It entered the World Cup of Hockey as a novelty. Many thought it would go winless.
Nobody thought it would win more than a game. And now it’s a finalist, having knocked off the U.S. and the Czechs in the opening round and then, most shockingly, the Swedes 3-2 in overtime in an elimination game.
It managed all of this after Team North America, filled with elite talents but neophytes, outscored it 9-1 across the first four periods of pre-tournament play.
How the hell did Team Europe do it?
Okay, it’s not an upset of the proportions of Leicester City just yet. Team Europe hasn’t won the World Cup of Hockey and odds are long that Canada will be stretched much in the best-of-three final. But just making the final of a best-on-best tournament is a career accomplishment for the players from Slovakia, Switzerland and lesser European minnows.
“For sure, none of us has been here before,” Andrej Sekera said.
That is true, though only to an extent and only within the limited context of international play. No world championships. No Olympic medals. And yet Team Europe played with remarkable poise throughout its four World Cup games.
The fact is, they have players who have plenty of NHL experience and accomplishments. Zdeno Chara, Dennis Seidenberg, Marian Hossa, Anze Kopitar and Marian Gaborik have Stanley Cup rings, yeah, but moreover, they were central pieces and even defining pieces of teams that won and contended every spring.
Tomas Tatar, who scored twice Sunday afternoon, including the overtime winner, hasn’t made it beyond the second round of the playoffs with the Red Wings, but he’s just 25 and he has filled a big role for a team that made the post-season in each of his three NHL seasons.
When GM Miroslav Satan and coach Ralph Krueger were charged with putting together a lineup of players from Slovakia, Switzerland and seven lesser minnows of European hockey, the top half of the roster was obvious from the get-go, including all of the aforementioned.
“We identified 50 players we had to draw from and experience was the big factor,” said Satan. “We wanted to have an older team that had played a lot of games in the NHL and in international tournaments. It explains to a large degree what we’ve done here.
“When we had players who were close in the last choices, we went with players with experience, like Mark Streit. We have a team with an average age over 30. That was the design … the plan. A young team that starts like we did against North America [in the pre-tournament games] might panic, maybe lose faith. But these players knew what they had to do.”
They didn’t panic in the semifinal either, when Sweden took the lead on a goal by Nicklas Backstrom a couple of minutes into the first period. Or when Erik Karlsson tied the game at two with less than five minutes left in regulation.
After the game Frans Nielsen talked about Team Europe as not being the most talented team at the World Cup but “the smartest.” That seems like a fair reading at this point.
In their victories and even in their loss to Canada in the first round, the Europeans played with great patience and a clear sense of where to go and when to get there. There were no bad pinches, no egregious penalties, no brain cramps, no stage fright. The occasion never ate them up; never made them play outside their games.
Going into any tournament of this magnitude, you presume that a goaltender can steal a game. Going into this tournament, with the exception of Team North America, you would have thought that no team would roll out a goaltender less likely to steal a game than Team Europe.
Jaroslav Halak does have NHL experience and memorably he stood on his head and stole a first-round series from the Washington Capitals but that was six years ago. For Halak to inspire hope you had to reach back in history and ignore recent form.
“Halak has been very good for us,” Satan said. “What we’ve done, it starts with him.”
That said, Halak didn’t exactly steal the semifinal game — yes, Team Europe was outshot 39-31 but it never felt like the ice was tilted decidedly in Sweden’s favour. The measure of his role in the game can be expressed in the least analytic terms: He wasn’t even one of the game’s three stars. (Those honours went to Tatar first, Backstrom second and lastly Gaborik, who scored the other goal.
Krueger has talked about Team Europe as “a team without a past and a team without a future.” And, he said, that this has helped them “be in the moment.”
Tag an asterisk to that. Yeah, these guys never have played as a group before — they’ve played far more games against each other than they have in the same sweater this September. But at this moment, two games against Canada represent their immediate future.
