I was one of those naysayers, but it is not totally unwarranted. Be honest with yourself, Canada before playing the US was not having a good tournament whereas the US were doing very well. Canada couldn't score and Price looked shaky on a lot of shots. Hardly unpatriotic to think that they might lose against a high scoring American team with a better goaltender. I'm glad to be proven wrong but if anyone hear says they had complete faith in this team to win that game is delusional.
I don't think Team Canada played poorly. I think Denmark, Latvia, etc played their best defensive games against us, which made our offence look stifled and led some to question whether Team Canada was even any good.
But, those games demonstrated, to me at least, that we have one of the strongest defensive teams we've ever assembled. The forwards and D were great at backchecking, we were great on breakouts and zone entry, and we were had very good zone time. We won damned near every loose puck and were dominating faceoffs. The only thing we couldn't solve were the collapsing D strategies, but even then, it was simply a matter of shooting enough pucks on goal and we'd get one.
I was pretty confident we'd beat the US. Either they would be less committed to D, and allow our forwards to finally run up the score, or they'd be forced to play on their heels and get beaten by our stifling defensive play.
Although I do agree that I was not 100% sure we'd win, and think it's silly to guarantee anything in these tournaments.