Crushin' The Russians

CALL CAA. THAT OVERHEATING DELOREAN SITTING ON THE SHOULDER of the freeway, the sleek machine that promised so much and delivered nothing, is Russia. ¶ Team Canada didn't merely make a mockery of the vaunted Russians in its 7-3 quarterfinal trashing, the second-most lopsided Russian defeat ever in the Winter Olympics. It made history. ¶ O.K., this is your unofficial Team Canada hockey quiz: Has there ever been a more dominant performance by a Canadian team (junior tournaments excluded)? If you said the 5-2 win over the Americans in the 2002 Olympic final, you have support—"We were pretty sound in that one," defenseman Chris Pronger said—but it was not a tour de force to match this foot-on-the-windpipe humiliation of Canada's archnemesis. Another candidate is the first period of Game 2 of the 1987 Canada Cup final, when Team Canada jumped on the Soviet Union 3-1 (on the way to a 6-5 overtime win), but "we weren't that dominant," says Wayne Gretzky, who was on that 1987 team and who was thunderstruck by Canada's play against Russia in Vancouver.

The correct answer, perhaps, is never.

"Never have we seen this," said Bill Hay, chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

This was a more physical and feral Team Canada than the one that blended slowly in the qualifying games. And in a role reversal with speedy Russia, Canada was the blindingly quick team in transition. With the Russians turning over the puck at a staggering rate—they have yet to acquire the dump-and-chase gene—Canada merrily counterattacked in waves. Instead of greasy goals, Canada kept making angled passes that opened up ice behind a befuddled Russian defense, a game of one-touch tic-tac-toe that led to tap-ins. At times Team Canada resembled the Soviet teams of the 1970s and '80s, while the figurative sons of those grand teams most closely resembled the Washington Generals.

In a postmatch press conference Team Canada coach Mike Babcock was effusive about Russian coach Slava Bykov's giving his national program structure since taking over in 2006; mercifully no journalist asked Babcock about his counterpart's bench-management skills in the quarterfinal. Bykov kept rolling his units without adjustments, Soviet-style, while Babcock cobbled together a five-man group to play against Russia's No. 1 line, starring left wing Alex Ovechkin. Rick Nash moved from his customary role as a scoring winger to help Jonathan Toews and Mike Richards make life miserable for Ovie & Friends. More tellingly, defensemen Shea Weber and Scott Niedermayer also were out on virtually every Ovechkin shift through the first two periods. Weber, who had been emerging as Canada's best blueliner, burnished that credential by blanketing the left wing. Russia's top line combined for a single assist, Evgeni Malkin's on a Sergei Gonchar power-play goal.

Ovechkin and Malkin have long insisted that no matter what the NHL decides about its participation in the next Olympics, they will be at Sochi 2014. They should have had the courtesy to show up in Vancouver first.