Canada's Sidney Crosby celebrates after scoring the game winning goal against the U.S. during overtime in the men's ice hockey gold medal game at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.TODD KOROL/Reuters
Sam Reinhart remembers exactly where he was when Sidney Crosby scored the golden goal.
He was 14 years old and Reinhart was in Vancouver watching the men’s hockey final of the 2010 Olympics at his family’s home. When Jarome Iginla passed to Crosby in overtime, who then buried the goal that would live on in Canadian hockey lore, it caused bedlam in the Reinhart household.
“I was jumping up and down on my couch,” Reinhart, of the Florida Panthers, said this fall at Team Canada’s orientation camp in Calgary. “There was definitely some rearranging of furniture going on after that one.”
Not all of Crosby’s teammates on the Canadian Olympic team share Reinhart’s vivid recollection of the moment.
The average age of the 25-man squad vying for hockey gold at the Milan Cortina Olympics is 29 years and 10 months.
Sam Reinhart was 14 when Sidney Crosby scored the golden goal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
At 38, Crosby is the oldest player. Macklin Celebrini, who made the team at 19, is the youngest.
Celebrini wants to say he remembers the goal, but in reality, he was not yet four years old.
“I mean, not really,” Celebrini said recently after a San Jose Sharks practice. Most likely, he said any recollections he has come from rewatching it.
Such is the age span of this Olympic team. The average player on Team Canada was 14 when the goal was scored to clinch the gold medal on home ice over the Americans.
Captain Sidney Crosby, left, talks with teammate Connor McDavid during practice. McDavid watched Crosby's golden goal when he was just 13.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
And much like Crosby himself never seems to age, producing this season as though he’s a decade younger, the golden goal also never gets old for his teammates.
Connor McDavid was 13 and watched it with his minor hockey friends.
“Our family kind of gathered with a bunch of teammates after we played earlier in the day,” the Edmonton Oilers captain recalled. “We all got together and watched the game, and had some food.”
It’s the nerves McDavid remembers most.
“It was so intense. You could feel it, the energy in the building the nervous energy in the building was coming through the TV.”
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Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche was 11 and watching at home in Calgary.
“Being from Calgary the cool thing for us was, obviously, Iginla assisted on that goal and made a great play,” Makar said.
“He was a really big role model for me at a young age, which was really awesome. And then to be able to play with a guy like Sid now and see how he has completely defied age and everything, it’s pretty incredible.”
His Avalanche teammate Nathan MacKinnon was 14 and travelling home to Nova Scotia from Shattuck-Saint Mary’s, the boarding school in Minnesota he attended eight years after Crosby, and where both played hockey. A snowstorm stranded MacKinnon mid-route, otherwise he might have missed it.
Nathan MacKinnon, left, battles for the puck against Crosby during practice.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
“I was at a friend’s house in Chicago,” MacKinnon said. “It was a cool moment.”
Anthony Cirelli, who was originally named to the Olympic team but was injured in an NHL game with the Tampa Bay Lightning and didn’t make the trip to Milan, was 12 years old and watching with his parents.
“It was kind of a back-and-forth game,” he remembered. “Just seeing Crosby, it hits the ref skating and Iginla gets it to Sid and you know once it’s on his tape, he’s going to find a way to put it in.”
Crosby also won gold with Canada in 2014, scoring in the final game in Sochi. But the golden goal clearly stands alone in terms of its status among players.
Asked what he remembers about Crosby’s repeat gold performance in Sochi, MacKinnon said, “Not much.”
He was on vacation.
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“I think I was in Cancun, so I don’t remember a whole lot from Sochi,” MacKinnon said. “I remember obviously they beat Sweden in the finals and Sid had a nice breakaway goal, but that’s honestly all I can remember.”
And of course, non-Canadian players feel differently when reminiscing about Olympic greatness.
For American captain Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs, it’s T.J. Oshie in the shootout at the 2014 Olympics. The Golden Goal? Not so much.
Matthews, then 16, was at school that day when Oshie, in a quirk of international rules, shot six times for the Americans in a shootout against Russia in the preliminary round.
“I remember watching the U.S.-Russia shootout in our lunchroom and missing a little bit of my post-lunch period to watch that,” Matthews said.
Oshie scored on four of his six attempts, winning the game for the U.S. and earning the nickname T.J. Sochi. But the U.S. went on to lose to Canada in the semi-finals.
“This kind of opportunity, not many people get,” Matthews said. “That’s a very big honour to be able to do.”