Five Red Wings to Leave Vancouver

It was a bittersweet night overall for Red Wings in the Olympics as five Wings bowed out of the tourney with no medals, while two others advanced to the semi-finals guaranteeing at least a Silver for one lucky Detroiter.

The game heavily anticipated to be the match-up for the Gold-medal took place last night in the quarter-finals as Steve Yzerman's Team Canada took on Pavel Datsyuk and his Russian compatriots. The amount of goals in the affair was not surprising but the distribution of them was certainly expected, as Canada lit up Russia 7-3. Team Canada, lead behind the scenes by Detroit's Steve Yzerman, Mike Babcock and Ken Holland, are all of a sudden right back in the hunt for Gold; particularly given the night's proceeding events.

The defending Olympic Champs, and highly-favored Team Sweden were to be Team Canada's semi-final opponent. That is, until Slovakia shocked them last night, sending Red Wings Franzen, Kronwall, Lidstrom and Zetterberg back to the D.

With names like Hossa, Chara and Vokoun in the line-up getting past Team Sweden was definitely not an impossible task, but the Slovaks went against the odds as they defeated the star-studded Scandinavians, 4-3. Having beaten Team Russia and now Team Sweden in the last week, it's not beyond imagination to think they could also beat Canada. They've proven they can beat the big teams, but you have to think if Babcock's boys are on their game, as they were last night, such a task would be next to impossible.

On the other side of the brackets, one Red Wing will earn the honor to play for the Gold on Friday night.

Finn, Valtteri Filppula and U.S.A.'s Brian Rafalski will meet in the other semi-final guaranteeing a medal for at least one of them. Team U.S.A. edged Anaheim's Jonas Hiller and Team Switzerland 2-0, yesterday before Finland also snuck by the Czech with that same scoreline.