Last-Second Comeback Shifts Hockey Gold to the Kinda Russia Team

Well, now we know.

The closest they can come to Cinderella in German is Aschenputtel.

They got the ashes bit right.

That's what happened to Germany's hopes for what would've been an incredible Olympic medal run.

 

One of the best stories in Pyeongchang was Coach Marco Sturm cobbling together a collection of disciplined skaters and non-NHL leftovers from traditional hockey nations with deeper talent pools than his.

An accomplished NHL veteran himself, Sturm implemented a by-the-numbers system that played into the German mentality. This not only served to keep them in games against allegedly stronger teams, it provided the stuff of shocking results.

Like their upset of Sweden. And then Canada.

 

After doing the unthinkable and making the gold medal game, it's become fair to think of this rag-tag bunch as German hockey's version of confident operators carrying out their tasks with surgical precision.

 

Germany almost got the steak for a job well done.

However, one of the craziest -- and for them, cruelest -- final minutes in any Olympic final went in favor of their outcast opponents -- a Kinda Russia team -- who had their own dreams to pursue:

 

Incredible. Unglaublich. Hеимоверный.

Not even Disney's reality embossers coulda come up with that sorta ending. Come to think of it, neither could Ridley Scott.

 

To someone who's Kinda Russian, it's something like that.

After all, it's been 26 years, and even that team was Kinda Russian.

To the Germans -- whose only Olympic hockey medals prior to this were bronzes in 1932 and 1976 -- the slipper still fits.

 

So does the skate.