USA Advances!

by Anne

For the first time since 2004, Team USA advances past the quarterfinals!!

Hooray!

I was doing my awesome Anne Happy Dance which I wish I could demonstrate on here so you could all do it. It involves a lot of hip shaking and and "raising the roof" style arm movements accompanied by a few well timed "aw yeah"s for good measure.

So I'm in my kitchen happy dancing away, scaring the cat and I have the following thought: "Woo! Semifinals! So who do we have to pl- oh. Damn." We have to play Russia. Friggin' A. Well it was nice to make it to the Semis.

During the game, Kyle Okposo missed on a wraparound attempt that he probably should've been able to stuff in and in the replay we were inadvertently treated to a super slo-mo version of Kyle saying "Eff me." It was pretty nice.

YO. What the hell. I'm looking for pictures while I'm typing this and the gallery is five pages long. Normally its three. Maybe its because it was Finland's final game? Whatevs.

Unlike the other games, I actually got to watch this one. Universalsports.com has a really nice high-quality streaming video of the games (its free). I thoroughly enjoy watching my team rather than just looking at a continually refreshing boxscore.

Because I was actually watching with my own to eyes, I got to see the Sabres fans in attendance:

They were moving way too much and so this picture quality is not so great.


Gerbe-Derby getting international love!

The game was definitely a seesaw. The first period was all Finland as the USA took a slew of penalties and played a lot of the 2nd half of the period short-handed. Finland fired 20 shots on Robert Esche in the first frame but Esche stood tall in net and kept his team in it. The Finns didn't solve Robbie until the first minute of the second at the end of a penalty that had been taken in the last minute of the first.

It looked like the Finns were ready to build on their lead until they took a penalty. Finally, Team USA got their heads together and managed to turn the game in their favor. The Finns took the next five penalties and even though they only scored on one of them, the rest of the game was all USA. All five goals were scored in the 2nd period and the USA won 3-2, mostly thanks to the play of Robert Esche.

Even the announcers were like "He's been in RUSSIA for the last two years. Can you BELIEVE it?" I mean he's not the greatest goaltender in the world but I think he'd be a good back-up. HINT. HINT. He's only 31. I'm not sayin'... I'm just sayin'.

Being in the Semifinals means if the USA wins (which they won't) they will play for Gold/Silver. If they lose, they will play for Bronze. Either way, they have a shot at a medal for the first time in many years. I honestly didn't expect this team to do better than last year's team but I was wrong, obviously.

Now for some photography:

Nick Foligno pushes Senator teammate Jarkko Ruutu to the ice
I like that Foligno kid, he's a good egg.
Too bad he's a Senator.
But HA, Ruutu


Dustin Brown scored the USA's first goal on a 5 on 3 after some beautifully crisp passing from his teammates
Hainsey shot it from the blue line, cross-ice to Suter just above the dot, to Brownie who was, well where he is in the picture.
It would seem this is a good way to score on Pekka Rinne, so TJ Oshie did the same thing on a 3-on-1 rush a bit later:


Nice.


Never fear, Little Foot's intense eyebrows showed up for the game


Let's discuss a few things.
1. How tiny is Jason Blake?
2. How tall are those boards?
3. Was Antti Miettinen hit by a sniper?
4. Why is he using his Minnesota Wild gloves? Is he just that particular? Would team Finland not foot the bill?
5. Could Team USA look less impressed by this game? Little Foot looks about ready to nod off, Nick Foligno looks like he's yawning and Joe Pavelski... well, he always looks like that.

Team USA takes on Russia Friday at 10:15 am EST.