Oh no! I can’t believe it! It’s Vancouver 2010 déjà vu! They

Oh no! I can’t believe it! It’s Vancouver 2010 déjà vu! They were so close!

Julie Chu, a four-time Olympian, lost her shot at ever winning a gold medal.

There were plenty of little things that went wrong for the Americans in their fourth consecutive Olympic loss to their archrivals, but the biggest issue was this: They had a two-goal lead with 3:26 left to play in the third period, and they let Canada back in the game.

“We didn’t finish the job,” said coach Katey Stone, who was the Harvard coach when it lost in the NCAA championship game three years in a row. “There really isn’t much to say to take away the sting.”

The Americans took a 2-0 lead on goals by Duggan and Alex Carpenter, and Jesse Vetter shut out the three-time defending Olympic champions into the 57th minute of the game. But a freak goal — a misdirected shot that was redirected off defender Kacey Bellamy’s knee — put the Canadians within one.

At a news conference the day after the loss, the Americans wore their silver medals and said how proud they were to represent their country. But they showed little satisfaction in their new prize, and their faces were worn either from recent tears or because they hadn’t slept since the late-night loss on Thursday.

“We believed we could win,” said forward Julie Chu, a four-time Olympian who now has three silver medals and a bronze. “We never lost the belief that we would win a gold medal. And when that final puck goes in, that’s just the moment where it dawns (on us), ‘OK, it didn’t come true.’

“But the whole piece of it, that defines us,” she said. “Not just this one game.”

Just devastating!

Source AP