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VANCOUVER – Practices resume in the NHL on Wednesday morning for non-Olympians. For at least one more day, but, that group does not include Team Canada.

Whether the Canadians can keep their Olympic flame burning beyond that, of course, remains an extremely tall order.

But on Tuesday night, the Canadians pretty much did exactly what they had to do in their playoff qualification game with Germany, beating them comfortably, handily and with enthusiasm, 8-2, to earn a date with the Russians on Wednesday.

Now, it was a game, as the score would suggest, that the Canadians dominated for much of the way and they needed to dominate it. There were elements of their game that would have made management pleased, too.

For instance, Joe Thornton got off the snide and scored his first goal. Shea Weber produced the first goal by a Canadian defenceman. Jarome Iginla scored two more goals playing alongside Sidney Crosby, with Eric Staal looking like a nice fit on the other side. Another young defenceman, Duncan Keith, continued to be brilliant. And there were no issues in goal with Roberto Luongo.

But it also wasn’t a perfect win. Witness a stretch in the second period when they took a couple of penalties, got a small sloppy, allowed the Germans a couple of legitimate scoring chances and ultimately a goal.

Overall, though, it was a excellent result from a game that isn’t always simple to play. But before you start tooting car horns and causing traffic jams, take a deep breath and draw in a small perspective please.

This was only Germany, a team that had scored a grand total of two goals in the tournament in their first three games. Whether called East Germany, West Germany or a unified Germany, they haven’t beaten Canada now in 15 Olympic tries – the closest call being a shootout choice in 1992.

So ,in many ways, they were patsies and Canada had to slap the exclamation mark on that point to build a small momentum and give themselves something to feel even remotely excellent about leading into their date with the Russians, who possess tons of firepower – so far pretty much holstered – but saved their best Olympic performance for the weekend when they beat the Czech Republic to win their pool and advance directly to the quarter-finals.

It should be a fantastic matchup. We all know there is a rich rivalry between Canada and Russia dating back to 1972 and even in the past few springs when the Russians beat the Canadians in the world championships. And there is that Crosby versus Alex Ovechkin matchup that is intriguing.
   
As for the fantastic Canadian goaltending debate, well, let’s place it this way: the only goaltender that mattered for most of Tuesday night was wearing a German sweater. Canada could have hung a shooter tutor on the net in the first period and still been fine.

For instance, the Germans didn’t get a shot on goal until nearly a dozen minutes into the game and it came from outside the blue-line. In total, they had four very manageable shots that period.

At the other end, the Canadians had a huge territorial edge, as you might have guessed, tried hard to pound pucks at the net from every angle and wound up firing 14 at Thomas Greiss, a San Jose prospect, with just one getting by him.

It was the Sharks line that produced first, with huge Thornton tapping in a Dany Heatley pass midway through the period, which allowed a few collars to loosen – most notably Thornton’s, who has been tagged by the media with the unflattering handle “No Show Joe” for his play.

Anyway, like we said, it’s one thing to produce shots and traffic and dominate the play, but as they did against Norway the Canadians needed results. Meaning goals. They got three of them in the first half of the second period, but even they were hard to come by.

Weber, who had earlier broken a panel of glass with his booming shot, place another right through the net early in the second. It had to be reviewed before it counted.

Iginla, who had a hat trick playing on the right side of Crosby in the 8-0 rout of Norway, scored two more in the second, one the result of traffic in front, the second a wicked snap shot.

Crosby, who missed on a penalty shot earlier, scored himself in the third, tipping in a Staal pass, while Keith earned his third help. Fascinatingly, it was Rick Nash, without a goal in 10 Olympic games, who drew the penalty shot, but they opted for Crosby to take it. It might have made sense to give Nash the chance to break the goose egg, which he eventually did later in the third.

Anyway, Canada got the job done, but if their Olympics should end on Wednesday with a loss against the disaster, they will be remembered as another unmitigated disaster. Lopsided wins over Norway and Germany and a shootout win over the Swiss, with losses to the Americans and, should it happen, the Russians will never been looked upon as a resounding success.