Olympic hockey won’t be lacking excitement

I was fortunate enough to cover the hockey tournaments at the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics, the two Games prior to the entrance of National Hockey League players — and both were among the most memorable events I’ve ever been around.

In ’92, there was the famous Eric Lindros Canadian shootout win against Germany and later a gold-medal loss to the Unified Team, which was a Russian team divided into numerous pieces that included Nikolai Borschevsky, Dmitri Mironov and Dmitry Yushkevich.

In ’94 in Norway, Canada played for gold against Sweden and lost in a shootout to the now-famous Peter Forsberg goal. There were some famous players on that team, but most of the team was little-known. The hockey, at the time, was frenetic and dramatic and to be honest, fun.

The past five Olympic Games featured NHL players. It’s ridiculous they are not back for PyeongChang, but that’s old news now. The tournament next month should be similar to ’92 and ’94 and while it may not feature stars who aren’t named Pavel Datsyuk and Ilya Kovalchuk, it should feature the same kind of frenzy and intensity tournament hockey can breed.

Team Canada was so superb four years ago at Sochi that the hockey was clinical and one-sided. The gold-medal game had no magic at all as a matchup. Yes, it was best-on-best and the Canadian best was too good for the rest of the world. Now it’s a coin flip. Now we don’t know what to expect and I’m looking forward to the great unknown.

It’s Canada. It’s hockey. It’s who we are.