Many thanks to Stensation, who put together this compilation of reactions to Canada's 5-3 hockey loss to Team USA last night. Here we go:

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From Ian Brown of the Toronto Globe and Mail, who watched the game at a sports bar: I will tell you this: The last five minutes will be why I am deaf later in life. And when it was over, it did not matter to the crowd. "You don't understand," a woman named Emin said at the end, her chest heaving, her breath coming fast as Canada tried to even the score. And then we lost. "But," she said in the next breath, "that'll just make the Americans think they've got it. We'll still win the gold." ------------------ From Steve Simmons of the QMI Agency: They lacked the kind of desperation and urgency that's needed to win at the highest levels. If this Canadian team is going to find itself playing for gold, let alone any medal, they're going to have to improve their game. This is too much like the rest of Canada's Olympic roster of athletes. This isn't good enough. ------------------- From Cam Cole of the Vancouver Sun: It has been written before - and it's a horrible disservice to the 160 or so Canadian athletes who aren't competing here with hockey sticks in their hands - but there's a certain amount of truth to it: Win the Olympic men's hockey gold medal and Canadians will quickly forget whether the sliders and skiers and skaters owned the podium or, actually, what that oddly confident-sounding phrase was all about. But get taken to the woodshed by the Americans at pretty much every Olympic Games venue for 10 solid days, then fail to stop the bleeding against Team USA at Canada Hockey Place - at the end of a sad, dispiriting weekend in which our Own The Podium aspirations were officially rendered null and void - and it would be difficult to pick the national chin off the floor during these last seven days. And so it will. … But for Canada, the Games go on, and they were crying out for a sliver, any sliver, of good news, on the weekend when we've unequivocally Blown The Podium. The hockey team couldn't produce it.
------------------ From François Gagnon of La Presse: Cette victoire permet aux Américains d'obtenir un laissez-passer en ronde éliminatoire. Quant au Canada, il devra se soumettre à un match suicide qui l'opposera à l'Allemagne. Les Américains ont disputé un match solide. Ils ont patiné avec le Canada et su répliquer coup d'épaule pour coup d'épaule aux assauts des Canadiens. (This victory allows the Americans to obtain a pass in the elimination round. As for Canada, it will have to subject itself to a suicide game that will oppose it to Germany. The Americans executed a solid game. They skated with Canada shoulder blow for shoulder blow to the assaults of the Canadians.)