It wasn’t a classic. It was the farthest thing from it.
The score — Team Canada 3, Team Europe 1 — fairly reflected the balance of play.
Its effect could go either way. On one hand it might give the underdog Europeans hope of stretching the World Cup of Hockey’s best-of-three final to Saturday night. On the other hand, it might serve as a wake-up call to the powerhouse Canadian side.
“We needed to play a perfect game,” European defenceman Dennis Seidenberg said. “We didn’t. We can’t make mistakes. We made two of them.”
It couldn’t have started better for Team Europe. On the very first shift, not even 20 seconds into the game, captain Anze Kopitar centred the puck from the corner to Tomas Tatar who crashed the net. Tatar and Tobias Reider had shots that Carey Price turned aside but not before drawing a cross-checking penalty on Brad Marchand. That wasn’t the end of the chances generated by Team Europe but the home team needed only one shot to take the lead. On the first shift after he stepped out of the box, Marchand drove to the net, snuck by Seidenberg and Nino Neiderreiter and pushed the puck past Jaroslav Halak for his fourth goal of the tournament, his impressive debut on such a big stage.
That was Mistake No. 1.
Marchand’s goal didn’t open the floodgates as many expected, though. Team Europe hung around, traded chances, mostly. Still, you’d look at the lineups and bet that this was nothing more than postponing the inevitable.
Zdeno Chara had struggled in the pre-tournament tilts painfully, but the 39-year-old seemed to have regained something like his usual game when the games turned meaningful. But with seven minutes to go in the first, he mishandled the puck in the neutral zone, turned the puck over to Ryan Getzlaf who set up Steven Stamkos for his first goal of the tournament.
Mistake No. 2. Two-zip Canada.
If you were told the score without having watched the game, you would have labelled it business as usual. But it wasn’t. Europe outshot Canada 13-9 in the first and that fairly reflected the balance of play.
And so it went into the second frame.
Team Europe had to feel a little unlucky to be down a goal at the end of 40 minutes. At that point, shots were even at 24 apiece and the number of quality chances was probably all square. Seven minutes in, Tatar beat Price, cashing with a rebound of Seidenberg’s shot from the point and drew Team Europe within a goal.
With four minutes to go before the second intermission, the Europeans had their best chance to score on a play you don’t see every day: a short-handed breakaway for a defenceman. Somehow the frozen waters parted and Andrej Sekera had a 90-foot breakaway on Price. As shocked as anybody in the arena, Sekera tried to deke out Price but the situation probably scared the shooter more than the netminder. If nothing else — and in this case, there was nothing else — it was a telltale sign of how out-of-sorts the Canadians were. With all the shimmering talent in their line-up, they had trouble just getting possession of the puck, nevermind generating chances.
When Team Europe needed its best period Tuesday night, it played its worst, which wasn’t bad per se, just not enough. Needing to take the game to Canada, the Europeans were only trading chances, not a recipe for success when Canada had Price and Halak was in net for the underdogs. When
Patrice Bergeron beat Halak midway through the third, the deal was done.
There was no consolation to be found in keeping it close. “It was our best game of the tournament,” Kopitar said. “There was quite a bit of time that we were dictating play.”
It had been hard to see how Team Europe was going to win a game in the final. It was nearly impossible to see a way that they would completely ruin the party for Canada. That was true if the Europeans came into the final with their full complement, and they didn’t — they desperately needed a scoring threat up front but perhaps their best finisher, Marian Gaborik, had to use crutches on his way to a seat in the press box, having taken one off his foot in the semi-final win over Sweden.
Still, they nicely filled the role of spoilers. As Frans Nielsen said after the game: “We try to be frustrating. It’s not a beautiful game.” Mission accomplished on both counts. Team Europe was frustrating and, of games in best-on-best finals, this might have been the least beautiful ever. It wouldn’t have even passed for attractive.
Many came to celebrate the greatness of those stars in the red and white. If there was celebrating after the opening game, it was less than full-throated, hearts having vacated windpipes only minutes before.