Waiting for something to get excited about
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— There’s been something confusing about the way Canada’s men’s hockey team has opened this Olympic tournament.
They’ve billed themselves as a bluecollar, work-first squad. But at times during their trio of group-stage games they’ve looked soft and disengaged. The team has been difficult to embrace.
Derek Roy, the veteran of 738 NHL games, said he’s received “a little feedback” from back home. And it’s mixed in a way that hockey feedback usually isn’t. “I heard some people are excited, and some people are the opposite,” the Ottawa native acknowledged with a shrug
On the bright side, at least Roy knows some of his friends and family are being honest with him. But if Roy’s friends and family in Canada would have seen the final tune-up game last week — a commanding 4-1 win over Sweden — they would have been far more excited. And they surely wouldn’t have predicted an Olympic beginning quite this blah.
At their best against Sweden, Canada looked bruising and speedy and sufficiently skilled to give ex-Leafs goaltender Jhonas Enroth nightmares. But ever since they’ve been immersed in the Olympic bubble, Canada’s team has offered few reminders of that version of itself.
What gives? It was worth putting the question to Chris Lee, the defenceman from MacTier, Ont., who has emerged as head coach Willie Desjardins’s most trusted back-end presence. Lee, a 37-year-old KHL regular who never played in the NHL, clearly understands the significance of this opportunity.
So what’s the difference between the team that crushed Sweden in pre-Olympic play and the team that’s spent the first three games of its Olympic tournament losing to the Czechs in a shootout in between notso-convincing wins over the Swiss and Koreans?
“The sweater has weight to it. And this venue has weight to it,” Lee said. “We’re on the biggest stage in sport. That’s a tough pill to swallow for a lot of guys.”
That’s a sobering thought as Canada approaches Wednesday’s quarterfinal against Finland. If a lot of guys on the squad had difficulty dealing with the pressure of representing the country during the essentially meaningless group stage, how can they be expected to react positively now? And how will they ultimately stack up against a field that includes the Pavel Datsyuk-captained Olympic Athletes from Russia, who led the tournament in goal differential in the group stage?
“We know we’ve got to raise our level,” said Canadian GM Sean Burke. “The preparation’s there. It really comes down to who performs. You’re not necessarily going to have to play your best game to win. But you don’t get away with, at this point in the tournament, not playing well. We’re prepared to play well. Now it’s up to the guys to go and do that.”
Burke, of course, assembled the roster with situations like this in mind.
“There’s a lot of players on our team that know how to step it up. They have NHL experience, and they’ve been in big games,” said Canada forward Maxim Lapierre. “We know we’re going to be ready.”
We’ll find out whether that extra gear actually exists soon enough. Captain Chris Kelly was asked which variety of pressure is more oppressive: The kind that arrives in Game 7 of a Stanley Cup final or the type he’s experienced here, wearing the national colours in view of the world.
“You feel sick for both,” Kelly said with a smile and a laugh. “The nerves are there for both, the excitement, the nervousness. I think it’s all good energy. When you’re playing hockey as a kid on the street, you’re dreaming about the Olympics or you’re dreaming about the Stanley Cup. To have this opportunity to experience both, I could pinch myself right now.”
He could have plenty of company soon. Now that every game’s an elimination game, either the excitement level around this team is going to rapidly escalate or the opposite will happen.