Thirty Years of the Game at its Best

by Gare Joyce

  It was wickedly cold that night in Regina. Team Canada sent advance scout Dave Draper to Regina for the game, but the rest of the team, including head coach

  Kris Draper went into

  the boards face first

  here, but he was face

  to face with Soviet star

  Pavel Bure in Canada’s

  victory over the Soviet

  Union.

  Canadian captain

  Steven Rice and his

  teammates had to wait

  for the results of the

  Soviet Union-Finland

  game to see if they

  would still have a shot

  at a gold medal.

  Todd, stayed back in their Saskatoon hotel, hoping for a miracle from the Finns.

  Team Canada winger Kent Manderville, a returnee from the 1990 gold-medal team that got an improbable gift from the Soviets a year earlier, recalls that January night like it was yesterday.

  “We had the whole floor of the hotel to ourselves and everyone’s doors were open and we were all just wandering around from room to room and through the hall,” Manderville said. “It was like being a kid in a minor hockey tournament again, there with all your teammates, but we were waiting for the [Soviet-Finland] game to start. We were obviously down after losing to the Czechs but we hoped Finland might be able to pull off the upset. We were all gathered around the TVs, just watching TSN [for the updates].”

  It turned out to be a night of theatre of the absurd.

  Less than 14 minutes into the second period in Regina, the spunky Finns jumped out to a 4–0 lead on the Soviets, including two goals from Jere

  Lehtinen. “We couldn’t believe it,” Manderville said. “We were going crazy but we also knew the lead wasn’t safe, not with all the firepower [the Soviets] had, especially Bure.”

  There wasn’t a huge crowd in the Agridome that night, but those who were there couldn’t believe their eyes. I can recall the excitement building with each Finnish goal and the breathless TSN updates with Paul Romanuk, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Canada was going to have an opportunity at redemption. But the euphoria was relatively short-lived.

  Less than two minutes after the Finns made it 4–0, the Soviets answered. Then, at 17:52 of the second, Bure scored to make it 4–2—and the sense of foreboding returned in a big way.

  Less than five minutes into the third period, Bure scored again to close the Soviet deficit to one goal. He was literally taking over the game. He wasn’t finished, and neither were the Soviets. Oleg Petrov scored at 11:08 to tie the game, and, 1:21 later, Bure got the hat trick and the Soviets were back in front 5–4. It was a tour de force by one of the game’s most exciting players, as dynamic a 15-minute stretch of game action by one player as I’ve ever witnessed.

  “It was like a roller-coaster ride,” Manderville said. “We were so high when the Finns were up 4–0, out running up and down the halls between rooms celebrating, and we were so low when Bure scored his third goal. We figured that was it; it was over for us.”

  It certainly seemed that way. The Soviet defence included future NHLers Dmitry Yushkevich, Darius Kasparaitis, Sandis Ozolinsh, Boris Mironov, and Alexei Zhitnik. Up front, they had Bure, Slava Kozlov, Sergei Berezin, and Sergei Zholtok, among others. Now, after having been in a four-goal hole, it was unimaginable to think the Soviets would surrender their lead.

  What happened next, though, truly qualifies as “you had to be there.”

  At 17:57, the Soviets took a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty. The Finns pulled their goalie, playing six on four. The Soviets had changed goaltenders, from Sergei Zvyagin to Sergei Tkachenko, and the Finns were having a tough time mustering any real good scoring chances on their final power play.

  But with less than 20 seconds to go, Finnish forward Jarkko Varvio backhanded a harmless looking bloop shot from the hash marks at the boards, to the right of Tkachenko—and the puck skittered between his legs and into the net.

  If I hadn’t been there to see it myself, I’m not sure I would have believed it. The Varvio power-play goal was scored at 19:45 of the third. Final score: Finland 5, Soviet Union 5. As was the case a year earlier at the 1990 WJC, the Soviets found a truly bizarro way to let Canada back into the gold-medal hunt.

  “It was bedlam in the hotel,” Manderville said.

  “Just crazy,” Todd added. “We were back in it. We had a chance.”

  “What I remember about all of that,” Manderville said, “was the picture on TV of the Russian goalie, just sitting on the ice, all by himself, looking totally depleted.”

  What I remember is Pavel Bure, standing despondently during the post-game presentations on the blue line, his chin resting atop his gloves, which were on top of his stick—in sort of a forlorn Ken Dryden pose, staring off into space.

  “I could not believe it,” Bure said. “Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of the details, it was so long ago, but I am sure I was thinking, how did this happen? That was two years in a row we did not do what we had to. We gave [gold] to Canada twice.”

  John Slaney’s winning

  goal ultimately over-

  shadowed the unlikely

  events that led up to the

  title game. Victory was

  made sweeter by the

  fact that the Canadian

  juniors thought gold

  was likely out of reach

  just 24 hours earlier.

  The despondent Soviets had to bus back north to Saskatoon after the game, with the now-gold-medal game the next night, while the Team Canada coaching staff strategized a game plan at the hotel in Saskatoon. The Canadian players, meanwhile, tried to calm themselves after the roller-coaster night of emotions, counting their blessings and trying to sleep.

  Todd’s game plan involved matching stalwart defensive forward Kris Draper against Bure. Draper brought a game and experience to the role, having been Guy Charron’s go-to faceoff man in the final minute of the gold-medal game in the 1990 tournament.

  As Bure recalled it, he didn’t get much room in the final game against Canada.

  “Was it Draper who was checking me?” Bure asked. “I didn’t realize then that it was him. I do remember I didn’t get as much room and as many chances in the Canadian game.”

  With Draper blunting the key piece of the Russians’ offence, the game was a tense, tight-checking affair. With the score tied two-all and just over five minutes left in the third period, Slaney provided the magic moment that would become one of the most replayed goals in the history of the event. It was the second year in a row a Newfoundlander scored the game-winning goal for gold after a Soviet miscue opened the door for the big prize.

  It’s funny, though, what different people remember most about that 1991 tournament and that Slaney goal.

  “What a lot of people don’t realize is that the Soviet winger had flown their zone and was way out in the neutral zone looking for the breakaway,” Todd said. “I saw the puck coming up the boards and I was screaming for Slaney to pull out and go back to get the guy in the neutral zone, but he didn’t. I thought they were going to get a breakaway but John knocked the puck down, shot, and scored. It was a great play by him but I had been terrified he was taking a risk that was going to cost us. Funny how that goes.”

  Unquestionably, the 1991 WJC will forever be known as John Slaney’s moment—but at the very least there should be a footnote for Jarkko Varvio and yet another improbable scenario paving the way for Canada to win gold when all had seemed so lost.

  In a break from its

  usual approach to

  team building, Hockey

  Canada added Eric

  Lindros to the roster of

  the 1992 WJC squad at

  the eleventh hour. He

  led the team in scor-

  ing, but anything short

  of a gold medal would

  have been deemed

  a failure for the most

  celebrated junior
/>
  player in Canadian

  history.

  It really came down to one play, one call. There were less than 10 seconds left in our game against Sweden and we were in front 2–1. I could see the players on the bench, standing up, getting ready to celebrate. We were just a deep breath from a third straight victory to start the tournament. That breath turned out to be in the cheeks of the ref who blew a whistle on an icing call that brought the puck back into our end for a faceoff and a last chance for the Swedes. It was a real close call, too. I had seen a lot like it not get called.

  The Swedes pulled their goaltender. It was Eric Lindros against Peter Forsberg on the faceoff. Forsberg won the draw and next thing you know the puck is in the net, past our goalie Trevor Kidd, who had been very solid for us. It wasn’t his fault. You couldn’t blame him. You couldn’t blame Eric for losing the draw—he was out there against a heck of a player in Forsberg. It just happened.

  It was a tie that felt like a loss. When I looked at the bench, I saw that all the energy that had been there just 10 seconds before was gone. When I watched the players after they came off the ice, I saw a team that was deflated. It was a turning point. I knew that it was going to be tough to rebound, especially in the format of

  Paul Kariya went to

  Füssen as an under-

  age player. He would

  have to wait until the

  following January for

  gold in the WJC.

  the tournament back then. There were no do-overs and a tie was just about as bad as a loss for your chances at getting the gold.

  The team was hurting after that game and hurting worse after the game the next day: a 2–2 tie with the Finns. If we had a day off, maybe the team would have had a chance to refocus. As it was, that second tie took us out of contention for the gold medal and in those days it was the mentality that prevailed with Canadian players—we were there for the gold, not second or third place. I think the Program of Excellence has made real strides in getting the players away from the all-or-nothing thinking in a challenging situation in the years since, but that’s how it was for our players in 1992. It was going to be all or nothing and, unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter.

  If you look at our lineup and not the final standings, you’d think it was a very strong team, maybe even a powerhouse. We had a player who’s going into the Hockey Hall of Fame, Scott Niedermayer, back from the previous year’s team to lead our blue line, as well as a couple of other defencemen, Karl Dykhuis and John Slaney, who had played for the team that beat the Soviets for gold in Saskatoon. Trevor Kidd had played for that team. Eric Lindros was back—as an underage player he had been great for the team in Saskatoon and everyone expected him to be that much better in Germany. Martin Lapointe was another key player returning for a shot at a second gold. It looked like that experience would serve us well in ‘92.

  We had a lot of talent beyond that. Paul Kariya was such a dynamic player. We had a couple of defencemen, Richard Matvichuk and Darryl Sydor, who would be the foundation of Dallas’s blue line when the Stars won the Stanley Cup. We had tremendous size, too, averaging 6-foot-2 across our blue line plus Eric, Martin, and Turner Stevenson up front who would make other teams pay a physical price on our forecheck. The team had a lot going for it. There were such high expectations. And it went downhill so fast that it seemed like we didn’t know what hit us until it was over. We ended the tournament with a couple of bad losses to Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union and finished sixth.

  It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what went wrong.

  After the tournament some people wanted to pin it on Eric Lindros, but that’s not fair or deserved. One player doesn’t win a tournament for you unless it’s a goaltender. He played well for us under the circumstances and he did that with so much pressure and publicity and hype surrounding him—far more than, say, Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky had as teenagers. He was also fighting the flu when he joined the team. That’s not uncommon for a player or two in your lineup at that time of year, but I don’t think we’d ever had one of our frontline players hurting so badly during a tournament. It’s one thing to have someone in a minor role play through it—a few shifts here and there. I think, though, that given his style of play and how

  Having won gold

  playing alongside elite

  NHLers at the Canada

  Cup, Eric Lindros

  went to Füssen with

  unmatched and

  unrealistic expecta-

  tions that he would

  singlehandedly carry

  his team to victory.

  much we asked of him, it really dragged Eric down. He simply wasn’t himself. And it wasn’t just illness that weighed on Eric. He was in a very difficult position, too, that was part of a decision we made. Previously, the Program of Excellence had required all players to attend the summer development camp and the entire evaluation camp in December. Eric couldn’t come to the summer camp—he was committed to the Canada Cup team, playing with the best pros even though he hadn’t played an NHL game. And that winter, because he hadn’t signed an NHL contract yet, he had joined the Olympic program. We brought him in late, only three days before we headed off to Europe. We named him captain, which only put more pressure on him. To an extent, we looked at him and his teammates looked at him, thinking, “Okay, Eric’s

  here and he’ll take over.” We didn’t put him in the best possible position to succeed, and we hurt our team chemistry by bringing in Eric, forward Kimbi Daniels, and Trevor Kidd so late in the process. In retrospect, would we have gotten a better read on Eric’s illness and on his fit with the other teammates had he been with us all along? There’s no way to know for sure—but we might have.

  Some said that our coach, Rick Cornacchia, was guilty of favouritism in the way he dealt with Eric because he had been his coach with the Oshawa Generals. It just wasn’t true. It was nothing that his assistant coaches Tom Renney and Gary Agnew would have sat still for. It’s nothing that Hockey Canada would have tolerated.

  Some years we benefited from some good breaks when we won gold. In Germany, we didn’t really get a single one. But we couldn’t pin it on bad luck. You have to give the other teams credit, too—it’s a hard tournament to win and all those teams had very good players. That said, our team underachieved.

  It was a bad tournament, but I think you can make a case that it was an important one for the Program of Excellence, maybe even a necessary one.

  After the WJC, we analyzed what had happened in Füssen and came up with one major conclusion.

  We did have an issue with team chemistry in Füssen. That really showed through when the team first faced adversity and never recovered. It was decided that we had to take what had been that team’s flaw and make it a strength in our program going forward. We determined that we had to put a real emphasis on team building—Perry Pearn, who had been both an assistant and head coach of our world junior teams and a major contributor to the Program of Excellence, was a key guy in developing the team-building strategies.

  I don’t doubt for a second that we had the right players and the right coaches in Füssen. I believe, though, that we didn’t do them any favours before the WJC. I’d love to take that same team back to the tournament and have another try. If we had everyone pulling together—everyone at the summer camp, everyone there for the evaluations in December, everyone through the team-building programs—I’d like our chances for gold in that field. I’d like our chances even more if the players had been through the under-17 and under-18 teams in the years before the world juniors.

  It was my first year scouting for the Program of Excellence—I had worked as a scout for the Quebec Nordiques and as general manager of the Seattle Thunderbirds. The ‘92 world juniors was a tough introduction. That said, I think that Füssen taught us a lot about what it was going to take to win the world juniors. And it’s no coincidence that after our poorest showing to that point, Canadian teams would bring hom
e the gold the next five years.

  Defenceman Joël

  Bouchard coolly

  controls the puck in

  Canada’s 9–1 rout of

  the Russians. The

  Canadian defence

  faced a tougher test

  against a high-flying

  Swedish team featuring

  Peter Forsberg.

  The turning point in the 1993 world junior tournament in Gävle, Sweden, wasn’t a goal, a save, or a hit. It was a bold prediction made by Sweden’s star forward Peter Forsberg, who told reporters that his team had nothing to fear in playing Canada the next day.

  The Canadian juniors were underdogs because of their youth and because the Swedish roster featured plenty of returnees from the team that lost 4–3 to Russia in the gold-medal-deciding game a year before. Forsberg centred wings Markus Näslund and Niklas Sundstrom on the most productive line in tournament history. The three would combine for 30 goals and 69 points in 1993 on a Swedish team that scored a remarkable 53 goals in the seven-game tournament.

  A much less experienced Canadian team featured the top teenage prospects in Alexandre Daigle, Chris Pronger, Chris Gratton, Paul Kariya, and Rob Niedermayer. They would wind up filling the first five slots at the NHL entry draft six months later.

  The young Canadians hadn’t exactly instilled fear into the Swedes when they dropped an 8–5 decision to the host country in an exhibition game days before the tournament. It was an undisciplined effort that saw Sweden check in with seven power-play goals—impressive firepower considering that Forsberg sat out the game because of the flu. A few days later there was

  Winger Martin

  Lapointe was one of

  three players returning

  from the 1992 team

  that had fallen flat in

  Füssen.

  Forsberg rinkside, watching the first period of Canada’s tournament opener against the United States. The Canucks prevailed against their North American rival with a 3–0 win, but Forsberg wasn’t impressed.