WEST VALLEY CITY — Today, either the United States or Canada lives the Olympic men's hockey dream.
On both sides of the border, North Americans wait and watch. And it's not to find out who will lose.
"The reality is simple," said Wayne Gretzky, the former NHL superstar and executive director of Team Canada, or today's 1 p.m. gold-medal finale. "Nobody remembers who finished second."
That pressure, Canadian coach Pat Quinn said, "can be an awful albatross."
Winning this game, Quinn and so many others argue, would mean so much more in Canada. That reason, too, is rudimentary.
"Hockey is Canada's game," said Jeremy Roenick, an American forward. "We respect that."
Canadians, however, do not respect losing. At least not in hockey, the national sport for a country whose men have not won Olympic gold in 50 years.
"If they lose (today)," said American defenseman Tom Poti, who works in Canada for the NHL's Edmonton Oilers, "they'll have a whole nation questioning them."
"Somehow, in Canada, we expect more," Quinn said. "And if it's anything less than gold, it's failure."
The concept can be difficult to grasp even for Americans who live with their win-at-all-costs mentality. But up north that's just the way it is. Imagine USA really inviting the world to its so-called baseball World Series, then no team from the states winning in half-a-century.
"This is religion in Canada — hockey," Roenick said. "And anything less than a gold would be hard to swallow."
All of which makes denying the Canadians the prize they covet so much that much more enticing to Americans players, many of whom were raised with a hockey inferiority complex.
"For all our lives, as soon as we strapped the skates on," Poti said, "we always wanted to beat the Canadians."
Poti even went so far as to say American players "love to hate the Canadians," adding later, "it's the same way for them."
Hate, however, may be stretching it.
"This rivalry is incredible, from your friends to your enemies," said American forward Doug Weight, who played nine seasons in Edmonton. "I'm not going to say 'hate,' but you want to beat each other so bad that the intensity feels like hate."
So while America still lives off the glory of its 1980 Miracle on Ice, and recalls (barely) that the last time it won gold before Lake Placid was at Squaw Valley in 1960, there is no question the U.S. could use a refresher to its hockey history.
"I've told the players (to) never underestimate their ability to influence American hockey," said 2002 coach Herb Brooks, the man behind the miracle of 22 years ago. "My reason for coming back to coach this team has to do with my belief in the future of the American hockey movement.
"We've proved, over the last 50 years, that American hockey is as good as any in the world," added Brooks, whose club beat Russia 3-2 Friday to advance to the gold medal-game, just a few hours after Canada blew away surprise semifinalist Belarus. "If you look at the medal count over the last 50 years, Russia (and the former Soviet Union) has dominated the gold medals, but we've had two, Sweden and the Czechs have one, and Canada has . . . none."
Or least none for Canada since 1952 in Oslo, which is why Gretzky says "our players understand the meaning of this game."
Funny thing about it, though, is that no matter what happens today, North America can't lose — quite a kick for European nations that prefer the free-skating, big-ice game of international hockey over the NHL's rough-and-tumble product.
"Canada is looked disdainfully at by the European teams, generally speaking," Quinn said. "It's pretty nice to see two North American teams who don't know much about this game being in the finals."
It's with that mentality that proud teams from two anxious nations get it on today. The only thing too bad is that they've had to wait so long.
"I was going to ask Herbie (Brooks) this morning," Quinn said, "if we could find a backyard rink someplace and let the two teams go at it."
E-MAIL: tbuckley@desnews.com