Oh Canada?
Oh No! Here's To Team USA
Even Before Winning Gold, Canadian Hockey Rhetoric Was Tough To Swallow
By Mike Prisuta

It couldn't have started any better had it been scripted.

Sweden 5, Canada 2

USA 6, Finland 0

This was one of the great Friday nights in our nation's history, the beginning of the Olympic hockey tournament last month in Salt Lake City.

My thinking heading into this thing, my passionate belief was that it wouldn't be enough merely to see the U.S. win.

Canada needed to be beaten as well, and if at all possible humbled.

It's not political; it's personal.

You don't think so?

Consider the following television commercial I came across on a recent trip to Montreal: It depicted a brawny, simple-minded looking character in a "USA" T-shirt phoning his coach to call in sick. For emphasis, this supposed "player" held the phone away from his face and faked a coughing fit. The coach responded by hollering, "What do you mean you're not playing today, we're playing Canada." As this was happening, Team Canada smirked its way onto the ice in the background.

Also consider the following pile of analysis published by The Montreal Gazette, by way of something called The Victoria Times Colonist on Feb. 8: "Canadian hockey fans must lose their obsession with winning, their fixation on first-or-failure. In the true spirit of the Olympics, let's focus instead on what really matters: Beating the Americans. Our curlers can choke, our skiers can tumble, a whole succession of figure skaters can come out of retirement to fall on their asses once more for old time's sake, and we won't care. All that really matters is finishing ahead of the U.S. ('Do you believe in miracles? No!')"

Does that sound like something we ought to be standing for to you?

The endless curling coverage is one thing. And the obsessing about Sale and Pelletier getting temporarily screwed out of their gold medal in pairs figure skating by Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze of Russia before a compromise double-winners position was achieved is still another.

But with these insults, our Canadian friends had gone too far.

The nation that's as much of a has-been as it is arrogant as far as hockey is concerned had thrown down the gauntlet.

It was the responsibility of the team generally managed by Craig Patrick and coached by Herb Brooks to pick it up and slap some Canadian face.

Team USA's strong start should have surprised no one. The majority of this latest edition played together in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey and the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. And in a tournament such as this cohesion, chemistry and familiarity can make the difference.

Goaltending can, too, and that means Russia's Nikolai Khabibulin stood as a serious threat at the tournament's outset. But in Mike Richter, Team USA had a player with one more World Cup and one more Stanley Cup on his resume than the "Bulin Wall." And Richter wasn't even needed in the opener against Finland, as Mike Dunham pitched a shutout.

As for the rest of the U.S. roster, it had been expertly constructed and blended enough size, strength, speed, skill and savvy to juggernaut its way to the gold.

Canada had countered by finding a way not to include one of its best skaters (Boston's Joe Thornton) and without question its best goaltender (Colorado's Patrick Roy).

Nice roster, Gretz.

Even a healthy Mario Lemieux—something Lemieux obviously is not—wasn't going to make up for that.

No wonder it had been 50 years since Canada had mined gold coming in.

As for America's finest, the opening-night massacre of Finland was an impressive opening statement, but Team USA needed to complete the job to truly send a message to the rest of the hockey world. And for the job to be completed, Team USA needed to find itself standing alone atop the medal stand when all was said and done, with "The Star-Spangled Banner" blaring in the background and captain Chris Chelios playing the part of a latter-day Mike Eruzione and calling his teammates up to join him.

Such a scenario is delicious for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it would make Canada sick (whether or not its citizens would report for work the next day anyway or phone in their regrets would remain every Canadian's option).

Mike Prisuta is also the sports director for WDVE-FM.