There is something here. Some intangible that we Canadians have that American hockey lacks. An element of human nature, perhaps buried deep inside the strains of our DNA — or perhaps theirs — that separates the Maple Leaf from the Stars and Stripes when a hockey rink and a puck is involved.
And it really doesn’t make sense, when you consider that many of our young players go to American colleges, and plenty of theirs come north to play Major Junior hockey. This isn’t baseball, where Americans outnumber us and can train for 12 months a year.
Uncle Sam has caught up enough to equal the scales yet somehow, some way, when the chips are down for Olympic supremacy, Canada gets the extra goal, that extra save. We have something they don’t, and maybe the most valuable element of this clear and discernible edge for Hockey Canada is nobody knows exactly what that extra element is.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” said retired American Olympian Bill Guerin, who took our call to discuss the 49th parallel puck conundrum in the wake of the second stunning, edge-of-your-seat one-goal victory by a Team Canada over a Team USA in as many days in Sochi.
We asked Guerin, who wore the red, white and blue in three Olympics and two World Cups of Hockey, if he could go back and magically change anything over the past two days, what moves would he make?
He answered, fittingly, with a question: “What would you change?”
“You would change the outcome of the games, obviously, but you have to play them out. They were both one-goal games that could have gone either way. But Canada came out on top. Give them credit, but you can’t look me in the face and say that we can’t play with and beat any country out there.”
He’s right on every count. Except one.
The Americans can play with Canada. And they can, at least in the women’s game, beat Canada once in a while on the road to the big game. When it’s all on the line, however, the game sheet always reads the same, with Team USA on the wrong end of the result against Canada.
“You’re right,” Guerin admitted. “I guess that’s our next step.”
The deeper question is this: Is the next step for USA Hockey simply to beat Canada? Or is the next step to figure out exactly what that next step really is that will allow them to beat Canada?
A doctor must fully diagnose the sickness before he can write a prescription. This rash is so intangible, so guttural — perhaps so mental — that it might not be something that can be figured out on a whiteboard at all. It might take an exorcism. This might be one of those “eye of newt” things.
“They played that grinding kind of game a little bit better than we did. And the result is a 1-0 game,” American David Backes told reporters in Sochi after the game. “We had an awesome opportunity. I don’t think we laid it all on the line the way we want to, the way that we needed to. Obviously 1-0 game in the semifinal against your rival country, it’s a sour taste for sure.”
Let us recap: In 2002 our men beat the Americans 5-2 in the gold medal game, while Canada’s women beat the USA 3-2. In 2006, both men’s teams bombed out in the quarterfinals at Turin, while the USA women were upset in their semifinal by Sweden. The Canadian women won gold.
In 2010 at Vancouver, again Canada won both gold medals over the United States: the men 3-2 on Sidney Crosby’s golden goal, while the women won 2-0 on two first period goals by heroine Marie-Philip Poulin. And now this year, a men’s game that finishes 1-0, with the easy-scoring Americans — having averaged nearly five goals per game through the tournament — unable to dent the twine behind the infallible Carey Price even once.
The women, well, that gold medal loss on Thursday was as crushing, as gut-wrenching a loss as ever you’ll see, handed away by allowing two Canadian goals in the final three-and-a-half minutes, then the dagger in overtime. It literally left Guerin feeling ill.
“I was sick to my stomach for those girls. I was. I hurt for them. That was hard, and they handled it is hard with such class,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a bounce. I don’t know if it’s mental makeup. That’s our next step. We have to figure that out.
“Our teams play great. They’re awesome. We stack up against anybody and everybody.”
And then they lose to Canada. Every time it really matters.