Team Canada coach Jon Cooper has a way of reaching his players with timely speeches. The one he gave the Canadian players at the 4 Nations Face-Off last year was very well received.Mike Segar/Reuters
As Team Canada prepared for the 4 Nations Face-Off last year, head coach Jon Cooper gathered his players together for a talk.
Cooper had given countless speeches to teams over the years, but this one was different, because the tournament itself was new.
Most of the players had never taken part in a best-on-best international showdown before. The last time Canada played at the Olympics with an NHL roster was in 2014, and the only two players remaining from that gold-medal-winning team were veterans Sidney Crosby and Drew Doughty.
When most people think of games like the Canada-Russia Summit Series, the Canada Cup and the Olympics, they think of the plays that won them.
Paul Henderson against the Soviets in 1972, Gretzky to Lemieux in ‘87, Crosby scoring the golden goal on home ice in 2010. These iconic moments are what everyone wants.
Coach Jon Cooper's unlikely journey to Olympic men's hockey reaches its moment of truth
But it was the wrong approach, Cooper told them.
The only way big moments happen, is if they are preceded by a series of equally important small moments that either go unnoticed, or are later overshadowed or forgotten. But the small moments are how champions are made.
The blocked shot before an end-to-end rush; the hit that leads to a turnover; the backcheck that prevents a scoring chance; and the forecheck that leads to one. None are plays that will be enshrined on a postage stamp, or turned into a statue, but they are actually the plays that win.
And with that moment, the hockey monologue that has since been dubbed Cooper’s ‘Small moments speech’ was born.
Cooper, seen here at last year's 4 Nations Face-Off, has stressed the ideas in that famous speech from a year ago with this year's Olympic roster.Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images
Canada, of course, went on to win the 4 Nations tournament by defeating the United States. Connor McDavid, in overtime, provided another famous goal for the list.
But when Cooper thinks back on that game, one of the most high-pressure of his career, he thinks about the face-offs won, the breakouts and the pucks cleared out of harm’s way.
“Everybody’s going to remember [McDavid’s] goal. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. But there was a lot of moments that got us to the big one,” he said.
Cooper reprised and expanded the speech when Team Canada gathered this past fall in Calgary to prepare for the Milan Cortina Olympics. The new version was broadened beyond hockey, to include examples from golf, baseball and sprinting – anything that would hammer home the point.
He described how Nick Taylor’s now famous putt to win the 2023 Canadian Open could not have happened without the lesser-known shots he needed to make earlier that day.
'He's a big-game player': Jordan Binnington back in the spotlight for Team Canada
He talked about how the Boston Red Sox became the first team in Major League Baseball to come back to win a series after being down 3-0 against the Yankees in 2004. But rather than zero-in on the series clinching game, as most people might, Cooper pulled apart “what they did in the first game they won, when they were about to get swept.”
The team then rolled tape on Canada’s stunning gold medal in the 4x100-metre relay at the Paris Olympics in 2024, where none of the sprinters had excelled in their individual races, but came together as a team to be faster as a group.
Sitting in his coach’s office in Tampa last fall, thinking back to his presentation, Cooper allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation.
“Actually, this presentation was pretty sick,” he chuckled.
Cooper will be looking for his team to commit to making the little plays as they chase winning Olympic gold in Milan.Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
After addressing the players, he was then asked to speak to Hockey Canada’s board of directors the next day.
“And it was supposed to be like, you know, go talk to the board. I’m like, ‘What am I going to say?’” Cooper recalled.
“So I took half the speech. It wasn’t the whole speech. I took half.”
It was enough. There were emotions, there may have been a few tears. Even Cooper is willing to admit he got a bit choked up.
“I guess it was a bigger hit than I thought it was going to be.”
After Poulin injury and physical tilt with U.S., Canadians struggling to find 'the line' at Olympics
That message – that little things win big games – is what the team is preaching in Milan as the tournament gets under way.
“You have to embrace that to be a part of Team Canada, if you want to hang a gold medal around your neck,” he said.
There are many famous pregame speeches done to inspire greatness in sports. So was that Cooper’s best?
“I don’t know,” he said. “You’d have to ask the players.”
Brandon Hagel, a member of the 4 Nations and Olympic teams who also plays for Cooper in Tampa, believes the Canada speech is up there.
“I wasn’t here for the Cups, so I couldn’t imagine what some of those were like,” Hagel said of Tampa’s Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021. “But I think one that’s going to stick with me for a long time is probably the one before the [4 Nations].”
Other players haven’t forgotten either.
Late last season, the Lightning were playing Pittsburgh and one of the Penguins trainers tracked down Cooper in the bowels of the arena.
“Hey, Jon, Sid’s got something for you,” the trainer said.
He then handed Cooper one of Crosby’s sticks. On it, Team Canada’s captain had signed in marker a small thank-you note.
“To Coop, great having you as a coach at Four Nations. Pucks in deep.”
Then Crosby added one more line.
“Small moments equal big moments.”