As a Canadian, I'm really concerned about our team's chances after having seen them struggle (IMO) against Latvia today in one of the other men's hockey quarter-finals. On paper, the difference in talent was grossly in our favor, and one would've thought/expected a bit of a blowout today, especially considering the fact that Latvia was still somewhat fatigued after having just played the previous night when they upset the Swiss team.
But give the Latvians credit, they stonewalled pretty much each of our guys in one-on-one or two-on-one type of situations, preventing them from really establishing any major swings of momentum. And HOLY SHIT their goalie was playing like a man possessed! We threw over 50 shots at him over the course of the game, and you could tell that he was, by far, the hardest working player on either team. During the last half of the 3rd period, all issues about the actual score aside, the CBC's commentators were expressing concern (and rightfully so) that the poor guy might be dehydrated, if not on the verge of passing out from exhaustion.
At any rate, we were eventually able to squeak a winning goal past him, and so now Canada moves on to the semi-finals, where we'll see a rematch of the 2010 Gold medal game by facing the Americans. Now the Americans were definitely the stronger team in their quarter-final match against the Czech Republic, so yeah, they've undoubtedly got the momentum to potentially knock us out of the finals. When you compare the American team's performance with the one that Canada put on today, Canadian fans should definitely be concerned.
In other news, at least both Canada's men's AND women's curling teams will be playing in their Gold medal matches.