While the women's ice hockey tournament played out to a familiar script at the Beijing Games, the men's competition produced an unexpected finale.

You cannot always be sure it will snow at a Winter Olympics but it is a safe bet that Canada or the United States will skate away with women's gold.

In Beijing, it was Canada's turn to take top spot on the podium with a 3-2 win over its North American neighbors.

If that has a familiar ring to it so it should.

Since women's hockey became part of the Olympic program at the 1998 Nagano Games, Canada or the US have been crowned as gold medalists as they have at every world championship.

Marie-Philip Poulin led Canada with a pair of goals and if that sounds familiar as well it is because 'Captain Clutch' has now scored three Olympic gold-medal clinching goals－all at the United States' expense.

In contrast, the men's podium saw Finland taking gold for the first time as it edged the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) 2-1, while Slovakia claimed its first medal by winning the bronze with a 4-0 rout of Sweden.

Not many hockey fans had heard of teenager Juraj Slafkovsky before the Beijing Games.

A lot more are aware of the Slovakian now after the 17-year-old led the Olympics in scoring with seven goals and was named the most outstanding player, underlining his likely status as a top-five pick in this year's National Hockey League draft.

There were no surprises, however, when it came to the performance of China's men's team, which was making its Olympic debut in Beijing.

China, featuring a mix of homegrown and foreign-born players, was expected to lose every game and did, but it managed to avoid the humiliating losses many predicted.

The last medal to be decided in Beijing－the men's final－was supposed to feature the world's absolute best hockey talent battling for gold.

But Beijing was denied that spectacle when the NHL opted out of Olympic participation after a COVID-19 surge through North American locker rooms forced the postponement of more than 100 games.

Before the NHL pulled out, Canada and the US－stocked with rosters of All-Stars and future Hall of Famers－were the hot favorites for men's gold.

But without their best players, and with teams instead cobbled together from minor leagues and colleges, both countries crashed out in the quarterfinals.

Reuters