CALGARY — For what hockey players go through in the course of winning a championship — more pain and spilled blood than in the other major North American sports — loyalty becomes something that should last at least as long as the bruises do.
A guy bleeds for you, the team wins. It’s not supposed to just end there.
But end it does for Team Canada in Sochi, where one of the chief lessons carried over from the disaster that was 2006 in Turin — where Canada was shut out in three of its last four games, finishing seventh — will be applied to the choosing of this roster.
“The two lessons we learned (in Turin) are, we are much more open-minded to have a different team than the gold medal team in Vancouver,” began Kevin Lowe, a member of the Team Canada management group. Lowe hinted that they were perhaps too loyal to members of the 2002 team that conquered in Salt Lake City.
“They were the incumbents; the ones who had won the Stanley Cup, or the gold medal, previously. We felt they were still capable of delivering as a group. Well, this is a lot different than the National Hockey League. It is four years removed from (Vancouver).”
Head coach Mike Babcock puts it more succinctly: “Some guys who played on that team are still on the top of their game. They’re going to be on the next team. And some guys that were on that team didn’t get invited to the camp. Their career’s not at that point.”
But Lowe referred to “the two lessons” didn’t he?
As it turns out, the second has much to do with the first.
“The biggest lesson is foot speed — for all players. You have to be able to skate and you have to be able to move the puck,” Lowe said. “The team will be made up of players who can skate, think and move the puck. There could be a number of changes from the gold medal team in Vancouver.”
It was at that point that de factor general manager Steve Yzerman thought it right to clarify: “We’re not just going to take the 14 fastest forwards and the eight fastest defencemen. Hockey sense is probably the most important aspect that a player can have. The guys who don’t have the hockey sense, it really stands out.
“There are going to be some players on this team who are simply too good to leave off, and you wouldn’t consider them as race horses.”
That leaves the door open for a veteran forward like Joe Thornton, whose feet may have slowed a touch but who still is one of the elite passers in the game today. Or a young Jordan Eberle, who does not fly, but is among the top thinkers of the game.
It likely closes the door on Jarome Iginla however, whose loss of foot speed will not overcome his wits for the game. He was not invited to this camp, despite having played in the last three Olympic Winter Games, and assisted on Sidney Crosby’s golden goal in Vancouver.
Everything changes on the big ice in Sochi, a surface that leaves the Canadians at a disadvantage. The game is played differently in Europe largely because of the size of the ice surface, and those nuances are ingrained in every European player.
Coaches speak of how European teams will allow you freedom near the boards, because you are so much further from the net out there that you’re harmless. Or how a defenceman who ventures into a corner in his own zone finds himself an extra stride away from his net in Europe, compared to back home.
On the forecheck, if you arrive after the puck has moved, the distance to recoup position is greater, thus, the risk higher. So the Canadian game plan is not to use the extra time and space afforded by the Olympic-sized rink to react more slowly, but instead to play the game as fast as possible.
A North American style, on a European sheet.
“I think the sucker play is you have more space, you have more time, so the tendency is to take more time. It’s the big mistake,” said assistant coach Ken Hitchcock on Sunday. “When we play well as Canadians, we play fast defensively and even faster offensively. It’s the sucker play if you make that mistake on big ice, you end up being slow and you get covered over quickly defensively.
“That’s what we’re emphasizing here over the next three days with the players. We can’t lose perspective of how we play. We’ve got to carry that onto the big ice game and not lose it from the 85-foot game we play naturally.”
Canada has not had success on the big ice, and these men know it. Give them credit, at least, for realizing that and learning from the Turins and Naganos.
No law says Canada will win in Sochi. But we’ll guarantee you this much: they won’t lose making the same mistakes as before.