Written by Joe Tetreault | 26 February 2010

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Game Thoughts

Ryan Miller came off with just over eleven and a half minutes to play. A standing ovation was in order. His last 110 minutes of play had been an unblemished exhibition of goalie perfection. And though Tim Thomas was fooled on Antti Miettinen's blast that deflected off Jack Johnson, the US played a near perfect sixty minutes of hockey in what felt an awful lot like a NHL playoff game./p>

Team USA never looked back after their first period explosion. And though they didn't score after Stastny's goal, they played stifling defense, leaving Finland stunned and defeated from the early going. Unlike the previous contests where Miller's expertise was needed to keep the US in the game, they jumped out and scored and took Finland out of it.

A fantastic sixty minutes of hockey for team USA. It was as a complete a performance as we've seen from them in these Olympics. And they will need another sixty minutes just like it to bring home the gold.

Team USA has clinched a medal for the second time in the last three winter games. They await the winner of the Canada-Slovakia game.

Gold Medal game is set for Sunday at noon pacific time, 3 pm eastern time.

Scoring Summary

• 14:46 Antti Miettinen from Sami Lepisto

Penalties

• 0:22 Nicklas Backstrom (Interference served by Teemu Selanne)
• 2:43 Ryan Malone (High Sticking)
• 8:29 Sami Lepisto (Cross Checking)
• 13:37 Erik Johnson (Interference)

Shots

Joe Tetreault blogs about sports, culture, business/technology and current events at TetreaultVision in addition to being the Editor for Bloguin's Olympic Hockey Blog.

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