i always pull for canada when the US is not involved and its fans like him that make me LOL when they start comparing to US sports...

we wont get butthurt over one SILVER medal, the US does us proud in EVERY olympics, time, after time, after time...

The Florida Panthers have traded Jordan Leopold to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a second round pick in 2010, pending a trade call with the NHL.

17.6/33 overnight rating, via Sports Business Daily. Writes Lepore:

This is up 46% from the 2002 USA/Canada showdown, and will very likely be the highest-rated hockey game since 1980. The share means that 1 in every 3 Americans with a TV were watching the game. This is, to put it professionally, out of this world.

Sunday's game drew a higher overnight rating than every World Series game since 2004 (including every game of Yankees/Phillies last year), every NBA Finals telecast since 1998, and every NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four game since at least '98.

Excluding the NFL, the 17.6 overnight for the game is the second-highest of the year for any sporting event, behind only the Texas/Alabama BCS National Championship Game in January (18.2).

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Is Pittsburgh becoming the United States' real Hockeytown?

Overnight television ratings of the Americans' 5-3 Olympic upset of Canada Sunday night, aired on MSNBC, were higher in Pittsburgh than in any U.S. market, according to an industry source. The 13.0 rating in Pittsburgh was more than double the national average for the game.

Overall, MSNBC drew 8.2 million viewers for the second-highest rated show in the cable network's history. It also was the highest-rated hockey game shown in the U.S. in 37 years.

In Canada, the game was the most-watched sporting event in the nation's history with 10.6 million viewers. Canada's population is 33 million.

Could any 21-year-old possibly have a better sense of the moment than Jonathan Toews? Could any hockey player his age match Toews's uncommon maturity and sure-footedness on and off the ice?

In case there is any doubt that the only international hockey match-up that matters any more is Canada versus the United States, consider Toews's statement about how his Olympic gold medal - the one shared with Blackhawks teammates Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook - is now officially off-limits as a joking matter in the Chicago dressing room. Somebody wants to mention it to teammate Patrick Kane? He'll have to go through Toews.

"I don't see it as a joking matter between the two of us," Toews said Sunday after Canada's 3-2 overtime win over the U.S. in the gold-medal game at Canada Hockey Place. Toews and Kane were among the best players on the ice.

"I think I will definitely be very, very respectful of what their team did in this tournament and what he did," Toews added. "We were this close to coming out on the losing end too, and it wouldn't have been a good feeling. So you got to give it to him for the way he played and leave it at that."

Toews is an old hand at the business of representing Canada internationally and is also a Winnipeg native - even better, since we're feeling all Canadian this morning. Named to the Olympic tournament all-star team, he has won two world junior championships, a world championship, and now an Olympic medal. Included in that haul are three shootout goals to beat the U.S. in the 2007 world junior tournament, when Kane was also on the losing side.

Kane was the best U.S. player not named Ryan Miller on the ice yesterday. The Canadians knew that would be the case, Toews said, and their coaching staff focused on him. Fat lot of good it did. Kane owned the puck in the Canadian end and even back-checked to interfere with Sidney Crosby on a breakaway late in the third period.

"I will talk to him about that," Toews said with a chuckle.

Crosby might indeed have given his generation its Paul Henderson Moment - those of us who were given the day off from school that day will need to ponder that notion for a while, so please bear with us - but what is indisputable is that Toews played a role in the finest tradition of, oh hell, I don't know. He didn't take out the other team's star like Bobby Clarke did in 1972. He didn't drop an "Aw geez, Canada, c'mon, the guys are really trying" moment like Phil Esposito.

But he and Rick Nash and Mike Richards checked the hell out of Alexander Ovechkin and they were on the ice in big moments yesterday. And Toews scored Canada's first goal.

There was a lesson for the NHL in this tournament in that the depth of young talent in North America has now swamped that of the rest of the world. It is time to sincerely focus on expanding the game internationally - beyond just selling jerseys - and the way to do that is more frequent high-level international play.

Not even the NHL can screw up what it has in the Olympic tournament, which should enable Kane and Toews to have more of these high-level meetings.

"Going back to world juniors, those guys have always been go-to guys for their country," Keith said, shaking his head.

"It's not surprising they turned out their biggest performances in the biggest game."

Toews wanted time to enjoy his gold medal before thinking about the resumption of the NHL season.

But when it was suggested to him that Toews v. Kane seems likely to become a sidebar to every future international hockey tournament, he smiled and said: "I'd like us to win something together, too."