Evan Lysacek skated a near-perfect routine Thursday night. Then he sat in the back and watched as ice skater after ice skater tried to top his number.

And when the favorite, Russian Evgeni Plushenko saw his score flash on the screen, Lysacek and his team celebrated. The Americans won a gold medal in men's figure skating for the first time since Brian Boitano in 1988.

Plushenko was the defending gold medalist and trying to become the first male figure skater to go back-to-back gold since Dick Button in 1948 and 1952.

He didn't get it.

The coolest story from the figure skating venue, though, didn't belong to Plushenko or Lysacek. It came from Sports Illustrated's Luke Winn and his tale of the music selected by Swedish skater Adrian Schultheiss, who skated to Cypress Hill on Thursday night.

MORE LINKS:

Canada held on for a 3-2 shootout win over Switzerland, carried by - who else - Sidney Crosby writes Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated.

The ever-growing sport of curling? It might end up running out of stones, writes Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports.

Torah Bright of Australia won the gold in women's halfpipe. Then, her parents surprised her by showing up, writes Jeff Passan of Yahoo!

Luger Werner Hoeger had put in a complaint about the Whistler luge track before the games even started, writes Jonathan Abrams and Katie Thomas of the New York Times.

Christine Nesbitt of Canada won the 1,000 meters in speed skating, but the Americans are making progress, writes Brian Hamilton of the Chicago Tribune in the Los Angeles Times.