TEAM CANADA DEFEATED ITSELF IN HUMBLING LOSS
In a game that brought tears to both sides, the favourites showed a lack of direction
These are the games you never forget.
It doesn’t matter who you are and where you play. It doesn’t matter that nobody knows your name or your background. It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t the Team Canada we wanted or you wanted on the ice.
It matters that they lost, to Germany — fricking Germany — who didn’t qualify for the last Olympics, and lost the opportunity to play for gold in hockey. Not being defeated — beating themselves.
It matters that they lost and these players we’ve barely come to know will live with this undisciplined defeat, this game lacking direction and common hockey sense, and they will carry this 4-3 loss with them, probably for the rest of their lives.
You don’t get over a game like this, when you’ve robbed yourself of your own possibilities. This was their opportunity to be somebodies, this group of mostly 30-year-olds who have played their way out of the NHL or never got there at all. It’s not like they were beaten by the Germans, who had one shot on goal in the final period. They showed up dumb at the wrong time. They lacked effort and game plan. And this was their opportunity to step up, the way extras do on Broadway every night.
But instead, they forgot their lines, tripped over themselves in the dance numbers, couldn’t follow the script and couldn’t find the moment on the big stage against an historically small opponent.
Instead, they froze. The coach, Willie Desjardins, froze.
The goaltender, Kevin Poulin, so sharp in his previous Team Canada performances, allowed four goals on the first nine shots and recovered after that.
The line changes looked like a fire drill. The 10-foot tape-totape pass was mostly a rumour. The ability for one moving player to pass to another moving player — it just wasn’t part of the package. The adjustments to playing against a 1-2-2 opponent, willing to clog up the middle and think defence first, were nonexistent. It all went wrong.
The odd man rushes against, all coming off Canadian turnovers, all coming from those who never read the play, kept the Canadians on their heels for two one-sided periods of semifinal Olympic hockey. The style of play Team Canada employed was baffling. The slow start was almost unexplainable. And the lack of discipline was close to mind-boggling.
When Patrick Hager scored to make it 4-1 Germany almost 13 minutes into the second period, Gilbert Brule showed a lack of sense by running at forward David Wolf. He was penalized five minutes and a game misconduct for the indiscretion. And just after Canada killed the penalty, veteran Rene Bourque got a high-sticking penalty.
Team Canada was basically short-handed for seven minutes immediately after giving up a goal.
That’s beyond inexcusable. Desjardins had no answer for it, but then he had no answer for almost anything else.
But on the way to defeat and the greatest victory in the notmemorable history of German hockey, Desjardins had much to answer for. He didn’t change lines. He didn’t change styles. He didn’t adjust to the Germans’ trapping ways. He didn’t shorten his bench when he needed to.
And in a 4-on-4 situation late in the game, down a goal, the Canadian coach put fourth-liners Eric O’Dell and Maxim Lapierre on the ice.
Up a goal, that makes perfect sense. Down a goal, it’s ludicrous.
Losing is one thing. Beating yourself is another. Canadian hockey expects and deserves better than that. Now there’s silver in women’s hockey, maybe no medal for the men. This week has been historic for Canada, for the great and for the horrible.
“We let Canada down,” said defenceman Mat Robinson, one of the players who did not. There were a few standout Canadians who never stopped — defencemen Robinson, Chris Lee and Maxim Noreau, and forwards like Derek Roy. The rest were mostly invisible or ineffective or impossible to remember.
“I think we could have won gold,” said Robinson, his eyes bright red, a welt beneath his right eye. “We’re not happy with this. We will never be.”
It isn’t often one hockey game brings tears from both sides, but this one did. The Canadians stunned. The Germans, more than half of them over 30 years old, elated. On the bench when it ended, German forward Yasin Ehliz pounded his hands against his head and kept screaming about beating “f---ing Canada.”
It was a night worthy of screams at the Olympic tournament. A night Germans will remember for the rest of their lives and Canadians will never forget, for all the wrong reasons.