The Olympic Men’s Hockey tournament got pretty goddamn interesting last night as talented underdogs Slovakia and Switzerland took heavy medal favorites Canada and Russia to shootouts. (Haha: “heavy medal.”)

Canada dodged a big fat bullet on the strength of assistant captain and national golden boy Sidney Crosby’s successful second shootout attempt on sensational Swiss goalie Jonas Hiller. In the NHL, players are allowed just one bite at the proverbial apple, but in international play, teams can send shooters back out during a shootout after the first three rounds. (A quirk I don’t like – too tough on goalies and robs fans of the unique joy of watching grinders and defensemen try to score in later rounds.) As a result, Crosby – stoned by Hiller on his first run – got to reload and beat Hiller with a wrist shot. Watching the game, you knew #87 wasn’t going to miss twice, even with the weight of the entire nation on his back.

The collective sigh of relief was deafening; I could hear Toronto triumphantly slamming down beer bottles from my apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I have to admit that I was kinda hoping SUI would pull the upset – not just as a Team USA partisan, but because the Red Crosses were scrappy as hell. Dudes were hitting everything that moved: my favorite hit of the night was some Swiss dude I can’t remember leveling Getzlaf in the third along the blueline. Getzlaf kinda teetered around like Piston Honda, then realized he had been knocked on his ass and promptly fell backwards. Awesome. Not to mention Jonas Hiller’s unbelievable performance in the face of 46 shots from the Hosers, plus a knee to the skull from Rick Nash late in the game. He was marvelous, as was the Swiss penalty killing in the third. The Swiss only have two NHLers on the squad – Hiller and Mark Streit – but the rest of the team isn’t just beer league assholes. These guys played gritty as hell last night and almost pulled off a stunner.

Fun game to watch; shame someone had to lose. Losing the World Juniors to the US last month – in Canada, no less – was presumably enough of a shock to the Canadian psyche; I’m not sure how the country would have responded to dropping a game to the Swiss in the Olympics.

The drama wasn’t done. Later in the night, Russia took an unlikely L when Slovakia’s Pavol Dimitra solved Ilya Bryzgalov to end a seven-round shootout. Despite reports of extra work on the man advantage in practice – and of course having Ovechkin, Malkin, Kovalchuk, etc. in the arsenal – the Russians simply couldn’t crack Jaroslav Halak on the power play during regulation. Halak’s magic continued throughout the overtime and into the shootout.

Bryzgalov, on the other hand, couldn’t hold on. And you gotta love this – asked about the goal after the game, Demitra said:

“That was a great move by me,” Demitra said, without a wink. “Obviously, I had a second chance and I was going from the other side. I wait, wait, wait to make the first move and I chip it over him.”

In other words, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Also, shout to Marian Gaborik for playing two games in two days for Slovakia, despite having his leg cut up by Henrik Lundqvist a week ago.

Olympic hockey awards a team 3 points for a regulation win, 2 points for an OT/SO win, and 1 for an OT/SO loss. (A scoring system which strikes me as remarkably intelligent, Commissioner Bettman.) Here are the standings after last night’s action. Sunday’s Canada-USA game looms large, as does the Russia-Czech Republic match on the same day. I look forward to observing both sporting matches this weekend.

- Caps