Gold gone: The misses in Milan that will haunt Canada forever

As Canada went back to work Monday under a cloud of collective hockey-related sadness, I couldn't help thinking about Super Bowl LI.

That's the one where it was 28-3. The one where the New England Patriots scored 31 straight points to come back and beat the Atlanta Falcons in overtime.

I covered that game, and I remember leaving my Houston hotel the next day and seeing a car with Georgia license plates parked outside. The entire vehicle had been painted and decorated with Falcons logos and colors for the trip to the game. All I could think was: That's going to be a long drive home. Far too many hours to mentally replay the very many things that had to go wrong for the Falcons to lose.

And that's pretty much where I've landed on Team Canada's gold-medal game loss to the United States in Olympic men's hockey. It's the worst kind of loss, one that seems to defy logic - like the "13 Seconds" game for the Buffalo Bills; the Malcolm Butler interception that went against the Seattle Seahawks; Greg Norman's Masters collapse; last year's World Series Game 7 for the Toronto Blue Jays.

These are the losses that you can end up replaying over and over in your head. Why didn't the Bills squib the kickoff? Why didn't Isiah Kiner-Falefa take a bigger lead?

If any solace can be taken from Canada's 2-1 overtime loss to the United States, it's that it lacked that kind of glaring failure of strategy in the moment. Jon Cooper played his best players, a lot. Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Cale Makar - arguably the three best players in the world - were on the ice for Jack Hughes' winning goal. There was no coaching malpractice that will give rise to years of second-guessing, like Pete Carroll's decision not to give Marshawn Lynch the damn ball.

But, still. Canada simply had too many chances to score the game-winner before the contest got to the coin flip of three-on-three overtime.

There was MacKinnon's miss of a canyon-sized opening as he shot wide of Connor Hellebuyck's net in the third period. McDavid's earlier breakaway, where the most dangerous open-ice skater on the planet just barreled straight into Hellebuyck's pads. Macklin Celebrini's repeated whiffs and misfires from the slot as his teammates kept teeing him up for not just high-danger chances, but extremely hazardous chances.

The worst - or best, if you were cheering for Team USA - was Devon Toews reaching out to tap the puck into an empty net, only to have Hellebuyck drop his paddle in front of it. If that exact situation was recreated 100 times, how many times does Toews score? I think 95 isn't unrealistic.

Sure, the U.S. was due. The Americans hadn't won Olympic gold in 46 years, even as the country became much more adept at churning out some of the best players in the world. All of that talent still struggled to win when it counted, whether it was at the Olympics or World Cup or 4 Nations. Canada still had elite talent, too, and everyone from Mario Lemieux to Sidney Crosby to McDavid had beaten the United States in a best-on-best format. Even counting just the last three Olympics in which NHL players participated, the gold-medal tally is Canada 2, United States 1.

But I don't think many Canadians are considering moral victories right now. Given everything that has gone on politically between the two longtime allies in recent months, we very much wanted this win just for the national vibes. Is it silly that we felt that way about a hockey game? Yes. Does that make it less true? No.

The men's national team will be fine. The way the Canadians dominated that game in every way but the final score was a surprise, as though they had an extra gear that the Americans - except Hellebuyck - struggled to match. It feels like Canada would win a rematch if it took place next week.

But it will be four years until Team Canada gets a chance to make Olympic amends. Crosby will be retired. McDavid will be 33. Celebrini, at least, will still be young (by then, he might even have facial hair). Hockey Canada will feel confident that it can ice a championship-caliber team, just like it has at every best-on-best tournament since they started holding such events.

The thing about losses like the one that happened Sunday, though, is that you never know when you'll get that close again.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.