Per Yahoo!:

On an uncommon night when the biggest cheers were for an opposing player who didn’t step on the ice, the Pittsburgh Penguins kept the Buffalo Sabres in their pre-Olympic slump.

Sidney Crosby? He didn’t star in his first game since winning the Olympics for Canada, but the Penguins still had enough offense to beat the Sabres 3-2 as Ruslan Fedotenko had a goal and an assist and Sergei Gonchar scored his 200th career goal.

The Sabres remained one point behind Ottawa for the Northeast Division lead despite losing their seventh in eight games.

Crosby, playing two days after beating United States goalie Ryan Miller for the game-winning overtime goal for Canada in Vancouver, missed out on opposing Miller again when Sabres coach Lindy Ruff started backup Patrick Lalime.

Ruff said Miller deserved a night off after the emotionally draining two-week Olympic tournament in which Miller was chosen MVP. Crosby was a little tired following a late-night return to Pittsburgh on Monday, but hasn’t had a post-Olympic letdown—yet.

“It’s not bad, (despite) going on a long flight and getting here and getting right back in the swing of things,” Crosby said. “I’ll try to manage my rest as we go along here, but I felt all right considering all that.’

Crosby played 17 1/2 minutes, about four minutes fewer than usual. The lack of power play time—the Penguins went 1 for 2 with the man advantage to Buffalo’s 0 for 4—figured in that.

“I probably could have played more, but we had all four lines going and played a good, solid team game,” Crosby said.

The pro-Olympic buzz created by the memorable Canada-U.S. game was evidenced by the standing ovations given Miller and Crosby during pregame introductions— and, for perhaps the first time in his career, Crosby drew fewer cheers than an opposing player. The ovation given Miller was noticeably louder and longer.

Twice when replays of Crosby’s game-winner were shown on the Mellon Arena scoreboard, there was perceptible booing—not that Crosby scored, but because the U.S. lost.

Miller watched the game from a Mellon Arena runway, where the fan sitting nearest to him wore a Crosby Canada Olympic jersey.

The Penguins lost three of their final four before the Olympic break, all in overtime or a shootout, before beating Buffalo for the third time in four games.

Fedotenko, an inconsistent scorer, gave Pittsburgh a 3-1 lead at 11:03 of the third—a goal the Penguins needed after Derek Roy scored at 15:21 on a shot that wasn’t originally ruled a goal. The puck entered and exited the net so quickly that the officials did not signal a goal until after a video review.

“I must have been the only guy in the building who thought it went in,” Roy said.

Gonchar, who played for non-medalist Russia during the Olympics, put the Penguins up 1-0 with a shot from the top of the slot during a power play at 14:58 of the first, with Alex Goligoski and Crosby assisting. Buffalo began the game with the NHL’s top-rated penalty killing unit.

Pascal Dupuis made it 2-0 by taking Fedotenko’s pass along the goal line and beating Lalime inside the near post at 3:13 of the second.

“I saw in the corner of my eye Dupes (Dupuis) going to the back door there and I was trying to kind of wrap it around,” Fedotenko said. “I threw the puck on net and it ended up right on his stick.”

Toni Lydman answered for Buffalo less than three minutes later with a one-timer from the top of the left circle on a play created by Patrick Kaleta’s drop pass. Lydman played for bronze medalist Finland in Vancouver.

“Physically it (the Olympics) wasn’t that big of a deal but maybe mentally it’s a little more draining than a usual regular season game,” Lydman said. “But you can’t blame it on the break, they had some guys who played in the tournament, too.”

Penguins goalie Brent Johnson made 26 saves and Lalime stopped 25 shots. Lalime turned aside 50 of 51 shots while going 1-0-1 in his two previous appearances against the Penguins this season. Miller allowed three goals to Crosby during his most recent start against Pittsburgh, a 5-4 Penguins victory on Feb. 1.

Per NHL.com:

Step aside Paul Henderson, you no longer have the most important goal in Canadian hockey history.

Thirty-eight years after Henderson’s goal in Moscow clinched a Summit Series victory for Canada, Sidney Crosby became the newest sports uber-hero in his country.

Isn’t that just fitting?

“Sid The Kid” has been Canada’s most visible and important athlete since Wayne Gretzky and he stamped his image into the heart of a nation Sunday. He sent a low shot through Team USA goalie Ryan Miller’s legs from the lower part of the left circle 7:40 into overtime to lift Canada to a 3-2 win in the gold-medal game.

Crosby’s goal sent a nation into hysterics about 25 or so minutes after it had a collective coronary when American forward Zach Parise tied the game with 24.4 seconds left in regulation.

“Yeah, I did dream about it — probably a thousand times,” Crosby was saying after the Canadians finished their impromptu celebration on the ice, passing around a Canadian flag as if it was the Stanley Cup. “You never know if it’s going to come true. You never know if you’re going to be in this position.”

Crosby found himself in this position because Team Canada coach Mike Babcock kept going back to him and Jarome Iginla even though neither was having a great game. That chemistry they showed previously in the tournament looked zapped until overtime.

“I thought Iggy and Sid would have a chance and in the end, obviously, they made a good play,” Babcock said. “He beat Miller to the deck with a quick release.”

Crosby first beat Team USA defenseman Brian Rafalski to the puck near the left boards and poked it up to Iginla. Crosby then got an inside step on Rafalski and Iginla found him with a perfect pass for the winning shot that went through Miller’s legs.

Miller said he saw Crosby with his head down, so he came out to play it aggressively, but just as he was hoping to force Crosby to make a decision on where to go with the puck, Crosby lifted his head and saw the small opening.

“I didn’t see it go in,” said Crosby, who jumped into the corner and threw off his gloves to start the celebration. “I just heard the screams.”

It wasn’t long before that he heard only silence.

In the dying seconds of regulation, Patrick Kane’s shot from the right circle hit Jamie Langenbrunner’s skate in the high slot. Parise, who was in his customary spot right in front of the net, had the puck come right to him and he wrapped it into the net, setting off a wild celebration by the Americans.

“We showed a lot of heart; scoring that goal with 20 seconds to go to force overtime,” Team USA captain Jamie Langenbrunner told NHL.com. “We really believed this was going to happen for us, but great players do great things and that is what happened.”

Canada had plenty of chances to put the Americans away before Parise tied the game, but couldn’t make good on any of them, starting with Eric Staal’s blown opportunity on a breakaway late in the second period.

The Canadians were inches away from scoring early in the third, but a pair of deflected shots rang off the post.

Crosby had perhaps Canada’s best chance to take a commanding two-goal lead when he got loose on a breakaway with 3:15 left. But Kane backchecked incredibly hard and got there just in time to thwart Crosby’s deke before he was going to shoot on Miller.

Crosby thought back to that missed opportunity after Parise tied the game.

“Anybody would have that going through their mind when they tie it up after you miss a breakaway,” he said.

Team Canada defenseman Duncan Keith said the entire team was calm in the dressing room during the intermission before overtime. They took their cue from how they handled the entire tournament. The Canadians faced enormous pressure before the tournament began and it only grew after three games yielded only one regulation victory, which was an 8-0 shellacking of the overmatched Norwegians.

Canada hung on to beat Switzerland on Crosby’s shootout winner and then lost to the Americans last Sunday. They faced elimination Tuesday against Germany, but won that going away before blowing out Russia and hanging on to beat Slovakia.

“We talked all tournament long about how there would be adversity throughout the tournament and everything wouldn’t be smooth sailing,” Keith said. “That’s what we talked about (in the dressing room); this is just another bump in the road so let’s stick with it and take it to them.”

Roberto Luongo, who also stamped his legacy by finally winning the big one on the big stage with 34 saves, said he didn’t do anything different during the intermission.

“It’s a tough one with 24 seconds left, but we’re in overtime and next goal wins so you have to refocus right away,” Luongo told NHL.com. “Once we got into the locker room guys started thinking about overtime right away. This is just a game of hockey and obviously it was going into overtime, but you have to play the same way.”

Canada came after the Americans in overtime, forcing Miller to make some big stops, including back-to-back saves on Iginla and Crosby about 4:20 into the session. Perhaps that was a harbinger of things to come.

“I thought we were good in overtime,” Babcock said. “We had some heat on, lots of opportunities and Miller was good. We still got cautious. When you’re ahead and you’re trying to protect the lead instead of just going to get the next one, you get yourself in a little bit of trouble and that happened. We found a way to win. That’s what it’s all about.”

Canada grabbed a 1-0 lead after the first period on a rebound goal by Jonathan Toews 12:50 into the game after Rafalski and Erik Johnson combined for a bad turnover near Miller.

The Canadians appeared to take control when Corey Perry scored 7:13 into the second to give the hosts a 2-0 lead. Ryan Getzlaf’s pass went off Ryan Whitney’s stick, but the puck settled perfectly for Perry in the high slot and he shot it high past Miller.

But a hard dash to the net by hometown boy Ryan Kesler, who plays for the Canucks, got the U.S. on the board with 7:16 left in the second. Kesler deflected Kane’s shot through the small opening between Luongo’s left arm and his side.

“That’s a roller coaster ride to get scored on with 20 or so seconds left,” Canada defenseman Dan Boyle told NHL.com. “Then to win it in overtime, and that’s really what you dream of, to win it in overtime. We had the right guy scoring the goal.”

Per The Province:

Shortly after he’d almost caused a nation-wide cardiac episode, Roberto Luongo was asked to describe the final couple of minutes of Team Canada’s semifinal against the Slovaks.

“Fun,” he said. “It was a lot of fun.”

Fun? Friday night was fun?

“It was the most fun I’ve ever had,” he said.

Which just means play dates at the Luongo household must be interesting.

Friday night, after spending the first 50 minutes in a Barcalounger with the remote, the Team Canada goalie had to stare down a ferocious Slovak attack that produced two goals and came within a desperation glove save by Luongo of scoring the tying marker in the game’s dying seconds.

As it was, Luongo got a piece of Vancouver Canuck teammate Pavol Demitra’s rebound try from the side of the net; the Canadians escaped with a 3-2 win; and the crowd at Canada Hockey Place got the Canada-U.S.A. gold-medal final they wanted.

And they’ll be able to enjoy it after they’ve changed their collective underwear.

“If we would have lost I don’t know if I’d be saying that,” Luongo said, clarifying his earlier assessment on the “fun” aspect of his evening. “But that’s what it’s all about right there.”

“It doesn’t take much for them to strike,” said team captain Scott Niedermayer. “We probably could have been better at the end but we got the win and we’re going where we want to go. We’re excited about that.”

Earlier Friday, the Americans advanced to the 2010 Games’ marquee event when they dispatched a lifeless Finnish side 6-1.

The Yanks scored six times in the game’s first 13 minutes, before coasting to the win. They’re now 5-0 in this tournament and, significantly, have played one fewer game than Canada.

“I think that was one of the best games in the tournament because I got to watch most of it,” said American goalie Ryan Miller.

Luongo, for his part, was in the same position for the first 2 1/2 periods of the Canada-Slovakia contest. Then, before you could say Milan Jurcina, all hell broke loose around him.

Canada, which was coming off a 7-3 beatdown of the Russians in the quarterfinal, opened a 3-0 lead on a pair of first-period deflection goals by Patrick Marleau and Brenden Morrow and Ryan Getzlaf’s power-play marker late in the second.

To that point, Luongo’s biggest challenge was staying awake. With two minutes to go in the second, he faced his first scoring chance of the game when he turned away Ziggy Palffy on a partial breakaway. It was also the ninth shot he’d faced.

But, with just over eight minutes left in the frame – and with the crowd already chanting, ‘We want USA, We want USA – Slovak defenceman Lubomir Vishnovsky banked a centering pass in off and Luongo and, suddenly, it was game on.

Michal Handzus followed with a goal on a rebound. And the suddenly inspired Slovaks spent the final minute storming Luongo.

The Canucks’ keeper would preserve the win with the save off Demitra but those last few minutes were, in the words of Morrow, “hairy.” It was also the first signs of vulnerability the Canadians had shown since their round-robin loss to the Americans.

Luongo was asked, if anything should be read into that.

“That the Slovaks are a good team and they deserve to be here,” he said. “I mean, they’ve got some guys who can play too. They were pressing at the end. That’s it. You can’t win every game 7-3.

“They were throwing every thing at the net. Pucks. Bodies. Anything.”

Slovak forward Marian Hossa, for his part, said his countrymen had made a statement against, “almost the best team ever.” The Slovaks also played the third period without star forward Marian Gaborik.

“We left everything on the ice,” said Hossa. “We tried to jam everything at Luongo and Pavol had a good chance at the end. But you know what, I’m proud of my team. We have to regroup tomorrow (in the bronze-medal game against Finland). It would be a dream come true if we got third place.”

Canada, meanwhile, has dreams of its own.

“It’s exciting,” said Luongo. “We can’t wait for Sunday. It’s going to be a great day, a great game. We’re really looking forward to it.”

You can think of about 33 million of his friends who share that sentiment.

Per NHL.com:

Team USA parlayed the most complete 13 minutes of hockey it has played in this Olympic tournament into a 60-minute date with destiny on Sunday.

The rabid Americans torched a usually reliable Finland team for a half-dozen goals by the time 12:46 had elapsed in the first period of Friday’s semifinal before cruising to an emphatic 6-1 victory against the shocked Finns.

Now a team few fancied to be among the last two standing in this battle of hockey heavyweights not only reaches the championship game, but does so while firing on all cylinders.

The Americans, who have yet to trail in this tournament after five games, will play Canada in Sunday’s gold-medal game. The host country hung on for a dramatic 3-2 win over Slovakia on Friday night.

“It’s pretty unbelievable,” American forward Zach Parise said. “It’s tough to describe right now. Even sitting on the bench and watching the clock count down to your chance to win a gold, it’s pretty surreal.”

Not as surreal as the first 13 minutes of Friday’s game, though.

Ryan Malone opened the scoring at the 2:04 mark when Finnish goalie Miikka Kiprusoff made a stunning gaffe in playing the puck. The Finnish goalie wandered out between the circles to chase down a dump-in before a hard-charging Phil Kessel reached it. But under pressure, Kiprusoff made the wrong read and pushed the puck right onto the stick of Malone just inside the blue line.

The Tampa Bay Lightning forward buried the shot and the Finns’ hopes of advancing to the gold-medal game for the second-straight Olympic tournament.

“It was a tough start for us,” Finland coach Jukka Jalonen said. “Kipper made one mistake and it shouldn’t be like this, but we were kind of shocked.”

That shock was evident and Team USA took fast advantage. A little more than four minutes after Malone’s goal, Parise scored on the power play. Then it was Erik Johnson, also on the power play, scoring a little more than two minutes later. Next, Patrick Kane scored the first of his two goals at 10:08, the Americans’ fourth goal on just seven shots.

The Finns tried to staunch their wounds by pulling a clearly rattled Kiprusoff, who stopped just three of seven shots, replacing him with backup Niklas Backstrom. He ended up being treated just as rudely. Kane scored his second goal at the 12:31 mark, less than two minutes after Backstrom entered the game. Fifteen seconds later, Paul Stastny scored to end one of the most dominant offensive stretches in recent Olympic history.

“It was a crazy 12 minutes,” said Kane, who played with a swagger that had been missing for much of this tournament. “I’ve never been a part of something like that. It seemed like we were scoring every shift, which was pretty amazing.

“It was a great 15 minutes for us. It would have been nice to play a full 60. But we still have more in the tank. It was a great start and it’s an awesome feeling to be going to the gold-medal game.”

The Americans did not score any more goals in the game’s final 47 minutes, but they didn’t take their foot off the gas either. Instead, they concentrated on the defensive side of the game, playing strong in their own zone, back-checking like demons and limiting neutral zone turnovers.

American goalie Ryan Miller faced just 18 shots without allowing a goal in the 48:29 he played before being replaced by Tim Thomas, who got his first Olympic action and allowed Finland’s only goal, by Antti Miettinen off a deflection with 5:14 remaining in the game.

“We were willing to play a game where Finland had to settle down and we were willing to settle down a little bit,” Miller told NHL.com. “We kept them off the board and that is a great accomplishment. I think they have some great skill players that want to get open and we did not let them. Their one goal goes off (Jack Johnson)’s heel and goes top shelf. A little more heel and it goes wide, a little lower and it is a block. I thought we did a great job.”

So did American coach Ron Wilson, who went out of his way to praise the work of his defensemen, who used good stick placement to cut off the passing lanes that the Finns often use to a lethal advantage.

But Finland never recovered from the grievous wounds suffered in the first dozen minutes. It was an unjust end for the veteran core of the Finnish national team that has delivered its country so many proud moments in the past decade, including a silver medal in Torino and a second-place medal at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey.

“It’s obviously very disappointing, very tough,” forward Teemu Selanne told NHL.com. “When a game is over after 12 minutes, I don’t know what to say. I’m stunned. This has never happened in my career on the national level. I don’t know what happened.”

What happened is the Americans sensed an opponent’s weakness and preyed mercilessly on it, showing a killer instinct that has been missing to this point in the competition.

Now, the Americans believe they are playing the best hockey of this two-week tournament and they are ready to embrace the opportunity to win the country’s first hockey gold medal — no matter the opponent — since the “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid 30 years ago.

“I like our chances against either team,” Wilson said.

Per Nesn:

The Czech Republic finished its quarterfinal matchup with Finland with zero goals and six penalties. Needless to say, the Czechs are on their way home from Vancouver.

Miikka Kiprusoff stood up to all 31 Czech shots, backstopping Finland to a 2-0 victory over the Czechs. Finland will go on to face the United States on Friday in the semifinals.

The game was scoreless after 53 minutes before Niklas Hagman scored on a power play, which came as a result of Martin Erat‘s clearing a puck over the glass for a delay of game. Valtteri Filppula later added an empty-net goal with 1:35 left in the game.

For the Czechs, Tomas Vokoun was nearly as good as Kiprusoff, making 29 saves on 30 shots. It was a tip-in goal from Hagman that broke the tie and eventually won the game for the Finns. The goal was aided by Czech defenseman Pavel Kubina was stuck behind the net, forced to retrieve his helmet. If it were an NHL game, he could continue playing helmet-free, but in the international rules, he either had to retrieve his helmet or head to the bench. Kubina’s absence freed some space for Hagman for the goal, but even Hagman wasn’t a fan of how the goal was scored.

“It was good for us he lost his helmet, but it’s a stupid rule,” Hagman told The Associated Press. “I know they want to keep it safe, [but] if you lose a helmet, you should let the guy play. I don’t know what they’re thinking, but that’s the rules and you have to play with them.”

Per NHL.com:

Pavol Demitra called it the biggest win in Slovakia’s ice hockey history and it’s hard to disagree with him.

Hours after Canada steamrolled the Russians here at Canada Hockey Place to earn a berth in the semifinals, Slovakia stunned Sweden, 4-3, winning the right to try to take down the big bad Canadians on Friday night at 9:30 p.m. ET.

No matter the outcome, the Slovaks have already had their best Olympics ever. Their previous best was four years ago in Torino when they finished fifth after coming in 13th at Salt Lake in 2002.

“We’ve got nothing to lose,” Tomas Kopecky, who scored the winning goal with 10:59 left in the third period, told NHL.com. “They are the favorites. We’re just going to play a solid hockey game and that’s how we’re going to win.”

The Slovaks didn’t make their way to the international ice hockey stage until 1994, one year after the breakup of Czechoslovakia. That year they finished 21st in the World Championships and sixth in the Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

They improved in each of the next seven years and finally peaked in 2002 by winning gold at the IIHF World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden. Six players from that team played in Wednesday night’s game.

“We know we can play,” Demitra, who had a goal and two assists, told NHL.com. “Obviously it’s the biggest win for our country ever, and we’re having a great time. We have a group of guys that this will be the last time we play together ever, so we’re enjoying it and we’re working hard for each other.”

Slovakia staggered to a 4-3 win as the favorite in Tuesday night’s qualification round game against upstart Norway. Marian Hossa told NHL.com afterward that he felt Slovakia would be better against Sweden because it would be the underdog and could go back to playing a more structured, disciplined game.

That’s precisely what happened.

Slovakia managed only seven shots on goal over the final two periods, but four of them beat Sweden goalie Henrik Lundqvist. The Slovaks had only 14 shots for the game while Jaroslav Halak stopped 26 of 29 from Sweden.

“We are a very disciplined team defensively,” Marian Gaborik told NHL.com. “I think it was a tight game overall, Halak was great in net and we got the edge on Lundqvist. It’s a big game for us. Huge.”

Gaborik scored on a low, sliding one-timer 7:34 into the second period to give Slovakia a 1-0 lead. Less than a minute later, Andrej Sekera finished off a 2-on-1 with Richard Zednik with a slam dunk goal to make it 2-0.

Sweden came back to get a pair from Patric Hornqvist and Henrik Zetterberg just 37 seconds apart, but Demitra staked Slovakia to a 3-2 lead by wiring his blistering slap shot from the left circle into the top right corner of the net for a power-play goal with 48 seconds left in the second period.

Michal Handzus took Sweden defenseman Mattias Ohlund to the front of the net and Lundqvist told NHL.com he couldn’t see the puck coming off Demitra’s stick between the two big bodies in front of him.

“And he just took a perfect shot,” Lundqvist said.

“When (Handzus) is in front there, he knows what he’s doing,” Demitra added. “He put a great screen for me and I just let it go. It somehow found the right corner.”

Demitra helped set up Kopecky’s winning goal by racing out for a 2-on-1 with Marian Hossa. As he saucered the pass across to Hossa, Kopecky filled the middle lane. Lundqvist came out to play the puck, but it stayed free in the slot and Kopecky was there to bang it in, giving Slovakia a 4-2 lead.

“I knew Pavol was going to pass it to Marian and I was just hoping there would be a loose puck, a rebound,” Kopecky said. “I went to the net hard, stopped in front and that’s how you get the goals.

“It’s really exciting. It was unbelievable.”

Sweden answered Kopecky’s goal 38 seconds later when Daniel Alfredsson finished off a gorgeous behind-the-net pass from Nicklas Backstrom. However, Slovakia never panicked, kept playing its defensive game and stayed out of the penalty box to preserve the lead and the win.

“We did everything we were talking about doing before the game,” Gaborik said. “There was a system, being disciplined, being on the puck and winning the battles. We did all of that and Halak was great in net. I’m proud of these guys.”

The Slovaks now have every reason to believe they can beat Canada, too. They already took down Russia in a shootout during the preliminary round and they just sent the defending gold medalists packing, too.

“We have to play the same way we did (Wednesday),” Gaborik said. “This was an unbelievable game from everybody.”