TARGET ON OUR BACKS
The rest of the field comes to Toronto gunning for the home team — and the Canadian players wouldn’t have it any other way.
Out they came, a parade: Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Drew Doughty, Carey Price, Steven Stamkos, John Tavares, on and on. Team Canada is always a different thing than anybody else. The Russians have trouble on defence, the Finns lack punch up front, the Swedes don’t have the highest-end star forwards, and the Americans are just a level down everywhere. You never know who will win in a short tournament, but the favourite is always Canada. There are no exceptions anymore, if there ever were.
“Canada is the measuring stick,” said American forward Max Pacioretty, two days before the World Cup of Hockey was to begin in Toronto. “You’ve just got to be honest about it. They’ve had a couple injuries and they called up new guys and you’re scratching your head saying, ‘How did that guy not make it originally?’ They just don’t have room for all these great players.”
“Yeah, I would say that: Canada has always been our rival,” Russian forward Nikita Kucherov said. “I think at any tournament, at any level you play against Canada, it’s something special. You’re making history when you play against them.”
It’s always been like that, but then after winning at the Vancouver Olympics, Canada razed the field in Sochi, and even won the last two world championships, an event that has traditionally been the beer-league tournament of Canada’s hockey world. The world juniors are, for the moment, a place where other people win. The senior level is Canada’s. With that comes the pressure, and that never changes.
“That’s the one thing about playing for Canada, and I learned it when I was 16 years old when this all started, is no matter what tournament we’re going to, we expect to win and want to win,” said Ryan Getzlaf, who has played for the under-17 team, in two world junior tournaments and in two Olympics. “I’ve never been satisfied with silver or bronze. That doesn’t mean we win every time we go, but that’s what we want, and every time we don’t it’s a failure for us.”
Hockey, for its part, does its best to level the field. Canada outshot Latvia 57-16 and beat them 1-0 in Sochi, and while their win over the U.S. in the semi-finals was pure dominance, as Price noted, “It was still 1-0.”
“Hockey’s still the same: it’s a game of chance and a game of bounces and a game of hard work,” Price said. “If you get those three things going your way, you’re in the money.”
In Sochi, Canada was so good that the hockey was . . . boring. But maybe this is the tournament where the things they can control exceed their grasp. Hockey is always a bounce away from the bottom dropping out, and at these things Canada still has so little margin for error.
“The pressure is the privilege,” said Canada coach Mike Babcock.
“If you don’t have any pressure it means you have no chance, do you want to come to the tournament with no chance, or you do you want to come to the tournament with pressure? The other thing is every guy who’s used to competing at the highest level, they like 50-50 opportunities — 80-20 doesn’t even get them to sweat or get excited, they like 50-50 opportunities where they got to find a way to overcome it. That’s why you’re in it.” “Yeah, it’s fun,” Getzlaf said. “That’s all you can say. That’s what makes it good. That’s the joys of playing in these tournaments is you get to compete against the best, and measure yourself up on a nightly basis, and hopefully our team is ready for it.”
Everyone will come at them: the Americans showed that first, in the nasty, snarling exhibition games. Europe coach Ralph Krueger helped Canada prepare for the big ice in Sochi.
He has seen the machine up close. He says “it’ll take a magical day, it’ll take a world-class goaltending performance, it’ll take something very, very special in a group to be able to beat Canada here on this ice.”
It’s possible. Maybe Canada is due. Maybe the world will catch up. Maybe there’s a Hasek out there, or an underdog with a punch. But Canada is the bar, for now. “It is for some,” said Finnish goaltender Tuukka Rask.
“Maybe not as much anyone, as it used to. Not personally, I don’t speak personally, but Finland, for example, they’ve won in the world juniors and the under-18s, and we’ve gotten over the hurdle of looking up to Canada, or anybody else. I think that was one of the big issues for many years, was we couldn’t beat Canada or the USA because we looked up to them so much. And now, guys have kind of said, ‘Screw this, we’re going to do our own thing,’ and it worked: we started winning.”
So would it be good for the hockey world if Canada, after all these years, lost?
“I think it would be, because everybody knows how important hockey is in Canada, so it would be nice to be able to tell them, like, screw you, we beat you at your own game,” Rask said with a grin.
“That’s why it would be good. "He thought for a second, and visions of TV ratings danced in his head.
“But then again, would it be better if they won? Maybe.”
Either way, here we go.