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Wilderness Walk: Champions at Last

Team USA has a gold medal in ice hockey, and it came against longtime rivals Team Canada. The women of Team USA won in the shootout and finally dethroned longtime gold medal spoilers Team Canada. The game winner by Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson was an absolutely filthy deke that everyone should see.

Far less thrilling, both because the result is disappointing and because it was painfully predictable was the men’s team’s failure to advance to a medal round. Hockey USA needs to figure out how to field a competitive team in men’s competitions. Obviously they weren’t done any favors by the dithering of the NHL on participation, but a nation with over 550,000 registered hockey players (roughly equivalent to 10% of the entire populations of Finland, Norway, or Slovakia) should not struggle this hard to put together a team that at least looks like it could threaten to win gold.