Genevieve Lacasse latest goalie to shine for Canada at Olympics

Canada goaltender Genevieve Lacasse (31) makes a save on United States forward Monique Lamoureux-Morando (7). (Nathan Denette/CP)

GANGNEUNG, South Korea — There are four Americans in and around Genevieve Lacasse’s crease, and she shoves the one closest to her. The buzzer just went here at Kwangdong Hockey Centre, but players are still punching, pushing and grabbing. Canadian forward Blayre Turnbull is taking on two Americans, one with each arm.

Lacasse has lost her helmet, because it flew off at some point. Her ponytail is half in-tact, slightly mangled. And if she looks like she’s been through the ringer, it’s because the Team Canada goalie pretty well has.

In a relatively meaningless round robin game against their American rivals, Lacasse made an incredible 44 saves to carry Canada to a 2-1 win on Day 6, giving the reigning Olympic champions a perfect 3-0 record heading into Monday’s semifinal. And, you have to figure, a boatload of confidence, too.

“She absolutely stood on her head,” veteran forward Haley Irwin said, of Lacasse.

She did. What a game it was for the 28-year-old netminder from Montreal, who shut down the Americans completely through the opening two periods that saw Team USA double Canada in shots. What Lacasse didn’t save, her posts did. Four times, the Americans struck the iron.

“From the dead angle, you just take up as much space as you can and the rest, that’s all they have so, yeah, hit the post, eeh,” Lacasse said, seeming very unconcerned. “That’s all you had there.” In other words, nothing.

Lacasse’s biggest save came in the second period on a penalty shot, an attempt that saw Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson fake a through-the-legs move, then pull the puck to her backhand, an interesting call in a 2-0 game.

“She tried to do something fancy, and I just watched it and pushed over and made the save,” Lacasse said, with her blocker.

Then, she smiled and looked over at Lamoureux-Davidson. “I didn’t wink,” Lacasse said, even though it appeared she did. “I just looked at her.”

The stop was a huge one, because Canada was up 2-0, and a goal would’ve blown this game open even earlier than American speedster Kendall Coyne managed to, in the third. In the first minute of the final frame, Coyne split the Canadian defence and beat Lacasse five-hole, highlight-reel style.

“We just gotta find a way to get another one,” Coyne said. “And then another one.”

Boy, did the Americans ever come close. In the last couple of minutes alone, Brianna Decker hit a post, a puck bounced over an American stick while the Canadian net was virtually wide open, and Hilary Knight came inches away from connecting on a back-door one-timer that would’ve tied this game up.

They should’ve been leading already by that point, anyway. The ice was tilted in Team USA’s favour, especially early on. Knight found herself on a breakaway after a bad Canadian line change, and Amanda Kessel was for an unknown reason left wide open in the slot, where she wired a one-timer that Lacasse stopped.

Canada, on the other hand, made good on two of 16 shots the team generated through two periods. At the 7:18 mark in the second, Natalie Spooner saw Meghan Agosta heading to the net and made a no-look backhand pass, which Agosta buried. “Beautiful pass,” Agosta said. It was her 17th career Olympic goal, which is two shy of the record.

Later in the second, Olympic rookie Sara Nurse made it 2-0 on a wrist shot perfectly labelled for the top corner, over the shoulder of Team USA goalie Maddie Rooney.

“We buried the chances we had,” Agosta said. And Canada also had two goals called back. The first came on a confusing call with a lot of players in the American crease, and the second when Spooner put a pass out front and Irwin stopped to avoid hitting the goalie, and her skate knocked the puck in.

“I felt it hit my foot, but obviously when you don’t see the puck there’s not much of an intent to kick,” Irwin said. “But they figured otherwise, so it is what it is.”

As Spooner pointed out, “Luckily we didn’t need that goal in that game and we can bring it to another game.”

The Canadians weren’t happy, of course, with the number of chances they gave the Americans, though as Nurse rightly pointed out, “we have great goaltenders back there and they don’t give up a lot, as you could tell.”

But Canada gave the Americans far too much. “I don’t think we can give them all those shots—we’re lucky that our goalie had a really good game,” Turnbull said. “Next time we face them we have to be more prepared to play some better defence and keep the puck in their end.”

The third period featured a lot of American pressure. Amanda Pelkey had a great chance on a two-on-one, and Decker had another good scoring chance shortly after that. Monique Lamoreux was stopped on a breakaway, but got the rebound out to her sister Jocelyne, who wired a slap shot off the post.

For all the chances the Americans had when you couldn’t believe they didn’t hammer it home, there was one point in the second when Irwin stopped a puck with her skate, nearly on the goal line, and a bunch of Canadian players fell on it, leading to that penalty shot.

Irwin grinned about that save. “I guess I learn from her,” she said, of Lacasse.

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Lacasse was pretty laid-back about the amount of rubber she saw, more interested in thanking her teammates for shot-blocking than acknowledging her own play. “We did a great job keeping their shots to the outside,” she said. “When we keep them out, we step up—our D, we were doing amazing, we had some huge blocked shots out there. [Lauriane] Rougeau had one, I was on the other side of the net, that would have been a goal for sure. [Marie-Philip] Poulin had a bunch, Mik [Meaghan Mikkelson]. It’s nice when your players are playing like that.”

Better, still, when your goalie is playing the way Lacasse did. Canada has an embarrassment of riches in net, including Shannon Szabados, who played the last two times Canada won Olympic gold. Said head coach Laura Schuler, “We’re going to definitely have some tough decisions.”

It’s a good problem to have, of course, heading into the semifinal and then in all likelihood a gold medal game that will see these rivals meet again, as they always do on this stage. If Thursday was any indication—fights, a penalty shot, called-back goals, back-and-forth chances—it’ll be a classic, too. “I feel confident that whoever is put in the net, that we’re gonna win that game,” Lacasse said.

She certainly did her job in this first meeting against Team USA. As for how she kept that puck out of the net in the final seconds, just before that net-front fight broke out, when more than a couple of Americans were swinging at a loose puck on her doorstep, “I’m a goalie,” Lacasse said, with a shrug. “That’s what I do.”

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