Canada scared into opening-game win over Swiss
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— If Canada’s national men’s hockey team needed a reminder of the folly of underestimating its impending Olympic opponents in the lead-up to its tournament-opening game against Switzerland Thursday, the preceding day’s events qualified as a coach’s dream.
It was a wild day. Tiny Slovenia toppled the United States in overtime. Underdog Slovakia overcame a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2 over the Russians — the latter the pre-tournament favourites to win gold. The upsets suggested the tournament is completely wide open and impossibly difficult to forecast. This isn’t Mike Babcock coaching the best players in the world to play keepaway. This is a dice roll.
“We think we can win,” said Craig Ramsay, the Slovakia coach.
And why wouldn’t they? Canada’s brain trust certainly didn’t need to be convinced. Even before the upsets started happening, general manager Sean Burke had been telling anyone who would listen that the Olympic field was brimming with unpredictability.
“In this tournament, those teams that Canada always beats — or feel we should beat — those teams all feel they have a chance now,” Burke said.
So consider Canada’s 5-1 tournament-opening win over the Swiss a possible pitfall dodged. While head coach Willie Desjardins had lamented his team’s tentative play in preOlympic matches — a result, he said, of players wanting to stay healthy for the big stage of the Games — Canada arrived at Kwandong Hockey Centre on Thursday with some early oomph.
“I think (seeing Russia and the U.S. lose) helped us,” said Derek Roy. “Seeing that, it just shows how close games are. We don’t want to leave it to chance.”
They didn’t. The game wasn’t eight minutes old and Canada found itself ahead 2-0 on goals from Rene Bourque and Maxim Noreau. Less than six minutes into the second period it was 4-0, with Bourque and Wojtek Wolski providing the markers. That led to the Swiss yanking goaltender Leonardo Genoni in favour of Jonas Hiller.
But goaltending wasn’t Switzerland’s chief problem. Canada’s relentlessness was a bigger issue. Ditto Canada’s power play, which scored on its first two chances. Ditto Bourque, who scored both his goals commanding net-front real estate without much Swiss argument. And don’t forget Roy, who had three assists and played with veteran purpose. Wolski added an empty netter to close out the scoring.
Chalk it up, too, to Canada’s players being reminded that the Swiss have been a serious nuisance to Canada in previous Olympic tournaments. But credit the soundness of Thursday’s win to Slovenia and Slovakia.
“It’s kind of eye-opening. A lot of talk about (those upsets) at breakfast.” said Chris Lee, who played on Canada’s top defensive pairing with Mat Robinson. “We were doing our best not to let that happen to us.”
Which is not to say Canada’s opening win changed much.
“We can’t kid ourselves and call ourselves the favourite,” Lee said. “Everyone thought going in on paper the Russians would have the best team. Man for man, I think they do. But in a tournament, in these onegame scenarios, anything can happen. It just takes a couple of bounces here and there. You never know who’s going to win. And I think this is probably the most even playing field we’re going to see in a tournament like this . . . There’s a lot of teams that have a chance to win this.”
Suddenly teams aren’t fearing the Russians like some suggested they should.
“Everybody knows that they’re good on paper, but they need to show it on the ice,” said Slovenia defenceman Blaz Gregoric, speaking of Datsyuk and Kovalchuk and company.
Everybody needs to show it here. Canada next plays Saturday against Czech Republic before closing out the group stage versus South Korea. Whether or not they’ll be truly tested is anyone’s guess. But if the Czechs thought the Canadians might sleepwalk into Saturday’s games — well, that ship appears to have sailed.
“It’s cliché, but we’re going to have to do the things that all teams that don’t have superstar offensive guys do,” Burke said before the tournament began. “We’re going to have to be hard around the net. We’re going to have to screen, tip, be a pain in the ass in front of the goalie . . . in this tournament, especially. I think you have the Russians that probably have the most talent. But the rest of the teams are all going to try and do the same things. At the end of the day, it’s going to come down a lot to heart and commitment.”
We’ve already seen Burke’s words ringing true to a degree. The Olympic Athletes from Russia, led by Pavel Datsyuk and Ilya Kovalchuk, have slouched to an early loss. And even if early losses don’t mean much — all12 teams make the playoff round — they’re not insignificant. In a short tournament, a hot team doesn’t need to sustain its temperature long to find itself on a deep run to the podium. A cold one might find itself never reaching its set point.