There’s nothing quite like a Canada/U.S. hockey game. This year’s World Junior tournament pitted the two hockey superpowers’ babies against each other in a rematch of last year’s gold medal game, in which the Americans stole top honors in foreign Canada, breaking the hearts – and five year winning streak – of the Canadians. This year in Buffalo, the revenge was cold and strong, albeit one game too early as Canada knocked off the U.S. 4-1 in the semi-final game on Monday night.

What we’re now left with is a pair of emotionless, if not meaningless, medal games. Canada will take on a noticeably weak team Russia for gold. Before that, however, the U.S. squad will try to win its first ever medal on home soil as well as deliver its first back-to-back medal performance at the World Juniors when it takes on Sweden for bronze. After the gritty affair that these two border rivals put on Monday night, expect Canadian and American victories to come easy on Wednesday.

The fact is, Canada, the U.S. and Russia may be the best three countries in the world when it comes to hockey, but Russia has been anything but a hockey force in recent years. The days of the Big Red Machine are long gone, leaving the two Western countries to rule the ice, and anytime those two get together, you can expect one hell of a game. Monday’s semi-final was one hell of a game.

The game featured some of the fastest, hardest hitting and emotional hockey you’ll ever see. Don’t let the way the goals came fool you, the Americans are just as capable of doing to Canada what was done to them. The World Junior tournament is a good way to showcase what’s on deck for the NHL as far as world talent goes, but as fans, we need to see more. If the NHL decides to back out of the 2014 Olympics, one benefit is that we’ll get to see these junior teams take on each other again; on a stage worthy of what they can deliver.