Karma

 Forty-six years to the day, Mike Eruzione was up in the booth, telling America it was Our Boys' time again. 

Forty-six years to the day, it was again George Washington's birthday, his 294th, and who wants to disappoint George on his big day?

Forty-six years to the day, and Our Boys even had a lucky talisman: The No. 13 jersey of the fallen Johnny Gaudreau, who likely would have been one of the Boys had a drunken fool in New Jersey not run down him and his brother Matthew 18 months ago.

So, 46 years to the day from the Miracle on Ice ... Eruzione in the house ... George Washington's birthday ... the Team USA jersey of a martyred American hockey star. As someone in "Star Wars" kinda-sorta almost said at some point: The karma was strong in this one.

"This one," of course, being Connor Hellebuyck and Matt Boldy and bloody-toothed Jack Hughes, and, oh, heck, all of them, really. Raise a glass, or several, to every old-time board-crashin' one of them, because they brought USA hockey Olympic gold for just the third time in history -- and, yes, 46 years to the day since the last time it happened.

This one was no Miracle, of course, because this wasn't a bunch of college kids and minor-league sloggers against the unbeatable Soviet juggernaut. It was one crew of NHL stars against another, with the boys in the red, white and blue beating the team dressed in red again.

Oh, there were echoes, of course. As Hellebuyck made one Houdini save after another -- the Canadians put 42 shots on net, 33 across the last two periods, Hellebuyck turned away all but one -- couldn't you see Jim Craig kicking out shot after shot almost half-a-century ago? Wasn't Jack Hughes staying out there after getting a tooth knocked out just another way of saying "Jack O'Callahan", who also played hurt in the Miracle game?

And that nifty flip-the-puck-over-the-D-man's-stick-and-regaining-control move Boldy put on the Canadians for the first American goal ...

Come on, now. Who didn't at least momentarily think of Mark Johnson, Team USA's slickest skate-and-stick man  back in 1980?

The difference this time was the Canadians didn't panic the way the Soviets did when they got down, because they were all seasoned NHL heads who'd been down before. Their first line -- Nathan McKinnon, Connor McDavid and 18-year-old phenom Macklin Celebrini -- was the best in the world. And if Hellebuyck was standing on his head at one end, his Canadian counterpart Jordan Binnington was pulling rabbits out of hats at the other end, too.

Now, I have no idea how you measure such things. But if there's ever been better goaltending in an Olympic gold medal game, I've never seen  it.

And so on it went into overtime, and finally here was Jack Hughes, gory Chiclets and all, taking a laser cross-ice pass from Zach Werensky and hammering the puck past Binnington, and then everyone in red, white and blue was throwing his gloves and stick down and forming a happy scrum that went on and on, same as 46 years ago. 

American flags materialized, seemingly from nowhere, and the boys put them on like Superman capes. They brought out Johnny Gaudreau's No. 13 and skated around with it. Then they scooped up Gaudreau's two young children and posed them with their father's jersey in the team photo.

If there was a dry eye in the house by that point -- or in sports bars or living rooms all over America, truth be told -- whoever it belonged to was missing a soul. 

(Also missing a soul: Anyone who didn't yelp "What the HELL?" upon seeing FBI director/jock-sniffing dweeb Kash Patel slamming beers with Our Boys like he belonged there. And on the taxpayers' dime, no less.)

Anyway ...

Karma 1, World 0, by God. Bless those Boys.