Al Strachan's Toronto Sun column of Friday bore the headline "Brodeur saviour again." I find it mildly disappointing that I'm going to write a post about the inaccuracy of the headline and not the article itself (much as I often disagree with Strachan's point of view, he still managed to stay away from saying anything revelatory, as he largely recapped Ziggy Palffy's penalty shot in Canada's 5-4 defeat of the Slovaks).

As I've stated previously, neither Brodeur nor Luongo has been at anywhere near his best. Both are still great goalies, but hockey fans are used to seeing something several steps above "great" from them...such as "sensational," "spectacular," and "scintillating," to name a few adjectives. But to paint Brodeur as a saviour in this game is well beyond misleading. Yes, he made an amazing save on that penalty shot. But he wasn't chalking it up to his usual upper-echelon skills; he knew that was a product of the horseshoes that he's got tucked away somewhere. "I was just hoping," he said. "I threw my arm back and I was able to get the puck with it....I didn't know."

Make no mistake, Brodeur will have to have improved some more in the last two days if Canada is to beat the Russians Saturday. Strachan's point about that big save building confidence for the Canadians is well-taken, but they're going to need a much better all-around performance this time, and bloated kudos from "newspapers" aren't going to help. (Yes, I added quotation marks there. Referring to a publication that needs to include pictures of scantily-clad men and women to ring up decent sales figures as a Newspaper hurts my head a little bit.)