Thirty Years of the Game at its Best

by Gare Joyce

  The Canadian team had wasted a big win over the favoured Soviet Union by losing to Sweden and tying Finland and was sitting with nine points, needing a victory over Czechoslovakia to get silver. The Czechoslovaks, meanwhile, had only one blemish on their record, a loss to the Soviets, and, with 10 points, a tie or a win against Canada would guarantee them silver. The Soviets, meanwhile, were in full control. Like the Czechs, they had 10 points, but they were playing Sweden in Helsinki at the same time as Canada-Czechoslovakia. No one thought it possible for Sweden to pull off an upset. If the Czechoslovaks beat Canada and the Soviets beat Sweden they would both finish with 12 points, but the Soviets owned

  the tiebreaker with the head-to-head win over Czechoslovakia. And, with the initial reports out of Helsinki putting the Soviets out in front of Sweden, this Canada vs. Czechoslovakia tilt had the look and feel of a consolation game.

  Maybe that was to be expected. The pundits had been concerned from the outset about Team Canada’s defence, a not-exactly-star-studded unit of Patrice Brisebois, Kevin Haller, Dan Ratushny, Adrien Plavsic, Jason Herter, and Stewart Malgunas. And, sure enough, if not for an out-of-this-world netminding performance from Stéphane Fiset, Canada may not have been playing for a medal at all. It was a young team—half of the players, including 16-year-old Eric Lindros, who had scored four goals in the tourney, were eligible to play in the next year’s 1991 WJC in Saskatoon. So a silver or bronze medal would not have been a surprise, or even necessarily a disappointment.

  Nevertheless, Charron’s players played hard that day. It was a terrific, up-and-down game. The Czechoslovaks jumped out to a 1–0 lead late in the first period on a Reichel goal, assisted by Jagr. But Canada came back strong in the second period. Mike Craig tied the game, and nine minutes later Newfoundlander Dwayne Norris put Canada ahead 2–1. Things got dicey in the

  Finland gave

  Stéphane Fiset and

  his teammates all

  kinds of problems

  in their 3–3 round-

  robin tie. Although

  the Finns didn’t win a

  medal in 1990—they

  wound up in fourth

  place—their strong

  play against Canada

  helped to sustain the

  tournament’s drama

  right up until its final

  minutes.

  third period when Canada took three straight minor penalties in a six-minute span, but Fiset stood tall with more of the tournament-long excellence that, even today, is considered one of Canada’s most dominant goaltending efforts at the WJC.

  Occasionally, over the course of the game, there were dispatches from Helsinki—and always the Soviets were comfortably ahead of the Swedes. The most recent had the Soviets up 5–3 in the third period. So Canada-Czechoslovakia remained a battle for silver.

  But with about five minutes left in the game in Turku, I received word through my earpiece connecting me to the CBC production truck that Sweden had mounted a late-third-period comeback and, unbelievably, scored two goals, including a buzzer-beater at 19:59 of the third period. Final score: Soviet Union 5, Sweden 5.

  The scene in the rink in Helsinki was said to be frenzied. The Soviet players were up on the dasher, ready to vault over the boards and celebrate their gold-medal win, when Swedish forward Patric Englund, set up by Nicklas Lidstrom, tied the game just as the buzzer sounded. Instead of swarming their goaltender, the Soviet players smashed their sticks on the dasher, cursed, and protested that the goal had been scored after time had expired. But the goal was ruled good.

  Armed with that information, I could hardly contain myself. But I quickly, in my mind, did the math to be 100 percent. The Soviets finished the tournament 5-1-1, with 11 points. If the Canadians held on to their 2–1 lead against the Czechoslovaks, they would also finish at 5-1-1 with 11 points, but by virtue of beating the Soviets in the head-to-head matchup would get the gold medal.

  Suddenly, right out of the blue, this silver-medal contest had become a gold-medal game with only five minutes to play.

  And that’s when I asked myself, How exactly do I handle this?

  I was close enough to the Canadian bench to be able to tap one of the players on the shoulder and just tell him, “You better protect that lead because you’ll win the gold medal if you do.” But it struck me that a media member maybe shouldn’t be interacting with players in the middle of a game and, had I done that, I’m pretty sure it would have resulted in some hysteria on the Canadian bench. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.

  But I’m not going to lie; I was fairly bursting to tell someone. This was huge news. It was exciting. I mean, I think that’s why anyone in the media ever goes into the business in the first place—because they like to find out news first, before anyone else, and be “that guy” to tell everyone something they don’t know.

  There was a stoppage in play and I caught Team Canada head coach Guy Charron’s attention and discreetly waved him over. He came down to the end of the bench, bent over, and I whispered in his ear, “The Swedes just tied the Soviets. The game is over. If you hold on to win this game, you win the gold medal. I don’t

  Left: An unheralded

  blue line looked like

  one of the question

  marks hanging over

  the team when it

  left for Finland, but

  by the end Canada

  had allowed only

  18 goals in seven

  games, half as many

  as they had scored.

  Here, defenceman

  Adrien Plavsic

  congratulates Eric

  Lindros on one of

  his four goals of the

  tournament.

  Right: The Canadians

  protested this goal in

  their game against

  Finland, but it would

  later be the Soviets

  crying foul in their

  pivotal game against

  Sweden.

  know if you want to tell your players or not. I won’t say anything to them, but I thought you should know.”

  Charron’s eyes lit up. If I recall correctly, he just said, “Really?” I nodded and he scooted back down the bench and immediately conferred with assistant coach Dick Todd.

  More than 20 years later, Charron still marvels at how it all went down.

  “I remember it being brought to our attention that the Swedes had tied the Soviets. I always thought it was Mats Sundin who scored the tying goal,” Charron said. “It was you who told me? I didn’t remember that part. I just knew we found out but the kids didn’t know at that point and I talked to Dick [Todd] and [other assistant coach] Perry [Pearn] and we decided not to tell the players. They were playing the game. We didn’t want to drop all that emotion on them—this is now a gold-medal game—and throw them all out of whack.”

  So the seconds ticked away and the magnitude of the little secret known by so few seemed to grow with every brilliant save Fiset made. It was high tension, to be sure, though at that point the players were oblivious to the stakes having been increased so dramatically.

  But with about 90 seconds left in the game, during a stoppage in play, there was a public address announcement that the Soviets and Swedes had played to a 5–5 tie.

  The players on both benches—Canada’s and Czechoslovakia’s—erupted. The Canadian players were celebrating their opportunity, all standing up, hooting and hollering and bouncing off each other with kinetic energy that you can’t even imagine. That image is burned into my memory.

  “What I recall is how garbled the P.A. was,” said Team Canada winger Kent Manderville. “It was really hard to hear, but someone picked out that the Soviets and Swedes tied and it spread like wildfire all up and down the bench. It was crazy. We started the game thinking the best we could do was get a silver and now there’s a very sudden realization … we can win gold!”

  The Czechoslovaks also rose up on their bench, more
with grim determination and steely resolve than outright excitement, knowing a win over Canada would give them the gold and even a tie would create a three-way logjam with them, the Soviets, and Canadians that would require the calculators to come out.

  Everything about the game had suddenly changed. It was the highest of high drama. All Charron was trying to do was maintain order, finish the job.

  “It was crazy,” Charron said. “When that announcement was made, the players went nuts on the bench. We had to try to stay focused.”

  Manderville said the striking memory of the final 90 seconds was that Reichel, Holik, and Jagr never came off the ice, and just how dominant they were.

  “Those three guys were all-world in that tournament and Reichel was scary good,

  Stéphane Fiset, named

  the outstanding

  goaltender of the

  1990 WJC, preserved

  a fragile one-goal

  lead against the

  surging Czechs in the

  tournament’s final

  game.

  so dangerous,” Manderville said. “I was on the bench the whole time, but they just kept coming at us. It was electric, but it was scary, too. The time couldn’t come off the clock fast enough.”

  Charron says he won’t ever forget those final moments, how Fiset made some terrific saves. But for him, two things stand out.

  “They had the puck in our end in the final minute but they never pulled their goalie,” Charron said. “European teams and coaches didn’t pull the goalie like we do. I thank heaven for that because this was a situation where you would want the goalie out for the extra skater. But they didn’t do it. I was happy for that.

  “Then there was a faceoff in our end late, I don’t recall exactly how many seconds were left but it was to the right of Fiset. I had to decide who should take the faceoff. I had been using Stu Barnes for those faceoffs because he’s a right-hand shot and I was using Kris Draper for the faceoffs to the left of Fiset because he’s a left shot. Kris asked me if he could take the faceoff; he told me he could win it. I had Kris when I was coaching the Olympic team and I had a lot of confidence in him. So I had him take the faceoff—I know Stu Barnes was really disappointed it wasn’t him—and Kris won it. We killed the clock. We won. I’ll never forget it.”

  There was some talk in the immediate aftermath of the game that the Soviets were officially protesting the tie with Sweden—that the Patric Englund goal had been scored after time expired and they had video to prove it. But as Russian star Pavel Bure said many years later, “It was very close. Maybe it was 19:59, maybe it was 20:00, but there wasn’t the technology then like now. The bottom line is the goal counted. We lost the gold medal.”

  “It’s funny,” said Charron from his Kamloops Blazers office, where he’s been the head coach since the fall of 2009. “I’m not sure I realized then what a big deal the world juniors were. We wanted to win of course—Canada always wants to win—but I had been in the Olympics and I went into the junior tournament thinking it would be a good experience. I suppose now that the world juniors have grown to what they are, I know how important it is and how much it means to be a world junior champion in Canada.

  “I have two pictures up in my [Kamloops] office. One is when I won the Memorial Cup with the 1969 Montreal Junior Canadiens and the other is from that 1990 world junior. I like to think those are things the kids who play junior hockey now can relate to. They are special.”

  Special, indeed. But for me, what I’ll always remember—aside from figuring out whom to tell once I found out the Soviets and Swedes had tied and Canada was in a gold-medal game—is that some years a team wins a gold medal at the world juniors when it seemingly has no business winning one, and other years it loses when by all rights it should have won.

  And it didn’t take very long for history to repeat itself, right down to a Newfoundlander scoring the game-winning goal in a most improbable gold-medal victory.

  Goaltender Trevor Kidd

  came up with an im-

  pressive performance

  in Canada’s 3–2 victory

  over the Soviets in the

  final game of the 1991

  WJC.

  The world junior championship has evolved from an annual tournament into a hockey phenomenon, especially in Canada. Though there have been many stages in that evolution, the 1991 tournament in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was a crucial catalyst.

  It was the perfect storm in every way.

  It was the first time Canada won the WJC on home ice. Hockey fans from Regina to Saskatoon—and all points in between, all over hockey’s heartland—braved 10 days of –40°C temperatures to fill the rinks.

  It was the first time TSN had televised the tournament—CBC previously held the broadcasting rights—and the first time all seven Canadian round-robin games were broadcast nationally. The tournament immediately became TSN’s signature event, with a ratings bonanza of more than 1 million for what turned out to be the gold-medal game between Eric Lindros and Team Canada and Pavel Bure and the Soviet Union. It was unquestionably the launching pad that rocketed the WJC into the Canadian sporting stratosphere, making it what it has become now—the most highly anticipated and most-watched annual sporting event in Canada.

  The images from January 4, 1991, remain strong to this day: The giant Canadian flag being unfurled at one end of a sold-out SaskPlace;

  Newfoundlander John Slaney’s unforgettable game-winning goal on the seeing-eye shot from the point in the final minutes to give Canada a 3–2 win.

  For many, that goal and that tourney are synonymous with—or emblematic of—the WJC itself.

  Fair enough—it really was something special. But those of us who were there and covering the entire tournament share a knowing smile at the remarkable set of circumstances that even allowed the Canada-Soviet game to become a gold-medal, winner-take-all showdown.

  By rights, it never should have happened.

  I was part of the TSN broadcast team that year. Jim Hughson and Gary Green did play-by-play and colour commentary, respectively. I provided pre-game and intermission analysis with Paul Romanuk hosting.

  The 1991 tournament attracted more public attention than any previous WJC, and that can be attributed to one player: Eric Lindros. It was the Big E’s NHL draft year, and by the holiday season he was at the centre of a full-blown media circus. At 18, he was possibly the most-discussed name in the game.

  Peterborough Petes coach Dick Todd was the behind-the-bench boss that year, and he had a group that was considered a strong team but by no means an overwhelming favourite. Lindros was obviously the marquee talent, but he was one of seven returnees from the 1990 team that won gold in Helsinki. Still, there were question marks. Some wondered if Trevor Kidd and Félix Potvin were up to the challenge in net. And, as was the case in 1990, the somewhat generic defence: Patrice Brisebois, Jason Marshall, Chris Snell, Karl Dykhuis, Dave Harlock, a draft-eligible Scott Niedermayer (who played only three games), and Slaney. The blue line was scrutinized and, by some, doubted.

  Making the odds of a repeat even longer was the strong competition Canada was facing. Bure was the electrifying phenom leading a strong Soviet team. Doug Weight led a talented U.S. entry and Martin Rucinsky, Ziggy Palffy, and Jiri Slegr led an impressive squad from Czechoslovakia.

  Canada blanked Switzerland to start the tournament, hit a speed bump in a 4–4 tie with the U.S., but then reeled off comfortable wins over Norway, Sweden, and Finland to go 4-0-1 in their first five games. The Soviets, though, were perfect after five contests, having beaten the U.S., Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia. With two games remaining for each of Canada and the Soviets, the arch-rivals looked to be on a collision course in the final game of the tournament.

  But on January 2 in Saskatoon, Czechoslovakia beat Team Canada 6–5. Canada was trailing 4–2 in the second period but the dynamic Oshawa Generals duo of Lindros and Mike Craig went to work with three straight goals. Craig sco
red two goals and one assist, and Lindros one goal and two assists to give Canada a 5–4 lead midway through the third period.

  But the Czechs scored a power-play goal with less than five minutes to go and Rucinsky scored the game-winner with less than three minutes left.

  That outcome was a disaster for Canada, because the next night in Regina the mighty Soviets were taking on a non-contender, Finland. A Soviet win seemed preordained—and if it materialized, the Soviets would clinch gold without having even played Canada.

  “I think it’s fair to say we thought we were done after that loss to the Czechs,” head coach Dick Todd said 20 years after the fact from his retirement home in Florida. “That whole tournament was a struggle in many respects. Nothing came easy, and when we lost to the Czechs it was tough. There were a lot of things happening behind the scenes, some people who fell off the bandwagon. The atmosphere (after the loss to Czechoslovakia) wasn’t very good.”

  Any time Team Canada fails to win, it doesn’t take long for the sharks to circle, questioning everything from the selection of certain players to myriad coaching decisions and tactics. This was no exception.

  There could not have been any more doom and gloom in the Team Canada ranks than there was on January 3, leading up to that night’s game between the Soviets and Finns at the Agridome, home of the WHL’s Regina Pats. No one was giving Finland any chance at all.

  TSN wasn’t able to broadcast the Soviet-Finland game because it had other programming commitments that night, but the network, recognizing the significance of the game, dispatched Paul Romanuk and me to Regina to provide live updates over the course of the night into TSN programming.