Switzerland beat Canada in Olympic hockey today by a score of 2-0. Hard for a lot of people who don't follow hockey (much less international hockey) to understand the magnitude of, but in the hockey world, this is a big deal. Canada doesn't really have a lot that it can hang its hat on culturally, so Canadian dominance in hockey is a point of pride for them. When they lose in international competition, its a painful national experience. When the Team Canada failed to win the gold medal in the Nagano Winter Olympics a few years back, Wayne Gretzky (then still playing) described himself as "devastated". When the Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 1984, one Canadian hockey writer after another insinuated that the Cup was "back in Canada, where it belongs". I guess there was some pride lost to Americans when the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series of baseball, but if there was, I didn't read about it or talk to anyone who felt it. Conversely, Canadians feel simply awful when they don't win in hockey, acutely when there's no Canadian-based teams competing for the Stanley Cup, and significantly more when they lose in international competition.
Switzerland has never been considered a hockey powerhouse in any way, shape, or form. The traditional European hockey powerhouses are Sweden, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia), Russia (formerly USSR), and to a lesser extent, Finland. The Swiss, Germans, Danish, Norwegians or Italians rarely figured into the equation, and were considered "also-rans". Not so with the Swiss in these Olympics. The Swiss, sporting a 2-1 record in the round-robin tournament, have on their wall the scalps of two hockey powerhouses: Czech Republic and Canada.
There's still an opportunity for the Canadians to climb back into it and win the Olympic tourney. But their loss to the Swiss has made things a lot more interesting.
There has been a shift in power in the hockey world.
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