Norway loses a 5-4 overtime thriller to the Swiss, which means I picked a terrible day to rock my Mighty Thor tee shirt. Slovakia doesn't mince words in a 6-0 beating of Latvia.  Finally, Belarus and Germany cap the triple threat with a fun game to watch, puncuated by a five goal third period that was more up-and-down than the Wave running through the arena.

Speaking of which, every time I close my eyes, if I'm not seeing Quatchi, Miga and Mukmuk, its images of the Wave.  Every single game has at least two instances of the ultimate in-arena fan participatory event. 

On separate occasions during the day, I breezed by both Darren Pang and Scottie Bowman, but rather than bother them – or worse, pull a Sedin – I simply nodded like a starstruck girl as they marched onward.  It's for the best, because I'm sure I would have enthusiastically said something incredibly stupid like, "Hey, Scottie, we have the same first name!" There is a very short list of people who awe me by their sheer presence (Scott Stevens and Flavor Flav come to mind) and Mr.Bowman has that aura about him, too.

Anyway, this brings us to Sunday, which boasts the most amazing threesome in international hockey history.  The starts at noon with Russia and the Czech Republic facing off.  Then at 4:30 PST, the main event of Canada vs USA is on, followed by Sweden vs Finland.  All three of those games are encores of the last three gold medal games, in chronological order from 1998.

Everyone in Vancouver has been buzzing about the Canada/USA game since I landed at the airport just over a week ago, and its finally built to a boiling point.  Olympic volunteers, many of whom have been run ragged by ten to twelve hour shifts for nearly a week, are begging to work inside Canada Hockey Place Sunday just to catch a glimpse of the action.

Questions and comments go here: olympics@newjerseydevils.com