CANADIAN WOMEN CHASING ANOTHER ‘FAIRY TALE’ ENDING
Two-time Olympic hero Poulin seeks another golden finish in PyeongChang
An Olympic Games is packed with roars, shouts and cheers, screams, crashes and horns.
Marie-Philip Poulin remembers exactly where she was for one of the other indelible sounds of Sochi 2014: the tink.
There were 74 seconds left in the gold-medal game at the Bolshoy Ice Dome and Canada had just scored to cut the United States’ lead to 2-1. Scrambling for the tying goal, Poulin was in the U.S. end when she saw teammate Catherine Ward bump into the referee along the left boards. The unintentional pick allowed the Americans to clear the zone, with a puck that was headed toward the empty Canadian net. Poulin saw Meghan Agosta trying to chase down the puck. The puck had an insurmountable lead.
“It was going in, and just at the end it changed direction just slightly and it hit the post,” Poulin says.
Tink.
“It was, like, how did that just happen?” Poulin says. “Then it was a big breath and a timeout, and I think it just gave us a little more momentum. It’s like, maybe we got this, if we just keep pushing.”
They did, you will recall. Poulin scored the tying goal 20 seconds later and Canada survived a wild push from the U.S. in overtime before Poulin scored the winner. Over two gold-medal matches against the United States at two Olympics, it was the fourth goal that Poulin scored for her country. Canada had five goals in those two games.
“To be honest, that game was like a fairy tale,” Poulin says. “If we wanted to write a different story, I don’t think we could have written it any better.”
Now the captain of the Canadian women’s team, Poulin, 26, was in Toronto recently to announce a sponsorship with Tide. The theme of the campaign is “Raising the Bar” and in an impressive bit of salesmanship, Poulin worked the phrase into several of her answers.
How will the Canadian women approach the defence of their four straight gold medals at the Olympics? Why, yes, they must raise the bar.
Marketing motto aside, she has a point. The women’s team just competed in the Four Nations Cup, losing twice to the U.S., including a 5-1 drubbing in the final. Coupled with four straight losses to the U.S. at the worlds, Canada knows the Americans will give them plenty of fight. But Poulin also says the team knows it can’t think of the Olympics — and the lead-up to them — as a series of tune-ups until an inevitable battle at the end for the gold.
“Obviously, we know there is a big rivalry with the U.S., but we gotta get there,” she says. “We know there are games before and we try to treat every game as a gold-medal game.”
Canada did lose to the plucky Finns in the round robin at the world championship, so the anything-can-happen mantra doesn’t ring entirely hollow. It’s proof, Poulin says, that other countries are finally making strides in the women’s game, putting more money into development and creating domestic leagues.
Raising the bar, if you will. Even though Poulin is just 26, she says the attitudes toward women and hockey have changed significantly since she was a kid. She started skating at four years old in Beauceville, Que., and wanted to play hockey like her brother. Her parents let her try the following year and she was hooked.
“I played with boys until I was 15 years old. I played with bodychecking and everything. I was the only girl there, so obviously you have to prove yourself,” Poulin says. “Every practice, every game, you knew the guys would want to hit the girl. Every time I fell down I would want to get up as fast as I could, even if I was hurt, because I didn’t want them to see they hurt the girl.”
Poulin says she was lucky to play for coaches and with teammates who accepted her, who treated her like a sister.
“But you hear your opponents saying stuff, you hear parents saying, ‘Why is she taking the spot of a guy?’ But obviously it made me a little stronger, it gave me a little thicker skin. It makes you want to prove people wrong.”
And the success of the Canadian team on the world’s biggest stage has certainly changed the opportunities for girls over the two decades since Poulin first tried hockey skates.
“It’s pretty fun to see how much growth has happened in women’s hockey,” Poulin says.
“Even when I go back to my hometown, there are more girls who are playing hockey. To be part of that generation that helped grow the sport, it’s something special.”
With less than three months before PyeongChang 2018 and the chance at a fifth straight gold, it is time to focus on something more narrow. Olympic years are different for the women: no more pro teams, no more second jobs and everyone moves to Calgary in August for what becomes a five-month training camp.
“I like the change, I like the new routine. It’s different, obviously, we are at the rink every day,” Poulin says.
“But it’s what we want to do. We are so lucky to be able to do that.”
Plus, there is much yet to work toward. Maybe even another fairy tale ending.