Mirakel P� Is

By beating the U.S., Sweden did more than pull off the greatest upset in women's hockey history. It gave a struggling sport a needed lift

THEY HAD witnessed a certified hockey miracle-- Sweden parting the red, white and blue sea in a 3-2 semifinal upset of the U.S.--and as they exited Palasport Olimpico last Friday night, Walter Bush, the head of the International Ice Hockey Federation women's committee and patron saint of the women's game, turned to IIHF president Ren� Fasel and said, "That was good for hockey." � Bush was displaying an Olympic-sized generosity of spirit. For he is also the USA Hockey board chairman, a man conversant in extraordinary events dating to 1980. � In Miracle, the 2004 film that recounts the U.S. men's unlikely run to the hockey gold medal in Lake Placid, Bush's character is the man in the parking lot scene who warns U.S. men's Olympic coach Herb Brooks (portrayed by Kurt Russell) that, after picking the team without consulting the board, he had better know what he's doing. If cinema is a circuitous route to explain Sweden's wondrous shootout victory over the U.S., well, consider that the Swedes used that DVD as inspiration and template, making Brooks's infamous "Again" drill--in which the team repeatedly skates sprints--their own. Goalie Kim Martin said she has watched Miracle six times, in English with Swedish subtitles. "I have always imagined," she said, "that I am [ U.S. goalie] Jim Craig."

Apparently this is a case of life imitating art imitating life.

Predictably Canada rolled past the drained Swedes 4-1 on Monday to win the gold, but as in Lake Placid 26 years earlier, when the U.S. beat Finland for the gold after upsetting the Soviet Union in the semifinals, the last match in Turin was anticlimactic. Facing a fit, fresh-faced team (average age 22.9 years to the U.S. squad's 24.1) whose portfolio was so modest four years ago that Sweden's Olympic Committee nearly yanked it from the Salt Lake Games, the Americans lost their intensity, their power play and ultimately the game for the first time in 26 meetings with the Swedes. After watching the first five minutes, Mats Naslund, the former NHL star and general manager of the Swedish men's team, gave the underdogs no chance. Yet the Swedes, led by Martin, forwards Maria Rooth and Pernilla Winberg and defenseman Joa Elfsberg rallied from a 2-0 second-period deficit. A team with an Elfsberg, a Lundberg, a Winberg ... maybe this was the Miracle on Ice-berg.

This was also, arguably, the most significant game in the history of Olympic hockey, men's or women's. The celebrated U.S. victory over the Soviet Union in 1980 was rife with geopolitical import and gave impetus to a new generation of American players, but it did not save a sport. The Swedish women's win may have done that. The victory, the first by a European team over a North American one, injected a dollop of suspense and hope into a tournament as predictable as Monday mornings. (After its 4-0 win over Finland in the bronze-medal game, the U.S. women's record jumped to 103-1-2 alltime against countries other than Canada.) It also took a sport that had stuttered through its first two Olympics and anchored it in the program. Not that the International Olympic Committee, which is shedding women's softball after the 2008 Games, necessarily had women's hockey on the endangered species list. "Pretty safe" is how IOC member Dick Pound described women's hockey in an e-mail to SI three days before the upset.

Still, there had been too many lopsided games--after Canada had defeated Italy and Russia by a combined 28-0, American defenseman Angela Ruggiero accused the Canadians of running up the score--and too many empty seats. During the round-robin Ruggiero even suggested women's hockey would benefit if Sweden or Finland made a final. "Eventually, not when I'm playing," she said. At the time she hardly seemed like Cassandra with a slap shot.

Then the Americans crashed into a concrete abutment in Martin (37 saves), a poised goalie with a face on loan from one of Raphael's cherubs, and the brilliant Rooth. Martin was 15 in 2002 when she won a Nordic war against Finland for the jayvee title, also known as the Olympic bronze medal. Generously listed as 5'6", she remains quick post-to-post and fearless, proving it during an extended U.S. five-on-three power play in the second period and again in the shootout, in which Natalie Darwitz hit a post but no another American had a sniff. Martin, whose father is a goaltending coach and whose brother plays professionally in France, practices and occasionally plays with a boys' junior team in Malm� but appears set to join the European migration next fall to the University of Minnesota-- Duluth, Rooth's alma mater.

"I want her on my line," Sweden's Peter Forsberg said of his nation's Babe Rooth. The 26-year-old right wing, who won three NCAA championships at Minnesota-Duluth, scored both of Sweden's regulation goals, including a nifty, sharp-angled backhand through the pads of U.S. netminder Chanda Gunn. For the shootout winner, Rooth picked the low corner, stick side. Moments after a giddy on-ice celebration, she declared, "I've always thought that a bigger heart will beat talent. And I think today just proves it."

Ingmar Bergman, do you smell box office?