The week or so that follows any Olympics that has NHL players can make for some seriously strange situations.

Good morning to you.

Good Monday morning.

I'm Dan Kovach of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

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in the same place that you found this.

United States, two, Canada won in overtime on a Jack Hughes goal.

Olympic gold for the first time for the Americans since, well, you know when, 1980.

Matt Boldie with a superb goal in regulation.

Connor Hellebuck with one of the great goal-tending performances in Olympic history.

And among old friends who emerge on the winning side, we've got Bill Guerin, Mike Sullivan, Jake Gensel. There are others. Congratulations to them all.

And on the other side, there was that guy with a uncomfortably wrenched face as the silver

metal was draped around him.

Sidney Crosby not being used to that sort of thing.

He also didn't play, making the decision to allow another player to go in and replace him

when following his Saturday practice, he felt that his knee wasn't strong enough to be

the kind of player that he'd need to be to compete. He was asked afterward how close he'd come

to being able to play. I was pretty close. Yeah, I mean, ultimately I wasn't able to go out there and do what I needed to do in order

to help the team.

So at that point, you got to make a decision that's best for the group.

And yeah, not an easy one, but, you know, that's hockey.

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