The Mens Championship has become a hotly contested tournament in the last 10 years as most of the competing nations are pulling out all the stops to ice the best collection of players possible. This years event was no exception. To add some anticipation to the event, neither Canada, nor Russia were the defending champions entering play. That distinction went to Sweden. One of the NHLs top new coaches, Andy Murray, a master strategist was assigned the task of leading Canadas efforts to reach the top of the podium. This assignment has enough pressure that goes with it, but it is ratcheted up a notch because of last seasons flop (4th place finish). Team Canada started slowly in the preliminary round with narrow victories over Germany (3-2) and Norway (4-2) before facing their first challenge against Slovakia. Similar to the opening two games Canada gave up the first goal but the difference here was that the opposition was of a slightly higher caliber than those in the first two games. The preliminary round hurdle was met successfully, for the Canadians despite these tight scores. Next up came the qualifying round, where Canada showed some firepower in a 5 goal second period (3 goals from Shane Doan) to dispatch the team from Belarus by a 6-3 score. Their next qualifying game saw Canada face its toughest challenge to date as they were pushed to overtime, where Eric Staal scored his second goal of the game a mere 23 seconds into overtime to give his team a 4-3 win. Canada would continue this positive run with a convincing 6-3 triumph over the USA to propel themselves into the quarter finals playoff round on the heels a perfect 3-0 qualifying round record. In the semi-final match-up Mike Camalleri, Eric Staal, and Rick Nash each tallied their 4th goals of the tournament to pave the way to a 4-1 triumph over a young, talented Swedish team. Nash and Staal would score early in the first period of the final game against Finland, seemingly removing any hint of an upset possibility and Canada would cruise to a 4-2 win, regaining the Gold Medal, punctuated by an undefeated 9-0 run through these championships.