US men beat Canada in Olympic hockey

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-02-22 15:32

VANCOUVER: Canada's hockey team failed to impress for the second straight game on home ice at the Vancouver Olympics.

Ryan Kesler (17), Erik Johnson (6) and Zach Parise (unseen) of the US celebrate their victory next to Canada's Corey Perry (L) and Scott Niedermayer during their men's preliminary ice hockey game at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics February 21, 2010. [Agencies]

Three days after being pushed to a shootout by Switzerland, the gold medal favorite lost to the United States 5-3 Sunday.

Now, instead of breezing through the preliminary round, the host Canadians will have to win a classification game to reach the quarterfinals.

Depending on the later Finland-Sweden game that concluded hockey's Super Sunday in Vancouver, the United States could go into Wednesday's quarterfinals not only as a group winner but as the top-seeded team, something almost no one predicted when the tournament began.

In the early game, Russia beat the Czech Republic 4-2 to reach the quarterfinals.

For the Americans, it was their biggest Olympic hockey upset since the Miracle on Ice 30 years ago, when the U.S. team beat the Soviet Union.

Brian Rafalski scored two goals and set up another, and Ryan Miller held off a flurry of shots to lead the Americans.

"We know we can beat anybody now," Rafalski said.

Chris Drury and Jamie Langenbrunner scored Sunday to put the United States up 4-2 and hold off a relentless late surge by Canada that included Sidney Crosby's power play goal with 3:09 remaining.

Miller made an exceptional save on Rick Nash's shot from the slot with two minutes left to preserve it, and Ryan Kesler put the game beyond doubt by scoring into an empty net with 45 seconds remaining.

"We're here to be the last ones standing and we're still alive," Brodeur said. "We're throwing 45 shot at these goalies and they are making stops facing forward, backward, sideways. Eventually we'll be more successful."

Eric Staal and Dany Heatley also scored for Canada.

Evgeni Malkin scored twice as Russia bounced back from a shootout loss to Slovakia and beat the Czech Republic.

In a rematch of the 1998 Olympic gold-medal game that was won 1-0 by the Czechs, Russia scored in every period to claim the top spot in Group B with seven points.

Malkin gave Russia a 1-0 lead in the first and pushed it to 3-1 in the third after a huge hit by teammate Alex Ovechkin freed the puck at center ice.

"Oh, I think it's a great moment of the Olympics Games," Malkin said. "After we score, of course it's a great moment."

Viktor Kozlov also scored for Russia, and Pavel Datsyuk added an empty-net goal off assists from Ovechkin and Malkin with 12.3 seconds remaining.

Tomas Plekanec and Milan Michalek had goals for the Czechs.

Evgeni Nabokov made 23 saves for the win. His Czech counterpart, Tomas Vokoun, stopped 27 shots.

"We played a good game," Vokoun said. "We ended up losing. It's a tournament and you have to shake it off pretty quickly if you want to go anywhere."