When the city of Vancouver, B.C., Canada, was awarded the Winter Olympics, the host country didn't just want to get a medal in ice hockey, which isn't just a sport, but a religion in the country.

They wanted to get as many medals as they could in every sport their athletes competed in.

They even had a catchy motto, "Owning the Podium," as in getting on the medal stand.

After 17 days of competition, it wasn't the Canadian athletes that were doing the owning, however. It was their neighbor to the south, the United States, who owned the podium and then some, winning a total of 37 medals.

The Stars and Stripes not only went up onto the podium in sports like speed skating and snowboarding, but it went up there to receive medals in sports it wasn't supposed to win, such as four-man bobsled and ice hockey.

Men's ice hockey, that is.

This was the hockey team that everyone, including this reporter, said had a snowball's chance in hell of getting a medal – any medal.

The team surprised everyone by playing for the gold medal against the host country, eventually losing in overtime in one of the most exciting games of the Olympics.

The next Winter Olympics is in 2014 in Sochi, Russia. We shouldn't expect our athletes to perform as well as they did in Vancouver.

For right now, let's just enjoy the fact that in Vancouver for 17 days, American athletes were the ones who really owned the podium.