Sincere Sports

  Connor McDavid couldn't lead Canada to the gold (Hockey Canada)     Well, you could say I moved on quickly.     In actuality, I still feel incredibly torn up about the result of Sunday's instant classic Olympic gold medal final between Canada and the United States of America. It feels cruel that we must wait another four years before an Olympic rematch between these two hockey powerhouses, as I desperately want another bite at the cherry before I accept the fact that Canada is no longer the king of the hockey world for the first time in over 16 years. However, my disappointment is masked by my excitement regarding the supreme quality of hockey with which we were treated and the potential for even more best-on-best competition in the coming years.     If you were expecting an overreaction from me about the game, you won't find it here. It sucks to lose, obviously, and losing to the Americans makes the result far worse. You don't have to be highly inte...

  Macklin Celebrini (Getty Images)     The return of best-on-best to the Winter Olympics was, predictably, an immensely satisfying experience that has dominated my attention and monopolized my television set for the past week. Although the dramatic highs of the 4 Nations final have not yet been eclipsed, the action will start to ramp up even more in the coming days as the elimination round begins.      With a brief Monday reprieve, I figured it was an appropriate time to take a quick retrospective at the group stages so far and offer some of my signature insight on the happenings of the men's preliminary round. Unlike most of my recent prospect rankings and mock drafts, this article will generally be quite aimless, resembling a series of point-form notes more than anything else. It is incredibly easy to overreact to a sample size of three games and make vast, overly broad claims about the state of the game and the players, so I'll steer clear of any signifi...