Europeans are looking to get the last laugh
Two weeks ago Team Europe was, to put it kindly, a laughingstock. Four periods into their pre-tournament warm-up for the World Cup of Hockey, they’d been outscored a combined 9-1 by the 23-and-under all-stars from North America.
Critics looked at Europe’s average age of more than 30 and dismissed them as too old and too slow. Certainly it was easy to scoff at their ragtag roster — this clearly illthought-out brainwave that united players representing eight different countries under one made-up flag — and have a hearty chuckle.
“Nobody would have guessed we could be in the final,” said Marian Hossa, the 37-year-old veteran from Slovakia. “I think it was 33-to-1 odds against us.”
But those long odds were defied on Sunday. Two weeks after absorbing their two-loss spanking at the hands of Connor McDavid et al, the men of Team Europe toppled Sweden in a shocker of a semifinal — a 3-2 overtime win that earned them the right to face Canada in the best-of-three final that begins at the Air Canada Centre on Tuesday night. Even if the Euros are massive underdogs, they’ve already announced themselves as lovable overachievers.
Maybe that’s because, in a tournament that has been an exercise in earning back the respect that vanished with their embarrassing exhibition-game stumbles, Europe’s members were tailor-made for the task. As coach Ralph Krueger was saying of his players after Sunday’s win: All of them come from countries — places like Switzerland and Germany and Norway and Denmark — “that weren’t respected by the National Hockey League.” As a result, Krueger said, all of them “had to do something special to get to the National Hockey League.”
“We’ve just got a whole locker room full of guys who had to fight to get here and had to fight to stay,” Krueger said. “But in the end, they’re NHL players.”
They’re also, along with being possessors of a combined eight Stanley Cup rings, hardened realists. Even Mats Zucarello, the five-foot-seven Norwegian whose career embodies the long-shot spirit Krueger was talking about, spent Sunday’s post-game glow acknowledging the daunting obstacle that stands before his team, specifically a Canadian team that hasn’t lost in best-on-best action since 2010 and outshot Europe 46-20 in a 4-1 win in preliminary-round play.
“It’s probably the best team ever,” Zucarello said of the impending foe. “We have to play a perfect game, and we have to be lucky.”
There are at least a few reasons to believe Europe has at least a faint chance of making the final mildly interesting — a high bar in this era of ho-hum Canadian dominance. Surely they’ll make it more compelling than Sweden might have.
On Sunday the men wearing the three crowns began the game playing a style that was painfully one note — passive and perimeter-based and ineffective all round. But finding themselves down 2-1 after Tomas Tatar scored 12 seconds into the third period, the Swedes changed gears, outshooting Europe 17-8 in the third period — a tally that included the overtime-forcing goal by Erik Karlsson, who beat a well- screened Jaro Halak with a quick slapper from the point with 4:32 left in regulation.
Alas, Tatar’s extra-period winner sent the defending Olympic silver medallists packing and Doug Armstrong, Canada’s GM, paying the exuberant Euros their post-game respect.
“Now everyone’s seeing they’re a helluva team, and not just a great story,” said Armstrong.
Armstrong, too, pointed out that Krueger’s presence on the opposing bench could be more than a minor inconvenience. As Krueger was telling it story on Sunday, it wasn’t long after he was fired by the Edmonton Oilers after a 48-game season in 2013 — “sitting on my daughter’s bed, by Skype,” Krueger deadpanned in a subtle shot at the Oilers organization — that he got a call from Mike Babcock. Babcock brought Krueger aboard as an adviser in the lead-up to the Sochi Olympics.
“He was a big part of what happened in Sochi,” Armstrong said. “He was part of every coaching meeting, part of how we were going to beat the European teams. And now he’s got a collection of European players (trying to beat Canada).”
Krueger, who’s from Winnipeg, has been previously hailed for outsmarting his countrymen on the international stage. He was at the helm for the Swiss national team in Turin in 2006 when Switzerland pulled off an unlikely 2-0 win over Canada. And as much as goaltender Martin Gerber’s 49 saves explained that result, it underlined a truism that has always underpinned the international game.
As Hossa said: “That’s a different animal we’re going to face . . . But you never know what’s going to happen.”
Krueger, a 57-year-old sporting renaissance man who took leave of his job as chairman of English Premier League soccer club Southampton to coach here, said he knows at least one thing: The slapdash, thrown-together nature of his team can be spun as an advantage.
“Because we have no past and we definitely have no future, we are really capable of being in the now,” he said.
In other words, their lack of pressure and expectation might equate to some kind of an outside chance. Two weeks ago, it would have been laughable. And yet, on Tuesday it’ll be little Slovakia and Slovenia and Austria and Denmark versus the big old favourites to settle the small matter of world supremacy.
“I came in here saying that I hope a few young children back in those countries get inspired by what we do and become great NHL players in 10 years or 12 years,” Krueger said. “If that happens when I’m old and retired, I hope it was a part of this tournament that did that.”