4. Germany's Olympic Silver
The men's hockey is often the highlight event of the Winter Games, with the final as one of the last scheduled events on the Olympic calendar.
Pre-Olympic Crisis
This build up to the year's hockey tournament was overshadowed as early as April 2017 by the NHL's refusal to release players for the Games. Then at the end of the year the Russian doping scandal broke and the entire nation was barred from competing. Six of the women's hockey team from Sochi 2014 were given lifetime bans by the Olympic committee and all the team's matches annulled. There was a rumour that the KHL would retaliate by refusing to allow its players to participate. In the end the Olympic committee created a fudge and allowed all Russian athletes who had not not been convicted of doping to appear under the name Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) without national anthem or their own flag.
All this lead to many saying that it would be the most open hockey tournament for years and that possibly an underdog might create a shock.
The rise of Germany
But no one expected that would be the Germans. They had not qualified for the 2014 games, not won an Olympic match since 2002 and were fielding a team entirely consisting of DEL players, a league where many of the best forwards are North American from the ECHL or AHL.
Perhaps the signs should have been there- they were the team with more NHL experience on their roster than Czech Republic, Finland and Slovakia. But as one unflattering report described assistant captain Christian Ehrhoff (798 games) and captain Marcel Goc (639 games), that experience was mainly two 30 plus fourth liners who have not played in the NHL for a few years.
But nothing in the group stage could have even hinted that this was a potential medal winning side as they lost to Nordic opposition first Finland, then Sweden and only beat Norway in a penalty shootout.
But from then on the Germans developed the habit of beating teams late, taking an unexpected win against Switzerland in Sudden Death and then huge upset when they beat Sweden in overtime.
Semi final v Canada
But they went to top that with one of the biggest victories in Olympic history- the 4-3 semifinal win over reigning Olympic champions, Canada. Amazingly, the football playing nation were 4-1 up with just under half the game to go against the nation that founded the sport of ice hockey. And when Linköping HC's Derek Roy (pictured) slotted home with 10 minutes to go to make it 3-4 it seemed inevitable that the Canadians would complete the comeback and overpower the Germans.
But not so.
Despite only managing 15 shots on goal to Canada's 31 heroics from Red Bull Munich's netminder, Danny aus den Birken and blocked shots aplenty meant the Germans went through to the final.
The Final
And to think, they were only 57 seconds away from beating Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Kovalchuk and the OA Russia team and taking Olympic Gold. But they were denied by an equalizer Nikita Gusev with 56 seconds of regulation and then the golden goal from Kirill Kaprizov in overtime.
The reward was not just a silver medal but for Dominik Kahun and Brook Macek shot to make it big in the States. Kahun is currently with Chicago Blackhawks and Macek at Vegas Knights' AHL outfit, Chicago Wolves.
Re-live some of the team's journey and note Patrick Reimer jinking his way through to the front of net game on his winning goal in Sudden Death against Sweden at 5:26.
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