CHICAGO – Corey Crawford is usually a pretty decent quote. But even the Chicago Blackhawks netminder can’t effuse on something that is simply nonexistent.
“Have you ever represented Canada at an international competition?” he was asked on Friday.
Crawford: “No.”
Reporter: “Have you even received an invitation to a camp?”
Crawford: “No.”
Reporter (digging ever deeper): “Any provincial teams? U18 teams? What’s the highest level you’ve ever got to?
Crawford: “Nothing man. Other than regular season, junior hockey, AHL, NHL… Other than that, there’s not much man.”
Is this, dear Canadian hockey fans, the answer to our quest? Is Corey Crawford the answer to the question, “Who the heck is going to play goal for Team Canada in Sochi?”
The jury may still be out on that question, but we can probably stop asking this one: Does Crawford get an invite to the August Olympic team camp in Calgary – assuming the NHL, NHLPA and the International Olympic Committee come to an agreement for the NHLers to play?
Yes. He does get the invite.
“I’m happy people are asking me that question,” began Hawks captain Jonathan Toews, when we approached him about Crawford. “He deserves it, and to get to that level you need to have some kind of name in the media. Have people know who you are. If they didn’t before, I think everyone knows who Corey Crawford is now.
“I don’t see how there should even be a doubt. He’s proven he’s a pressure player. He has the talent, the ability and the mental game to go with it.”
There is some irony that the Montreal native has a hard time worming his way into the Olympic goaltending conversation, despite backstopping the best regular season team in 2012-13, as well as taking Chicago to this Cup final.
Meanwhile Carey Price, the Anahim Lake, B.C., product who plays for the Canadiens in Montreal, is considered by most to be the leading candidate to start Game 1 of the Olympic tournament, despite some spotty play down the stretch and into the playoffs this season.
Why the lack of respect?
“I don’t know. You tell me,” Toews counters. “We all know in this locker room how good Corey Crawford is.”
Maybe if he had a French surname, and stayed a little more true to his butterfly roots, Crawford would be on the Olympic radar. He did grow up like every other young netminder in Montreal, idolizing the great Patrick Roy.
“He’s one of the reasons why I became a goalie,” Crawford revealed. “Growing up in the Montreal area, he was The Man back in the day playing for the Habs. He was my idol. I wanted to be like him when I was younger.”
Roy’s personality, as his career went on, became larger than life. He cast a shadow as large as his goal pants and inflatable jersey, while winning Cups along the way.
Crawford is a different cat. He’s quiet; the kind of guy who will engage in conversation, but never dominate it.
He isn’t bland, but definitely not the Technicolor figure that Roy became over his storied career.
“Yeah, he’s boring, literally boring,” teammate Dave Bolland chuckled. “Crow, he’s a little different than any other goalie. You can talk to him. Even during a game you can say, ‘What’s up?’ You can screw around with him before the game, have some fun with him.
“I don’t think he’s an actual goalie. He’s a player in goalie’s equipment.”
It was Crawford, however, who had to make more and tougher saves than Boston’s Tuukka Rask in the triple-overtime thriller that was Game 1. Was that perhaps the first act of what could be Crawford’s coming out party this June?
“I had to do it, or we would have lost the game. You just do anything you can to keep it out,” he reasoned. “It was worth it, definitely worth it, to end up on the winning end of a game like that.
A game that long – he made 51 saves in what became the fifth-longest game in Stanley Cup finals history – would expose a goaltender’s focus if it weren’t strong enough.
They all let the odd bad goal in during the first or second period of a game. Allow a softie in a game like that one, and it could well define your career.
“I was telling myself, ‘Make the next save and our guys will score on the next shot,'” he said. “It was a constant repeat of that, over and over.”
Repeat that Game 1 performance three more times, and Corey Crawford could be a busy man this August, and next February as well.