The Olympic Athletes from Russia defeated Germany 4-3 in overtime Sunday to capture gold in the men's Olympic hockey tournament at Gangneung Hockey Centre in South Korea.
Kirill Kaprizov scored the game-winner on a power play nine minutes, 40 seconds into the extra session to hand the OAR team the Olympic title.
That effort came on the heels of a frenzied third period that featured four goals in less than six minutes.
In fact, OAR trailed 3-2 with 3:16 to go in regulation following a go-ahead tally by Germany's Jonas Muller. The Russians, however, stood tall and knotted the score with 56 seconds remaining when Nikita Gusev slotted one home for his second goal of the night.
Gusev proved instrumental in overtime, as well, as he set up Kaprizov in the middle of the right circle for the one-time winner that will live forever in Russian hockey history.
Gusev (two goals, two assists) and Kaprizov (one goal, three assists) finished with four points apiece. Plus, Gusev joined Jarome Iginla and Joe Sakic as the only players in Olympic history to score twice in a gold-medal game, according to the NBCSN broadcast.
The gold—though it was not credited to Russia since Russian participants were competing under the Olympic flag in the aftermath of a doping scandal—represented the first for the country since the Unified Team won it all in 1992.
After that, Russia's best results were in 1998 (silver) and 2002 (bronze).
The Germans will be disappointed they couldn't close things out in regulation considering they were leading with less than a minute to go, but they had also staged a late comeback, scoring twice to take a 3-2 lead after Gusev made it 2-1 with only 6:39 to play.
That said, the result was still a major triumph for a program that didn't qualify for the Olympic tournament in 2014 and finished 11th out of 12 teams eight years ago in Vancouver.
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