Mitch Marner scores Canada's OT winner past Czech Republic's Lukas Dostal in Milan on Wednesday.Marton Monus/Reuters
The easy headline out of Canada’s victory over the Czechs in Wednesday’s Olympic quarter-final is ‘Nagano’s Revenge.’
Unlike 28 years ago, Canada won this time, barely, 4-3 through Mitch Marner in overtime. It turns out that getting stoned by another impassable Czech goalie in a shootout at the Games was a little too on-the-nose, even for us.
So mission accomplished, sort of. It’s never easy, but is it actually supposed to be this hard? With that in mind, the banner Canada might want to hang in the dressing room is, “Chickens, and how to go about counting them.”
All the things that killed Canada in the NHL’s inaugural Olympic effort were back in place on Wednesday in Milan.
A leisure cruise through the round robin? Yes.
Confidence that had tilted into hubris? Yes.
The Czechs hanging off the ropes, looking like they were cooked? Yes.
Hockey players are not historians, and this was the game that proved it.
Nobody was silly enough to say the words “tune-up” going into the quarter-final, but that was the approach. Loose to the point of rubberiness. Unaffected verging on disaffected.
Victory in the 4 Nations seemed to convince Canada – the country as well as the team – that going against the U.S. for Olympic gold wasn’t just their mission here, but their right. Like everyone else was going to clear the path so that CBC and NBC could get the big Sunday event they wanted.
The Czechs came with a plan – get up in Canada’s face.
The Canadians came with their own plan: Is this the same team we beat 5-0 a week ago? Great. Let’s remember guys – take it easy out there. No one pull anything.
First and foremost, what a hockey game. Does it make sense to say that the ice was tilted in both directions? Because on Wednesday, it looked that way. No one could bear to be caught in the middle. The action was perpetually steaming toward either end at full speed.
Czechia's Ondrej Palat (18) scores a goal against Canada goalkeeper Jordan Binnington (50) during the third period.Carolyn Kaster/The Associated Press
Canada would have gotten away with it more easily had goalie Jordan Binnington not cracked early.
Ahead of the tournament, Canadian coaches and executives mocked the idea that Binnington shouldn’t be an automatic in goal. As in, actually laughed whenever it was brought up.
Head coach Jon Cooper worked and reworked a joke where he tried to guesstimate exactly how many days it had been since Binnington won the 4 Nations, saying that was how long he’d had him penned in as the starter. Three hundred and sixty five days? Three hundred and fifty eight?
Sure, okay, but they’ve played hockey since then. This season, Binnington has the 58th best save percentage (.864) in the NHL. You might do better taped to a chair. If history must always trump recent performance, then why wasn’t Roberto Luongo starting?
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Binnington wasn’t terrible on Wednesday, but he wasn’t good enough. On what was for a few minutes the winning Czech goal, he was so far out of his net he looked like he was starting a bag skate to the blue line.
You could feel the story that was coming and how it would be told. Long shots of Wayne Gretzky staring out disconsolately from the bench, having not risen from it for the shootout. Brendan Shanahan failing to get the last shot past Dominik Hasek.
Who would be that guy this time? Who was going to make the miss that become the enduring image of this disaster?
Sidney Crosby was already off, injured. At least he would be spared that humiliation.
A few moments before the end, Nick Suzuki tipped a shot whipped in high from the point.
If you had to go down the list of who should and shouldn’t have made this team, Suzuki would be near the bottom of it. This is another reminder that Canadians don’t need the best players. They need the best gamers. If this ends up turning out, there will be a special place in the telling of it for Suzuki, whether or not he plays another shift.
Looking back on it, it’s easy to see what the problem was. For Canada, this game was the one of two full-contact practices they will hold before, as God has intended, they face America in the gold-medal game. Donald Trump may be there. We’re 100 per cent going to win, by as much as 10 goals. It’s going to be a whole Heritage Moment.
Palat (18) checks Sidney Crosby (87) during the second period, forcing Canada's captain off the ice with an injury.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
For the Czechs, this was their gold-medal game. No win looms larger in their history than that upset in Japan. It drove them to the gold medal. It established them as a hockey superpower, even though they’d only recently been shorn of Slovakia.
The Czechs knew that history. You could see it carved on the face of David Pastrnak, after catching a stick in the teeth. He went back to the bench, spitting blood and comically fending off a trainer. Eventually, someone stuck a towel on him.
After so many years of meaningless international hockey, there are a few things Canada didn’t just pick back up at last year’s 4 Nations. One of them is that despite the name, there are more than four countries in the world, and some of them care as much about this as we do. The Czechs are one of them, but they didn’t get an invite to Montreal and Boston.
Man-for-man, there is no day on which the Czechs or Slovaks or Swedes can match Canada’s highest-end talent. On Tuesday, the Czechs showed on behalf of everyone else that when pressed to do so, they can match, and maybe surpass, Canada’s desire.
There are a lot of things Canada can tighten up about its game going forward. Leaving it until midway through the second period to get the car out of first gear is one of them. Telling Binnington to stop roving around the Canadian end like he’s truffle hunting might be another. Getting Crosby back is definitely on the list.
However, the biggest lesson is that this isn’t automatically going to turn out the way Canada wants because it’s the way Canada wants it.
No one’s owed anything anywhere, even us, even at hockey, even at the Olympics, and even though we would really, really like it.
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