Team Canada is the Boston Red Sox of world hockey, a proud, founding franchise that hasn’t worn the world crown for generations. Oh, they skate beautifully and pass with perfect precision, dress in tasteful red-and-white hockey sweaters and shower before handing out sound bites to the press (the shower-shoe touch is so civilized). They’re polite and proud–often to the point of dismissiveness. Yet year after year, they watch foreigners assume their crown.
Not so the Americans. Team USA is the rowdy, great unwashed who’re just starting to believe in themselves. They trash hotel rooms and step off the rink and stink and sweat on reporters. Yet they’re evolving. Over captain Chris Chelios’ dead body will his team ever go Johnny Depp on a rented room again. That’s why nobody screamed “Do you believe in miracles?” the other day after Team USA beat Russia. Granted, pro players and the fall of the Iron Curtain have radically altered the playing field of international hockey. But consistent, chilled American players like Mike Modano and Brett Hull are proving that the American style of fists and finesse can work. That’s a serious advantage the Americans will have going into the gold medal game. Almost everybody on the U.S. club hits very hard and often late, whereas the Canadians seem to consider smackdowns as intemperate.
Sunday’s grab for gold will still be unpredictable. Both teams, stacked with NHLers, are gelling and peaking at roughly the same moment. But the Americans, with home-team advantage, are drunk with confidence after proving to themselves that they can own even the Russians–if for just two periods. They argued, post-Russia, that it’s better to implode and survive in the semifinals, to get past the confidence self-con, and to get down to serious business in the finals. They’re also mildly vengeful after watching from the stands as Canada’s women snatched the gold medal away from their American sisters.
The Canadians, on the other hand, are almost congenitally incapable of over-confidence in the Big Game. They lucked into a near bye in the semifinals when Belarus shocked Sweden and earned the right to face (and be mauled by) Canada. Canada needed a break. They’d suddenly developed a Russian-sized persecution complex, with the otherwise classy Wayne Gretzky whining about everyone hating Canada for being beautiful. Moreover, two of team-architect Gretzky’s stars are on the brink of burning out. Comeback kid Mario Lemieux is Michael Jordan without the healthy back. He prowls the rink hunched over like a toothless geriatric looking for his walker. And Eric Lindros, sadly, is one vicious hit from vegetation.
When it’s over, attitude and a maturing national hockey program will likely trump the Great One’s insecure old empire. No doubt, Lemieux could yet find some hockey-Viagra, and Canadian wizards Steve Yzerman and Joe Sakic could help him snatch back the crown. The Americans know that the weight of Canada will be on their opponents’ shoulders; they’ve endured a half-century Olympic gold medal drought. Team Canada defenseman Scott Niedermayer characteristically understated things. “It’s no secret that hockey isn’t as popular in the U.S. as it is in Canada,” he said. Team USA knows this. “I don’t think there will be one person in the street anywhere in Canada on Sunday afternoon,” American Jeremy Roenick laughed after beating Russia. Not that that worries him and American punks like winger Keith Tkachuk. He was so cocky during warm-ups that he sent a few rink-long shots past Russian goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin and into the net. But Gretzky’s boys have more than a cheap Tkachuk to worry about. They’ve got an entire nation’s ego to mend.
