TEAM CANADA AIMS TO MAKE IT MEMORABLE
World Cup offers opportunity to add to country’s hockey lore
They are Team Canada moments that remain frozen in time and entrenched in our memories:
Paul Henderson’s dramatic goal to win the 1972 Summit Series versus the Soviet Union.
Wayne Gretzky’s feed to Mario Lemieux, who fired home the winning goal with 1:26 left to give Canada a 6-5 victory over the Soviets in the 1987 Canada Cup in Hamilton.
Joe Sakic’s four-point effort on Feb. 24, 2002, in Salt Lake City led Canada to a 5-2 victory over Team USA to capture the gold medal at the Winter Olympics.
And of course, who can forget Sidney Crosby’s golden goal on Feb. 28, 2010, that broke a 2-2 tie in overtime to give Canada the Olympic gold medal on home soil in Vancouver. Every goal has its own story. As the 23 players chosen for Team Canada report for training camp Monday at Canadian Tire Centre to participate in the World Cup of Hockey — a best-on-best event that gets underway Sept. 16 in Toronto — this group is hoping to make more memories in a tournament that has been surrounded by its share of skepticism.
The reality is that once the puck is dropped, it’ll feature all the top players in the world — with the exception of a few sidelined by injury — going head to head and should produce, by all accounts, a pretty strong competition.
“You’re getting everybody coming in rested and in a great frame of mind in a sense that they’re excited,” Team Canada general manager Doug Armstrong told Postmedia in a recent telephone interview from St. Louis. “I think every time the competition starts and you get to play rivals ... it’s going to be interesting playing the World Team and the 23-and-under team ( billed as Team North America).
“Any time you play the U.S., Russians, Finns or Czechs, you know what to expect, but there’s a little bit of a new dynamic (with those) other (two teams). They’re all proud people participating in this event. We know we’re going there to win and everybody else is going there to win. I think it’s going to be great hockey. I believe the intensity is going to be at a high level quickly.”
Canada won’t waste any time once the players report. Medicals will be done Sunday, there will be a team meeting at the hotel that night and then they’ll hit the ice under the watchful eye of Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock on Labour Day to start building what they hope will be a winning combination by tournament’s end.
The decision was made not to get together for a couple of days of meetings last month — like some countries did — because Team Canada management felt with short summers and no ability to put the players on the ice, it made sense to hold off bringing everybody together until this camp.
“The training camp and exhibition games is something they don’t have at the Olympics. You just jump right into it,” Armstrong said. “We felt with the camp and exhibition games, the players will show up ready to work and we’ll accomplish what we need to without disrupting everybody’s summer plans for a two-day meeting.”
With back-to-back pre-tournament games against Team USA next Friday in Columbus and the following night in Ottawa, the competition is going to ramp up quickly.
“What we’re going to find out after that second exhibition game is that it’s going to be ‘game on,’ ” Armstrong said.
One player the group doesn’t have any concerns about is Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price. He missed almost all of last season with a knee injury, but Armstrong has received regular medical updates from Habs GM Marc Bergevin and is confident Price is fully healed.
“We’ve been on top of this for awhile,” said Armstrong. “He ended the season what he felt was healthy and he’s been training all summer and he’s in great shape.
“He’ll be 100 per cent ready to go on Sept. 5 when we jump on the ice.”
Armstrong, along with the rest of the staff, got together in July at Predator Ridge in B.C. to discuss every aspect of training camp and preparations for the tournament. The coaching staff — which also includes Claude Julien (Boston), Barry Trotz ( Washington), Joel Quenneville (Chicago) and Bill Peters (Carolina) — were part of those talks.
Team Canada officials felt that was important in building togetherness quickly.
“We’re excited about the whole process,” Armstrong said. “Getting the coaches involved has been really important in picking the 16 (players) and the rest of the team. We had a really good meeting in British Columbia where we went over the process we’re going to use for pre-scouting and had some good interaction with the coaches.
“From a management perspective, we have the players and we believe we have some of the top coaches in the game on our staff. We’ve given them the keys to the car, basically. We’re really excited about the tournament. The competition is going to be as great as ever — just with the addition of the two new teams — and how quickly every game matters.”
Organizers are hoping this tournament can have the same cachet as the Canada Cup did when its run ended in 1987, and Armstrong believes it’s a possibility.
“I hope it can be,” Armstrong said. “I think that the NHL and the Players’ Association are hoping it can be. Once you get best on best, the competitive juices flow.
“We all remember Mario and Wayne. That’s imprinted in our generation’s mind. We’re hoping, like the Crosby goal in Vancouver, there is going to be something in this tournament that’s going to be the staple of it moving forward. We just hope we’re on the right side of the images to propel this tournament to the level we think it can get to.”
We know we’re going there to win and everybody else is going there to win. I think it’s going to be great hockey.