It was reported in the news:
STory on the Gold Medal
<<There was no love lost between the teams.
The Canadians had heard stories of U.S. players throwing a Canadian flag on their dressing room floor.
Photos of Canadian players Lori Dupuis and Kelly Bechard in the athletes' village had American players' autographs scrawled across the faces.
"We put those pictures up in our dressing room," said Vicky Sunohara. "We weren't going to forget that.
"'Look at what they're doing.' We used those things. We gained momentum from them. We thank them for that." >>
Sounds like normal coaching and team motivation to me. The article above also points out that Canada caught a few key breaks in the officiating even though the penalty count was against them.
I also know that the media wants to milk as much as they can out of every match-up like this.
Michael
ps - FFMCobalt - As you're a full fledged member of the flag cult country, I don't doubt that you would feel that way. Canadians really don't care about the flag, so any rumours of flag stomping by the Americans would be like hearing the Americans were calling them names. I bet the people using the rumours didn't even consider the fact that Americans would be highly unlikely to stomp on flags as this would be a hate statement on the level of pure religious hate.