Crosby's absence left a huge void in Milan

For Canadian hockey fans, sad was the 2-1 overtime loss to the U.S. in the gold medal game at the Milan/Cortina Olympic Games. Sad, too, was that future Hall of Famer and Canadian captain Sidney Crosby had to watch the game from the press box, nursing a lower-body injury.

Crosby, of course, will one day go into the Hockey Hall of Fame with the phrase 'Golden Goal' front and centre, thanks to his overtime heroics in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, where he put Canada on top of the hockey world. How much his absence affected the final outcome of this year's gold medal game will never be known, but if you consider that Canada's team significantly outplayed the Americans for about 45 of the 60 minutes, and did it without Crosby, it's not too absurd to suggest Canada might have won by a comfortable margin had Crosby played a regular shift.