Wayne Gretzky's Ghost (49 page)

A loss or tie by the Canadians would ensure that they would be playing the Finns, who earlier had surprised the Olympic tournament with a 3–1 victory over the powerful Russians. The Czechs now go on to meet the Russians in the next round, while the Swedes, winners of the group Canada found itself in, will meet Belarus and the surprising USA squad, winners of the other grouping, will meet Germany.

“This was an important game for us,” said Brodeur. “We played hard and we have a big rivalry with the Czechs. We didn't win—but in our hearts, the way we played we felt like we won.”

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

F
our minutes left in the biggest hockey game in the thirty years of his life—biggest in the last fifty years of Canada's—and Owen Nolan suddenly bolted from the bench to the dressing room.

Nothing to do with injury, but an equipment problem. He wanted his camera. Sixty seconds to go in the final match at the 2002 Winter Games and Nolan, like his teammates, was on his feet at the Team Canada bench. The big Canadian forward, however, was the only one not holding his stick. Gloves off and stick down, he was recording the final seconds so he would never forget. As if he will ever be allowed.

All around him, the crowd was singing “O Canada”; behind him, coach Pat Quinn was dealing with the first of many tears, so perhaps he didn't notice. Nor would it have mattered if Quinn had and tapped the player to take the next shift. “I wasn't going on!” a smiling Nolan said when it was all over. “I was too busy.”

His camera lens had captured what all Canada had been dreaming about for four long, torturous, soul-searching and at times panic-inducing years: the first Olympic gold medal in hockey in fifty years, to the very day. Canada's perfect golden anniversary. “Words can't describe what was going on,” said Nolan.

They can try: The horn went and the scoreboard said Canada 5, USA 2. Sticks and gloves and helmets were in the air. Goaltender Martin Brodeur—he of the endless doubts—was being mobbed by those who now believed they had believed in him forever.
Quinn used the back of his sleeve to wipe away a tear. They rushed Brodeur and someone tossed a Canadian flag to Team Canada captain Mario Lemieux and he thought about wearing it and then thought it would be too much and carried it to the bench. Paul Kariya blew kisses up to his mother and girlfriend in the stands. Lemieux then led his team in a handshake with the Americans that ended, charmingly, with Brodeur hugging American goaltender Mike Richter.

Such a modest, gracious, classy celebration—the moment the horn blew the Canadians ceased to be fierce, driven hockey players and suddenly turned back into the shy and humble men who have taken their lead from the likes of Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr and, yes, the one who put this team together: Wayne Gretzky.

They shook hands and the American team saluted the crowd that cheered for them all over again, and they gave out the medals—the classless Russians not even bothering to show up for their bronze—and the Canadian flag rose highest in the E Center for the second time this week. And Quinn wiped away a tear, just as he had when the Canadian women took the gold medal Thursday night.

“A big monkey is lifted off Canada's back,” said U.S. forward Jeremy Roenick, who played his junior hockey in Hull, Quebec, and knows what this day meant to Canada. “Today was their day.”

“This,” said Quinn, “is a legacy for Canadian hockey we want to pass on.”

“Fifty years ago today,” mused Canadian defenceman Al MacInnis. “Maybe some things are meant to be.”

Asked what he thought the reaction might be back home, MacInnis smiled and suggested, “They're having a cold one on us—and well deserved.”

The Canadian team, assembled over this past year by Gretzky and his Team Canada brain trust, was widely held to be the greatest hockey team ever iced by the country that invented the sport—and yet it had been plagued by questions. Patrick Roy, the best
goaltender, had elected not to play. Other key players—Lemieux, Nolan, Steve Yzerman—were injured coming in. The team collapsed against Sweden, struggled against Germany, but seemed to find itself against the Czech Republic. They then beat Finland and Belarus to reach the final, which they won in convincing fashion.

“There's no question there was a great deal of pressure on us,” said a relieved Gretzky. “There was pressure on all the teams, but ours seemed to be a little bit greater, maybe because we hadn't won in fifty years.”

Gretzky himself conceded he “probably” handled the pressure better as a player, and claimed his emotional outburst last week had been deliberate, in order to “get all the focus off those guys and turn the focus in a different direction.” Whatever—the players still felt the pressure intensely. Paul Kariya said he was so “numb” he found it difficult to play the third period. “It was like I got shot by a shotgun,” defenceman Adam Foote said when it was over, “and all the air was seeping out, all the pressure.”

The pressure going into this match was extraordinary. No Canadian team had won since the Edmonton Mercurys in the 1952 Oslo Games. Canada had twice reached silver in the 1990s and fallen in a shootout four years ago in Nagano. The Americans were enjoying their best Winter Games ever, and were talking up their own anniversary: twenty-two years since the “Miracle on Ice” at Lake Placid that had given the USA its last gold medal in hockey. The Americans had not lost an Olympic hockey game on home ice since 1932—a seventy-year anniversary to lord over Canada's fifty-year benchmark.

It was not quite the game expected. The Americans had dominated throughout the tournament but could not use their speed against the pounding Canadian defence. Nor could the Americans get the Canadians to play their European hybrid puck-control game. The Canadians simply played NHL hockey on a big ice surface, up and down, dump and chase, pound and jam—and it worked wonderfully.

Herb Brooks, the American coach in both 1980 and today, sounded the only sour note, claiming that the Canadians had been given an easier route to the final and Team USA's tougher matches had meant the Canadians had “better legs” when it counted. It had been anticipated that Canadian nerves and American patriotism would fire up Team USA right off the mark, and the USA did score first when Tony Amonte came in on a two-on-one and fired a hard, low shot through Brodeur's pads. It was Brodeur's only bad moment of the day.

Canada tied the game on a gorgeous cross-ice pass from Chris Pronger to Kariya, moving fast up the left side, and Kariya had the open side to put the puck in behind Richter. The Canadians went ahead on a second lovely pass, this time from Sakic to Jarome Iginla, the NHL scoring leader, and Iginla jammed the puck in along the post.

Canada should have run away with the match in the second but for an extraordinary number of missed opportunities. Theoren Fleury flubbed a chance, Scott Niedermayer failed to slip a puck into the open set and—in the shocker of the day—Lemieux missed a wide-open net, hitting the goalpost as Canada enjoyed a two-man advantage and Richter was so far out of the play that Lemieux could have shoved it in with his nose had he so chosen.

In a brief but ominous turn, the Americans then immediately tied the game 2–2 when a power-play pass from defenceman Brian Rafalski was tipped by Pronger into his own net. Canada took the lead again, however, when Sakic fired a floater from the top of the left circle that seemed to deflect off American defenceman Brian Leetch, for there seemed no other explanation for Richter missing so easy a shot.

Richter, incidentally, was named all-star goaltender for the tournament, in a media vote that must have been counted in Florida. He was joined by American defencemen Chris Chelios and Leetch, U.S. forward John LeClair, Swedish forward Mats Sundin and, mercifully, Canada's Sakic. The best forward in the
tournament, however, may well have been Canada's Steve Yzerman. The Canadians put it away in the third period when Iginla one-timed a nice pass from Yzerman and the puck simply trickled on in after an initial stop by Richter.

It was 16:01, and Nolan was already hurrying down the hallway in his skates, racing for his video camera. Gretzky, high in the stands, was also on his feet, pumping his fist in the air and shouting something we will presume was “Hip, Hip, Hurrah.”

Then, with only 1:20 left in the game, Sakic broke up the right side, drove to the net and slipped a quick low shot into the far side.

The crowd was already singing “O Canada.” Nolan had it on film, just in case anyone ever doubted that Canada won the gold medal at the 2002 Winter Games.

And Pat Quinn was wondering if anyone was noticing that he was crying.

TURIN, ITALY

I
t's hard to look ahead when everyone else insists on looking back.

But that was the situation yesterday at the Palasport Olympico, where the rest of the hockey world was gearing up for today's semifinal matches—Russia against Finland and Sweden against the Czech Republic—while the Canadian hockey world was still trying to figure out what went wrong a day earlier.

“It's like being dead without being buried,” long-time minor-league coach Gene Ubriaco once said of an unacceptable string of losses. Team Canada head coach Pat Quinn would surely agree.
The list of reasons Canada fell flat on its face in its attempt to defend the Olympic gold continues to grow by the hour: