Pavel Datsyuk and Ilya Kovalchuk were far and away the biggest names in the 2018 Winter Olympics, which is why they were clear favourites to win the tournament.
Germany was almost the exact opposite. While they did have a couple former NHL players on their roster, they were mostly made up of names that most people weren’t familiar with and nobody expected them to go far. Despite all that, they managed to make it to the gold-medal game took Russia to overtime.
They ended up losing the game, but unlike some recent silver medalists, they were more than happy with their performance.
In fact, they were just happy to be there. In fact, they were so happy to be there that at the end of the game, members of Team Germany started lining up to take photos with the Russian superstars. Stories like these are what make the Olympics special, even without NHL players.
Unfortunately, not everyone was so happy at the end of the game. Some of the fans were pretty rattled after the late third period goal to send it to overtime.
