Thirty Years of the Game at its Best

by Gare Joyce

  Harvey played with a painful hip injury, but exhibited tremendous grit. Girard persevered through a bothersome shoulder ailment. Tully underwent an emergency appendectomy in late October and had to play himself back into condition during the tournament.

  “Being called a bunch of no-names hit a lot of us in the heart,” Gavey said. “We wanted to prove we were good enough to win. We are proud of where we come from. We all worked hard to get here.”

  Rick Girard embodied

  the breakneck

  commitment of the

  1994 Canadian juniors.

  Here, he crashes

  the crease, literally,

  going headfirst over

  American Kevyn

  Adams and into the

  net.

  Head coach Don Hay

  brought in forward

  Darcy Tucker (right)

  and defenceman Nolan

  Baumgartner from his

  Kamloops Blazers,

  the defending Memo-

  rial Cup champions.

  After adding a WJC

  gold, Hay, Tucker, and

  Baumgartner would

  lead the Blazers to a

  second consecutive

  Memorial Cup.

  All eyes were on head coach Don Hay when he blew his whistle to begin the 34-player Canadian junior selection camp in Edmonton in mid-December 1994. The country was three months into the NHL lockout and the 1995 world junior championship in Red Deer could not have come at a better time.

  Fans were starving for something to sink their teeth into. So there was Alexandre Daigle, Ed Jovanovski, Ryan Smyth, and Co. ready for the intense spotlight. The NHL was on hiatus and the tournament was being contested on home soil, where it matters the most.

  The media dubbed the Canadians the “Dream Team.” Theirs was a powerhouse squad even though out-of-work junior-aged NHLers Chris Gratton and Brendan Witt decided not to report to their junior teams in Kingston and Seattle and thus weren’t eligible to play for Canada in Red Deer.

  Either way, Hay detested hyperbole. He was a fireman and preached teamwork. He preached chemistry. He wanted players to buy into the team concept, not believe the hyperbole.

  “I didn’t like this Dream Team image,” Hay said. “I don’t think it was fair to the kids. Putting that label on it hurt them. We just kept stressing that there were a lot of good teams out there and they hadn’t won anything yet.”

  Defenceman Bryan

  McCabe contributed a

  big goal in a come-

  from-behind victory

  over the Czechs, the

  only stiff challenge

  the Dream Team faced

  throughout play in Red

  Deer.

  The Dream Team idea was hard to ignore, however. Seven players already were under contract to NHL teams. Daigle was the first selection in the 1993 NHL entry draft and Jovanovski went first overall in 1994. Wade Redden was expected to be among the first two choices in 1995. In total, 17 of the 34 juniors invited to the camp were first-round NHL picks. Two more, in Redden and Brad Church (who didn’t make the team), were drafted in the first round six months later.

  On the final day of the evaluation camp, Hay made two controversial cuts: Jocelyn Thibault and Brett Lindros. Thibault had made 29 appearances for the Quebec Nordiques in 1993–94, but had seen limited action prior to the camp because of a shoulder ailment. The Lindros decision was a surprising development that the player didn’t take well.

  Asked if he was bitter, the younger brother of NHL superstar Eric snapped, “big time.”

  “I thought I played well enough to make this team—evidently not,” Lindros said. “Donnie just said, ‘Hey, you’re more suited to the pro style.’ There’s no arguing with that. I’m pretty disappointed. He said he wanted a checker, and I checked. Now he wants more finesse out of me. I just don’t know.”

  Hay remarked at the time that Lindros’s skating held him back. “He has good assets, but we were probably looking for somebody that could skate a little better,” Hay said. “More speed. In international games, speed is so important.”

  Once the roster was finalized, Hay had to keep his players from being distracted by the spotlight. This wasn’t the only powerhouse team that Hay had coached. The previous spring he had won the Memorial Cup as the Kamloops head coach, but even more instructive were lessons he learned working as an assistant to Ken Hitchcock with the same club a few seasons before. That earlier edition of the Blazers had won the WHL championship to advance to the 1991 Memorial Cup, and though they were loaded with talent, they were the first team eliminated from the tournament. When they were asked for opinions afterwards as to what went wrong in Hamilton, the

  players remarked they weren’t given much downtime and spent too much time sequestered in their hotel.

  Hay made sure that wasn’t going to be an issue in Red Deer. There were volleyball matches organized, walks in the park, and even an outdoor game of shinny was played prior to the tournament. Hay also had plenty of inspirational sayings plastered on the walls of the dressing room. One of the coach’s favourites: “You can’t count the days, you’ve got to make the days count.”

  “You have to pay attention to the player’s mental state just as much as his

  physical skills,” Hay said. “The mental part of the game is just as important. The motivation part also is key in a tournament like this where you have to refocus very quickly. In 1990 we went to the Memorial Cup and we had a pretty good hockey team, but it was like we were in jail all week and we didn’t play very good.”

  Hay’s Canadian junior team was very good in 1995. They opened the eight-team round-robin tournament with three lopsided victories, 7–1 over Ukraine, 9–1 against Germany, and 8–3 over the rival United States. But the games were about to become more difficult.

  The Canadians travelled south to Calgary to take on the Czechs and escaped

  with a hard-fought 7–5 victory. Canada trailed 3–1 after the first period, but tied it up at 4–4 in the second period on goals from Bryan McCabe, Marty Murray, and Todd Harvey, only to see the Czechs go ahead 5–4 before the second intermission. Redden drew Canada even with four minutes remaining, then blueliner Jamie Rivers put Canada ahead for good with 2 minutes, 24 seconds left.

  “The Czechs always gave us trouble and we were playing before a crazy crowd that night,” Harvey recalled. “I remember the coaching staff told us to tighten up defensively and that there was to be no pinching from the defencemen. So Jamie Rivers pinches in all the way into the corner, picks up the puck, and scores.”

  The Canadian juniors went to Edmonton for

  a New Year’s Day tilt against Finland and prevailed 6–4 to secure a medal. They returned to Red Deer for a game against Russia, which they won 8–5, though they didn’t clinch the gold until 40 minutes after the final horn, thanks to Finland’s late-game comeback to tie Sweden 3–3.

  “To be honest, I thought the Finland-Sweden game was supposed to start in a few hours,” said forward Jason Allison, who won a world junior gold medal for the second time. “Then I was undressing and somebody yelled it was 3–1 Sweden. I came out of the shower and some of the guys were yelling it was 3–3. It’s great to win a second, but it would have been better winning it out on the ice against Sweden.”

  Jere Karalahti provided the heroics for Finland with his game-tying goal with 2:51 remaining. It was just another bizarre chapter in his life. Earlier in the tournament, he’d gone AWOL from the Finnish team after he met some new friends in a local bar and went off with them to party for a few days.

  McCabe crashes the

  net in Canada’s 8–3

  rout of the United

  States. In their first

  three games, the

  Canadians lived up to

  the Dream Team hype,

  outscoring opponents

  24–5.

  Winger Eric Daze was

  unheralded before


  the tournament but

  emerged as one of

  Canada’s best players

  and a WJC all-star.

  “Find out where Jere is staying, we have to send him something,” Harvey yelled after the goal.

  With the gold medal locked up, Canada went off to a country bar to celebrate. They had a day off before the tournament finale against Sweden. At stake not only was Canada’s first perfect 7-0 record at a world junior tournament, but also the fact that if they could beat Sweden, Canada would do a favour for their new-found Finnish friends. A Sweden loss and a Finland win over Russia on the final day of the tournament would give Finland the silver medal.

  Finland, however, was beaten 6–

  2 by Russia. Canada enjoyed a 4–3 win after Sweden made it close with goals 18 seconds apart with two minutes remaining in the third period.

  For all the attention given to heralded pro prospects, two of the least-known players might have been the best during the tournament: Marty Murray and Eric Daze. Both were taken in the fourth round of the 1994 NHL entry draft. The Chicago Blackhawks chose Daze six spots before the Calgary Flames took Murray. Murray, a cousin of former Los Angeles Kings and St. Louis Blues coach Andy Murray, checked in with six goals and 15 points for Canada, while Daze scored eight times in seven games. His big outing came when he scored a hat trick against Russia.

  “I just wanted to make the team,” he said. “I would have never dreamed of scoring three against Russia.”

  The guy Daze beat out to make the Canadian roster was Brett Lindros.

  “Going into the Edmonton camp [Daze] was probably fifth or sixth on the depth chart,” Hay said. “He kept getting better and better. I thought he was one of the best players in camp. He put some right wingers out of a job. He had great hands for a big guy and he skated really well for a guy his size.”

  Daze was raised in Laval, Quebec, and played his minor hockey with Daigle. He mostly played with Daigle in the tournament, and off the ice Daze also enjoyed the company of the outgoing Daigle, who was thrilled about his linemate’s success. “Everybody was focusing on me, but right now he’s the centre point and he’s got to enjoy it, too,” Daigle said after the Russia game.

  “I’m a shy guy and I don’t talk a lot,” Daze said. “[Daigle] talked to me a lot and brought me along with the rest of the guys.”

  Unfortunately, Daze’s career with the Blackhawks was limited to 226 goals in 601 games because he was forced to retire after chronic back woes. While Daze was the biggest player on the Canadian roster at 6-foot-5, 205 pounds, the 5-foot-9, 168-pound Murray was the smallest.

  But Murray, who grew up on a crop and cattle farm near Lyleton in southern Manitoba, not far from the U.S. border, had a tremendous amount of character. His passion for hockey ran deep. He would play for two teams some seasons in his youth—both his rural team and the nearby city team.

  Murray ran up against the old not-big-enough stigma. But he was big enough and skilled enough to play 14 pro seasons on both sides of the pond, including 261 NHL games for the Flames, Kings, Flyers, and Hurricanes, and win a Calder Cup championship with the 2000–01 Saint John Flames.

  “He has excelled at every level,” Hay said after the perfect 7-0 run. “He’s probably the smartest player I’ve ever coached and just has tremendous feel for the game.”

  That’s one of the most remarkable achievements of the Program of Excellence. It’s not just that Team Canada draws on the immense talent this country produces or showcases future stars on their way to professional stardom. It’s that every year there will be a guy who may never be a household name or a millionaire, who nevertheless shines among those future stars on the brightest stage any of these young men have ever encountered.

  Centre Jason Allison

  (right) was just one of

  a crowd of Canadian

  players who would

  jump directly to the

  NHL the following fall.

  Jarome Iginla, who

  would go on to lead

  Canada to two Olympic

  gold medals, first burst

  onto the scene at the

  WJC in Boston. Just

  days before the start

  of the tournament, the

  Dallas Stars traded

  Iginla’s NHL rights to

  the Calgary Flames.

  The 1996 tournament will be remembered for many things but it won’t be remembered by many hockey fans in Boston. The stands were virtually empty for most games, including the medal-round games. It wasn’t entirely a lack of interest in hockey. The Boston Globe put citizens on alert for the storm of the century not once, not twice, but three times over the course of 10 days. The streets of the city seemed to be deserted, though someone might have been buried under a drift. “Find a Way” was adopted as the Canadian team’s motto during its training camp, but for many on hand, finding a way to the arena was a challenge.

  Those who were there or watched the tournament back in Canada remember the 1996 WJC as the coming-out party for Jarome Iginla. The Edmonton-born right winger put in arguably the best-ever performance by a Canadian forward in any under-20 championship and one that has been matched only a couple of times by individual players regardless of position or nationality. He led the tournament in scoring with five goals and seven assists in six games—but those numbers only hint at his impact. Whenever Canada needed a big play, Iginla was on the scene.

  Today it’s hard to think of Iginla arriving. It seems like he has always been there. There’s a generation of hockey fans who can’t remember a time when Iginla wasn’t a fixture in the Canadian lineup. He was a leader in 2002, scoring two

  Jarome Iginla was a

  member of the

  Memorial Cup cham-

  pion Kamloops Blazers

  when he was added

  to the Canadian roster.

  He led the team in

  scoring with five goals

  and seven assists in 12

  games and was picked

  as the tournament’s

  top forward.

  goals against the U.S. in the final in Salt Lake City when the Canadian men’s team won its first Olympic gold in hockey in 50 years. Eight years later he dug the puck out of the corner and hit Sidney Crosby with the pass that set up Sid the Kid for the golden goal in the overtime victory over the Americans at the Vancouver Olympics.

  In 1996 Iginla was making his debut on a major international stage, but NHL scouts knew all about him, having watched him with the two-time Memorial Cup champion Kamloops Blazers. He had been the 11th-overall pick of the Dallas Stars the previous June. Fans in Calgary would have recognized his name—the week before the tournament, the Stars traded him to the Flames for two-time 50-goal scorer and fan favourite Joe Nieuwendyk. Many of those fans were at first critical of the trade, but in Boston Iginla gave them reason to suspect he’d someday be the Flames’ captain.

  The Canadian Hockey Association had Iginla on its radar early. He’d played for Team Pacific, the bronze medallists from the 1994 world under-17 challenge in Amos, Quebec. Later that year he’d played in the national under-

  18 program, leading the Canadian team in scoring in summer-tournament play in the Czech Republic.

  He was known to the coach of the 1996 Canadian junior team. Marcel Comeau had coached his Kelowna Rockets against Iginla and the Kamloops Blazers. In fact, three of Iginla’s Blazers teammates would also make the Canadian team’s roster: two blueliners, team captain Nolan Baumgartner and Jason Holland, and left winger Hnat Domenichelli. Domenichelli had played across from Iginla for two seasons and, though they meshed seamlessly, they couldn’t have been more different. Iginla, at 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds, was a power forward who rolled over and went through defenders, while Domenichelli relied on speed to slip in and out of traffic.

  When players reported to the evaluation camp in Campbellton, New Brunswick, Comeau and Team Canada’s management had a clear idea of the talent they were g
oing to be working with. “We will have to be a disciplined two-way team and we will have to be opportunistic offensively,” the coach said on the eve of the tournament. “We will not blow anybody out of the water. I

  Hnat Domenichelli,

  here on a scor-

  ing chance against

  Sweden in the final,

  played on Canada’s

  top line with Iginla, his

  Kamloops teammate,

  and centre Daymond

  Langkow.

  Right: Defenceman

  Chris Phillips led a

  Canadian blue line

  that improved going

  into the medal round.

  The key game was

  a tense contest with

  the Russians in the

  semifinal.

  think we have enough offence to get us there.” Comeau had projected Iginla as a first-liner, the most likely source of that offence. Iginla was, Comeau said, “a real handful down low, too much of a handful for most anyone in the Western Hockey League.” Playing with Domenichelli and gritty centre Daymond Langkow, he lived up to those expectations and far exceeded them.

  Comeau did have his team pegged. The Canadian roster featured only a couple of forwards over 6 feet and more than 200 pounds. Iginla, Langkow, and Alyn McCauley were the only players up front who would end up playing any significant time in the NHL. After Iginla, the next forward who was slotted as a pure scorer was Jason Podollan, a 40-goal shooter with the Spokane Chiefs that season. Podollan didn’t score until the semifinal, and he would wind up registering just one NHL goal in 41 career games. The team had to lean on Iginla for offence.

  Iginla’s numbers were impressive, but the idea that he was something special crystallized when Canada faced its stiffest challenge. In fact, after four fairly routine wins in the preliminary round, the semifinal against Russia was the first real challenge the Canadian teens had to stare down. These rivals ranked as the two best teams in the tournament—the best by far, really. That they met in the semis rather than the final might be misleading. The Russians lost their first game in Boston to the Czechs but gave every indication that they weren’t showing all their cards early. They moved their phenom Sergei Samsonov from the fourth line only just before their quarter-final win over the Finns, a 6–2 rout. The Russians looked like a different team from the one that had lost to the Czechs, and Alexei Morozov raised his game to the point where he was challenging Iginla for the tournament’s top forward honours. More than a few folks at the tournament figured the Russians were sandbagging and hoping to catch Canada by surprise.