Canadians top quasi-Korea, reach quarters
> CANADA 4 > SOUTH KOREA 0
GANGNEUNG, SOUTH KOREA— The Korean journalist to my left is going berserk — ripping off his toque and all but prepared to stomp on it, seems like — as Stompin’ Tom Connors twangs from the speakers, followed by The Tragically Hip.
A slice of Canadiana transported to the Gangneung Hockey Centre.
The host country’s inability to finish any of its scoring chances against Canada — and we’re talking here about lots of Canadian-born players against all Canadian-born players — is the source of the reporter’s eruption. The dictum “No cheering in the pressbox” apparently doesn’t apply to the Olympics.
Further down the media tribune row, Chris Cuthbert is calling the game with his usual panache, though I wonder how he can negotiate the play-by-play when four of the Koreans share the surname Kim. Also, three Parks and two Lees.
But the ringers, the imports, the naturalized citizens who grew up with a maple leaf on their sleeve, swapped now for the South Korean crest, their names flow confidently off the tongue: a half-dozen of them, and one American, who never imagined themselves, as recently as a year ago — when the National Hockey League dips announced they would not be participating in the Olympics — playing a game against Canada at the Winter Games.
As adults, most have never had more than a demitasse of espresso in the NHL.
Like Matt Dalton, for instance, from Clinton, Ont., who signed a contract with the Bruins in 2009 but never made it past the bench in two call-ups, his career meandering from the ECHL to Russia to, finally, the Anyang Halla club in the Asian league, where he was voted best goalie in two of the past three seasons.
On Sunday night, Dalton faced an 11-1 shot barrage from Team Canada in the opening four minutes.
Yet the Canadians didn’t put a puck past the 31-year-old until their 14th shot of the period.
The match felt like it could go either way before the un-NHLers got untracked in the third frame, dispatching a game Korea 4-0, in front of a boisterous crowd that may not have known a whole bunch about hockey but were certainly not lacking in enthusiasm.
Such as when they cheered loudly for a run-of-the-mill Korean breakout.
“I think they were just excited that we got it out of the zone,” Dalton observed drily afterwards.
In the mixed zone, the netminder — he’s started all three of Korea’s preliminary-round matches, though pulled after surrendering five in the previous evening’s 8-0 trouncing by Switzerland — was doing his best spacey Phil Kessel impression. Asked about the strangeness of playing against Canada, he hummed and hawed. “Huh, huh . . . huh . . . huh.”
Wait, let me write that down. Then Dalton caught his train of thought.
“That’s a team my whole life I’ve cheered for, as a kid. Obviously, we’d like the outcome to be a little bit different. I feel pretty good about my effort and the team’s effort. You know, it’s special. If you asked me five years ago if I’d be playing in the Olympics against Team Canada, I’d say you’re crazy.”
It would have been much stranger, Dalton continued, had Korea and Canada not squared off at the Channel One Cup in Moscow in December. “That time it was a little more weird, I guess. I’m glad we did that, to get it out of the way. But at the end of the day, it’s a hockey game, you know what I mean? So you just try to go out and play.
“I think I’ll appreciate it more when I’m done, looking back.”
Korea had no hockey culture — fewer than 200 players registered in the country — so the program was slapped together after Korea won the Games bid. As hosts they were automatically spotted a berth for the Games, despite being slotted 21st in the IIHF rankings. They’ve leaned heavily on the Canadian quotient. Just as Canada has leaned heavily on NHL asterisks, the KHL and other lower-tier leagues.
This was only Korea’s third-ever Olympic hockey game.
What was quite evident in this particular tilt was why those imports on the Team Canada roster have never made the NHL. The tournament must be taken on its own merits, however, rather than yearning for what might have been, with muscle-flexing teams from Russia, the Czech Republic, the U.S., Sweden and Finland. Some games have been entertaining, others not so much.
With the win over Korea, and a regulation-time 3-1 outcome in Sweden over Finland, Canada advances directly to the quarterfinals with a 2-1 record.
Canada finally solved Dalton — he was pretty spectacular in that early bombardment — on a high wrist shot by Christian Thomas, son of old Stumpy himself, Stevie Thomas, the ex-Leaf — at 7:36 of the first. Korea showed impressive speed but could do little with the scoring chances they generated, especially during a four-minute penalty to Mason Raymond for high sticking at the start of the second. Their best scoring opportunity resulted from Team Canada goalie Kevin Poulin — making his first start, Ben Scrivens on the bench — misjudging a boomer off his end boards, the puck bouncing out front with the net wide open but no Korean player there.
Eric O’Dell jumped on a puck that had caromed off the backboards straight back into the crease, tucking it behind Dalton, who was caught sliding toward the opposite post. “That second goal, it took a weird bounce off the wall there,” said Dalton. “I thought it was coming out the other side.”
Another surge by Korea in the third ended up in their own net when the play wheeled around, Maxim Lapierre one-handing the puck under Dalton’s left pad. That, and Gilbert Brule dusting off the night with a power-play marker with under two minutes left, made the Canadian victory look more convincing on the scoresheet than it actually was.
“It was a lot of fun,” pronounced Korea forward Brock Radunske, a third-round draft pick by the Oilers in 2002, who not only become the first North American player ever to sign with Anyang Halla but is also, at six-foot-five, the tallest player in the Asian league, earning the Kitchener-born player the nickname “Canadian Big Beauty.”
“The crowd energized us early on and we fed off that.”
He admitted feeling awkward lining up against the maple leaf crest. “It kind of takes your breath away a little bit and you realize what you’re doing. But you’ve got to focus pretty quickly once the puck drops if you don’t want to get embarrassed out there.”
Tons of best-wishes messages from back home, which pumped up the quasi-Koreans. “The support has been unbelievable and that’s helped us out a lot.’’
Alex Plante, another Oilers high draft pick — he took out Korean citizenship last year — tried to take some of the shine off his Canadian opponents, pointing out they were all little more than minor-league pluggers, dispersed to leagues around the world but not the one they’d fantasized about as kids.
“I played against all these guys in the American Hockey League and NHL exhibition games. They tie their skates the same way we do. They’re human. They’re not superheroes.”
Geez, whoever said this motley crew were that?
“The crowd energized us early on and we fed off that.” BROCK RADUNSKE FORMER EDMONTON OILERS PICK SKATING FOR KOREA