top of the goal net for it to count. After an extensive video review, it was ruled a legal goal.

 Less than two minutes later, Morrow extended the lead on a similar play. Getzlaf started the play by lunging to get a loose puck tipped back to Pronger. Morrow redirected Chris Pronger’s fluttering shot behind the screened Halak to make it 2-0.

 On Sunday, Canada and the U.S. will meet for the second time in eight years in the men’s Olympic final. The last time they met, in Salt Lake City, the Canadians ruined an otherwise excellent Olympics for the Americans, who had gone undefeated, with only a tie in the preliminary round to spoil their record.

 So this time around, the Americans would like to return the favor and spoil the party.

 Slovakia entered the tournament with only the No. 9 International Ice Hockey Federation rating, the result of some poor results at world championships of late. Their issue has been an unwillingness to move off the previous generation of players – Ziggy Palffy, Jozef Stumpel, Pavol Demitra, who have been around for a long time – most of whom played their last games for the national team Friday night.

It was a night where everybody contributed, Cory Perry got 2 goals, Ryan Getzlaf had 1, Shea Weber had 1, Brendan Morrow had 1, Rick Nash had 1, and Sharks defenseman Dan Boyle had 1.

Russias goals were scored by Maxim Afineganov, Sergei Gonchar, and Dmitri Kalinin.

This comes as a surprise to most people, Russia was picked as a high favorite to win the gold this year in Vancouver, but will be looking forward to 2014 when the games go to Russia.

Canada will play either Sweden or Slovakia on Friday.

It was a game in which everything went Canada’s way, from the moment the puck was dropped between Jonathan Toews and Russia’s No. 1 centre Evgeni Malkin. Canadian coach Mike Babcock cobbled together a checking line consisting of Toews, Mike Richards and Rick Nash, with Nash drawing the task of shadowing Russia’s all-world scoring sensation, Alex Ovechkin.

Nash had been Canada’s most physical forward in this tournament and physically, the best equipped to go head-to-head against Ovechkin, who’d knocked the Czech star Jaromir Jagr right out of the tournament in an earlier game. But Nash was strong against Ovechkin all night – or as long as it mattered, which was probably no more than the early stages of the second period, by which time Canada had the game sealed and delivered.

Richards was just as good, hounding Malkin, a frequent NHL adversary in the Pittsburgh Penguins-Philadelphia Flyers’ rivalry. Richards’ play, to strip Malkin of the puck just inside the Russian blue line with Canada holding a 2-0 first-period lead, may have been the turning point in the game. Richards moved the puck up to Toews on a quick transitional play, who then found Nash breaking into the clear.

Evgeni Nabokov had given up 6 goals before being yanked from the net, and being replaced by Phoenix Coyote’s goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov.

The crowd at Canada Hockey Place had to content itself by mocking Ovechkin with the cry, “Ovie, Ovie” whenever the Russian touched the puck.

The test now will be to harness the emotion Canada had off the start and see if they can reach that fervor pitch again in time to play Slovakia or Sweden.

In 2006, when Russia won the meeting against Canada in the quarter-final, they fell apart in the final two games, failing to score in either the semi-final or the bronze medal game.

Spectators might be forgiven for continually checking if Canada had pulled their goalie Tuesday night, as their must-win game against Germany had all the hallmarks of a permanent power play.

 Canada stormed the first break with a 1-0 lead and a heap of momentum on the back of a goal by Joe Thornton, with the Canadians having outshot Germany by 14 to 4.

The second period saw Germany produce a bit more, but the scoreline indictaed even more of a cakewalk for Canada, with Shea Weber slotting home a pass by Michael Richards with such force that it broke through the net and had to be reviewed by the refs before being awarded.

 Jarome Iginla went on a Flame frenzy after that, bulldozing a shot from close on the power play after lead-up work by Drew Doughty, and scoring another even-handed with an Exocet missile shot high past the goalie’s glove with the assist going to Eric Staal.

 Thornton’s opening goal came in the tenth minute after good lead-up work from Duncan Keith saw Dany Heatley feed Thornton from behind the German goal. The San Jose Sharks forward made no mistake, beating Thomas Greiss, his Sharks teammate in Germany’s goalmouth.

 Germany’s Marcel Goc squeezed in what will likely be a consoloation goal at the 16:34 mark of the second period. Christopher Schmidt got the assist.

 Sidney Crosby leads the Canadians with five shots on goal across the first two periods, and scored a 5th goal for Canada early in the 3rd period, jabbing his stick out at the far post to ram home Eric Staal’s shot from the wing.

 The sixth Canadian goal was all work as Johnathan Toews got the puck out of troblue behind the net and put it out front to Brendan Morrow who fed it to Michael Richards to finish the play off.

 Scott Neidermayer ran home Canada’s seventh on a breakaway that saw him slide the puck home through the five-hole after Germany’s TJ Mulock lost the handle mid-ice.

 Rick Nash rammed home an eighth after tearing around the German defense, homing in on goal after he was freed by Chris Pronger.

 With a minute to play, Germany scored a second goal on Vancouver Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo, wihen Manuel Klinge swatted a kick save out of the air past the sprawling goaltender.

 Luongo made 21 saves on 23 shots.

Canada will play Russia in the quarter finals.

Just as Sidney Crosby had cut the U.S. lead to one goal, American Ryan Kessler scored an empty-netter to regain it as the U.S. chased down its first Olympic men’s hockey victory versus Canada since 1960 by a score of 5-3.

With the victory, the Americans win Group A and earn the automatic berth to the quarterfinal round. Canada finishes second in the group and must now play Germany on Tuesday in a qualification game.

Earlier in the third period, Jamie Langenbrunner tipped a Brian Rafalski shot past Martin Brodeur to give the U.S. a 4-2 lead at the Vancouver Olympics.

Chris Drury ended the second period by batting a rebound past a sprawled Martin Brodeur to put the U.S. up 3-2 .

Earlier in the second period, Canada’s Dany Heatley banged in his fourth goal of the Games to tie the contest 2-2.

Rafalski had scored two goals for the U.S. to give the Americans a 2-1 lead going into the dressing room after the first period.

Rafalski’s second score interrupted the roar of Canadian fans still cheering for a goal scored by Canadian Eric Staal, which tied the game 1-1 just 22 seconds earlier. Brent Seabrook took a shot from the point, which was tipped by Staal past U.S. goalie Ryan Miller.

Rafalski’s opener came on a slapshot from the point past Brodeur just 41 seconds into the first period. It interrupted the first ‘Go Canada Go’ chant that boomed from the crowd to open the game.

he atmosphere is booming, fitting for a rivalry game of this magnitude. The U.S. team hasn’t been greeted so politely at Canada Hockey Place although the booing was gentle considering how high emotions are running.

There is a sprinkling of U.S. jerseys and flags around the arena, including two large Stars and Stripes that are being held right behind the Canadian bench. On Beatty Street, outside the arena, scalpers were asking for $2,500 per ticket to sit at centre ice.

She was sitting second overall with one run remaining, but Canada’s Mellisa Hollingsworth fell short of a podium finish.

The Eckville, Alta., native, who was favoured to win Olympic skeleton gold, clocked a final run time of 54.44 seconds, knocking her back to fifth.

That final run was the slowest of the Games for Hollingsworth, the 2006 Olympic bronze medallist. She finished 0.96s off the pace set by gold medallist Amy Williams.

Williams, of Great Britain, broke the track record for the second consecutive day with a blazing opening run of 53.68s. She led the field from start to finish and had a four-run time of 3 minutes, 35.64 seconds.  

The gold is Great Britain’s first medal of these Games.

Germany finished 2-3, with Kerstin Szymkowiak winning silver, 0.56s back, and Anja Huber taking the bronze. The medals mark Germany’s first-ever skeleton medals in Winter Olympic history.

Huber was sitting in eighth after her third run, but little time separated her from third place, and a fast final heat bumped her on to the podium.

Amy Gough of Williams Lake, B.C., finished seventh, and Michelle Kelly of Fort St. John, B.C., was 13th.  

Gough, 32, was sitting in second place overall after the first run of the competition on Thursday, but a slower second run bumped her to seventh. She managed to move up to sixth on her third run, but finished one spot back (3:37.01).

Kelly, who finished 10th at the 2002 Olympic Games, finished 5.15s off the pace (3:40.79).

“I wasn’t thrilled about the race or the run,” Kelly said. “I’m disappointed that I worked so hard for four years and was on my home track. I went for it and gave it all I got. It was certainly the blade’s glory, but now not so much glory.”

Shaun White Wins Gold on the Olympic Half-pipe.

It’s official – Shaun White wins gold. The US snowboarder, nicknamed the Flying Tomato, was the clear favorite coming into the snowboarding halfpipe event at the 2010 Winter Olympics and he didn’t disappoint. The most famous athlete in the sport laid down an epic first run to become the new Olympic champion.

He dominated a quality field for the win. Halfpipe at the Olympics involves two runs, with each rider’s final score being the best of the two. White was in top spot after his first run, with a score of 46.8. By the time he pushed off for his second run, he already had the gold medal in the bag based on the strength of his first score, meaning his second run was irrelevant.

This isn’t the first time Shaun White has won Olympic gold in this event. He was the defending champion after taking the top prize at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. Today’s result, along with his continuing dominance at the X Games and other snowboarding events, just cements his reputation as the best halfpipe boarder of all time.

The defending champs wasted no time getting started, holding off a fired up German squad 2-0 on Wednesday night.

Matthias Ohlund and Loui Eriksson had goals for Sweden in the win, while goaltender Henrik Lundqvist made 21 saves for the shutout.

The Swedes are trying to become the first team to win two Olympic golds since the NHL allowed its players take part in the Olympics 12 years ago, although the Russians and Canadians are widely regarded as the favorites.

Ohlund would score on a slap-shot thanks to a beautiful screen that was set up by Daniel Sedin.

The Germans played well on defense but didn’t have enough talent to worry Sweden at the other end – other than Christian Ehrhoff’s shot off a post in the second period. They had a 5-on-3 situation that didn’t prove to be much of an advantage.

Germany’s Thomas Greiss made 23 saves.

Keron Williams lands in BC, Dominique Dorsey to the Riders, all of this makes up for a busy couple days in the CFl free agency period.

The Toronto Argonauts haven’t wasted any time, signing DB Byron Parker, and trading PK Sam to the Calgary Stampeders for all-star reciever Jermaine Copeland, who led the CFL in touchdowns last year.

The Montreal Alouettes locked up only their own free agents.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders mostly locked up their own players. But also made a splash signing kick return specialist Dominique Dorsey to a 1 +1 contract for 125k. Dorsey had special teams player of the year honours in 2008 with his 6 special teams touchdowns.

The Hamilton Tiger Cats and the Edmonton Eskimos made a trade, Maurice Mann went to the Ti-Cats while DB Chris Thompson went to the Eskimos.