Late night open thread

What an incredible hockey game today. A game well worthy of it's gold medal prize. Full marks to Canada for winning, joining only the USA as teams to win gold on home soil. Never though has a silver medal been so rewarding. Johnny's not a touchy feely everybody wins when everybody plays kind of guy. He's a fierce sports competitor in the old school mold. Coming in to the games with no medal expectations and to take Canada to overtime in the gold medal game, this after beating them a week before, USA Hockey closed the gap immeasurably between themselves and Canada and Russia. A case could now be made a game between the USA and Canada is a tossup.

Gary Bettman, get your head out of your ass, quit the Napoleon thing and understand with NHL players the Olympic men's hockey tournament rivals the NCAA basketball tournament for excitement. Why? The great thing about the NCAA tourney is that any one of say 8 teams can win it. With the NHL players there are six teams who can win it (USA, Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic) and a seventh (Slovakia) who can medal. Germany and Switzerland made huge improvements to their games from 2006. Gary, you HAVE to let the NHL players keep playing. If you have a worry about exposure ask your business partner to show the games in high def on the flagship NBC station like today. It's nice the earlier games were on MSNBC and CNBC but the USA and Canada games should always be live on the big network.

Being a Michigan State fan Johnny had always been a big Ryan Miller fan but it was enjoyable to cheer for and appreciate the talents of the Devils Zach Parise and Jamie Langenbrunner and the Rangers Ryan Callahan. Brian Rafalski you just keep playing like that for the Red Wings the rest of the year. Rafalski has been a godsend in Detroit (After all his cups here for the Devils) and it's nice he got to show off his qualities these last couple weeks.

A huge tip of the cap to team USA, they did us all proud. Herb Brooks is smiling.

Time for Jersey City, After Dark