They won the Olympic hockey bet but lost big time otherwise.

Canadians Matthew Seifert, 26, and Ryan Smith, 25, were watching the Vancouver Olympics men’s hockey gold medal game between Canada and the U.S. on Feb. 28 at a bar in La Quinta, Calif. The two men live in southern California.

They were drinking and cheering for their home team when they made a bet with other bar patrons that if the Canadian team won, they would replace the U.S. flag posted on the top of a nearby mountain with a Canadian flag.

Canada won and the two ecstatic fans, as a prank, swapped the American flag with a Canadian one. On June 10, they pleaded not guilty to misdemeanour charges of vandalism and public trampling or mutilation of the flag.

“I don’t think they knew what they were doing,” said an employee at the Beer Hunter Sports Pub & Grill, where the two young men watched the hockey final. “It was a lot of people and many bets in the bar that evening.”

Seifert and Smith climbed a steep, craggy mountain known as Point Happy to replace the flag. The American flag was torn and left wadded up in a ball with a rock placed on top of it, according to court documents.

The two were charged on Feb. 28.

According to local reports, the American flag had been posted at Point Happy by Mayte Sterling, a local resident, in honour of those who died during the Sept. 11 2001 terrorist attacks.

Sterling told local television station KPSP that the flag, which she changes every six months with a new one donated by Wal-Mart, has personal meaning to her and the entire neighbourhood. It was placed on that particular mountaintop as it is a common hiking area for her.

Seifert and Smith told court they didn’t mean any disrespect and admitted they had been drinking heavily that evening, according to KPSP.

Seifert, from Alberta, and Smith, from Ontario, are due back in court on June 29 for a pretrial hearing.

If convicted, they could face up to a year in jail.