Thirty Years of the Game at its Best

by Gare Joyce

  Downie would be named to the tournament all-star team, but this doesn’t begin to tell the story of his contribution. Playing with Dustin Boyd and Blake Comeau in what passed for Sutter’s first line, Downie was everywhere throughout the tournament. Against a strong entry from the United States, Canada needed a tie to win their group. Downie set up Boyd for the game-tying goal, then, with American goalie Cory Schneider pulled for an extra attacker late in the game, sent in Canadian captain Kyle Chipchura for the game-winning goal

  Bourdon and his

  Val-d’Or teammate

  Kris Letang keyed

  a defence that

  surrendered only

  six goals in the

  tournament, capped by

  a shutout victory over

  Russia in the final.

  Andrew Cogliano

  picked up a pair of

  assists in the 5–0 gold

  -medal-game victory

  over Russia. Cogliano

  injected open-ice

  speed into Canada’s

  offence by committee.

  Defenceman Marc

  Staal thumped Evgeni

  Malkin in the gold-

  medal game. Staal and

  blue-line partner Ryan

  Parent shut down and

  thoroughly frustrated

  Malkin and the

  favoured Russians.

  about the same time as Team U.S.A.’s Jack Johnson was throwing a flying elbow at Downie’s noggin.

  None the worse for wear, Downie came back for the 4–0 win over Finland in the semifinal, then scored the first goal against Russia in the gold-medal game and drew back-to-back penalties in the second period that led to Canada’s fourth goal.

  The tournament final, in fact, would provide the canvas for Sutter’s most enduring work in his two years with the Canadian juniors. The Russians were stacked. Malkin was among the best players, period, in the KHL. His supporting cast included Nikolai Kulemin, Alexander Radulov, Enver Lisin, and Ilya Zubov. The Russians had also demolished the Americans 5–1 in the other semifinal.

  “We were facing a much stronger team with a superstar like Malkin,” said Letang. “But it was a chance to show everyone what kind of team we had.”

  And they did every bit of that. Downie set the tone, blasting Russian rearguard Denis Bodrov in the opening minutes and taking a charging penalty for his troubles. The Russians would outshoot Canada 15–3 over the first 15 minutes of the first period but Pogge stood tall. Downie then beat Malkin behind the Russian net and sifted a roller through goalie Anton Khudobin to open the scoring. Less than two minutes later, defenceman Marc Staal picked off a pass in the neutral zone and set up Comeau for the second goal.

  The Russians would have a goal disallowed early in the second and were still carrying the play when Michael Blunden scored a backbreaking third goal on the power play. Blunden would add another power-play goal. Chipchura would add the fifth goal with three minutes left and, in a celebration that presaged the gold-medal game at the 2010 Winter Olympics in the same arena, Canadian fans stood for the final two minutes of the game and saluted their young heroes.

  “The whole focus was on winning the gold,” said Sutter. “Everyone on that team was focused on that moment.”

  The summer before the WJC, the Vancouver Canucks had taken Luc Bourdon with their first pick, 10th overall, and there was considerable buzz about the young blueliner as the tournament opened. Bourdon had enjoyed an impressive training camp with the Canucks and almost made the NHL team as an 18-year-old. As it was, he became fast friends with the Canucks’ Alex Burrows before returning to Val-d’Or.

  He would be traded to Moncton during the WJC, where he played in the Memorial Cup that spring.

  “We worked out together for a solid week,” says Burrows. “That’s really where we started to become great friends. He came from a small town and didn’t know a

  Michael Blunden

  (number 21 with stick

  raised) picked up two

  power-play goals in

  the second period of

  the gold-medal game.

  Russia had outshot

  Canada 15–4 in the first

  period, but Blunden’s

  second goal made the

  score 4–0.

  lot about the big city. I’d been around the team and I think he was comfortable with me.”

  Bourdon would enjoy a solid WJC. Staal was named the tournament’s outstanding defenceman, but Bourdon was one of the focal points of the team. Choruses of “Luuuuc, Luuuuc” would rattle around the building every time he made a play. He would also be named to the tournament all-star team, and it seemed the WJC represented just the first of many memorable moments for the big blueliner in Vancouver.

  “It was really exciting for him,” says Letang. “It was pretty much his building. For him, it was a chance to show them he was going to be ready to play in the NHL. He was already a leader.”

  The next season, Letang and Bourdon would again win gold for Team Canada at the WJC in Sweden. The year after, Bourdon split the season between Manitoba and the Canucks while Letang played 63 games with the Penguins. Letang was with the Penguins in the Stanley Cup final against Detroit when he heard he’d lost his friend. Luc Bourdon had just turned 21 when he died.

  “It’s always fresh in my mind,” says Letang. “It’s hard when the month of May comes around. I try to think about him every day. It’s something you don’t forget.”

  So he keeps the friendship alive. Letang makes a point of talking to Bourdon’s mother, Suzanne Boucher, a couple of times a year. He also sees her at the annual Luc Bourdon Golf Classic. Before he passed, Bourdon donated $10,000 to sports groups in Shippagan. Boucher has since established the Luc Bourdon Foundation to help students and athletes from the area.

  Burrows, meanwhile, is also involved in the tournament. He and his wife, Nancy, remain close to Charlene, Bourdon’s fiancée, who is attending medical school.

  In the Canucks first game of the 2008–09 season, a permanent display honouring Bourdon was unveiled at GM Place (now known as Rogers Arena). As a video tribute played, Canadian recording artist Tom Cochrane sang “Big League” with bandmate Ken Greer. Vancouver fans then chanted “Luuuuc” one more time before the game started with the Calgary Flames.

  Burrows would score twice in that game. After each goal, he mimed pulling an arrow from his back and shooting it into the sky. That was for Bourdon.

  “He was my friend,” says Burrows. “He’ll always be my friend.”

  Blunden (here

  hammering Sergei

  Shirokov) and his

  Canadian teammates

  surrendered scoring

  chances to the

  Russians through

  the first two periods

  but were the more

  physical team

  throughout the game.

  Jonathan Toews

  (here taking a faceoff

  against U.S. rival

  Peter Mueller) did

  it all for Canada in

  the 2007 tournament,

  leading the team in

  scoring and notching

  three goals in the

  shootout victory over

  the Americans in the

  semifinal.

  For sustained suspense, no single game matches it in the history of the Program of Excellence. Sixty minutes of regulation couldn’t settle it, nor could 10 minutes of sudden death. The semifinal between Canada and the United States at the 2007 world juniors had to go to a shootout. And even the shootout had to go into overtime.

  The cliffhanger was so dramatic that Canada’s 4–2 win over Russia in the final seemed anticlimactic.

  The images that are burned in the memories of most who watched the semifinal feature the two best Canadian players in Leksand, Sweden: Jonathan Toews and Carey Price.

  Toews was in his second turn with the under-20 team. As the youngest
Canadian player in Vancouver the year before, Toews served on the checking line and flew under the radar, picking up just a couple of assists. In Sweden, however, he centred the first line, worked the first power play and penalty-killing units, and was expected to do everything but drive the team bus. He was at something of a disadvantage—he was playing through a shoulder injury and his season at the University of North Dakota had been a disappointment to that point. Still, Toews led the Canadians in scoring with four goals and three assists in six games—none of his teammates had more than two goals. Still, what people remember most about Toews in that tournament were three goals that

  Defenceman Ryan

  Parent was the

  loneliest player on the

  ice when the United

  States went on the

  power play in overtime

  of the semifinal game.

  Parent and blue-line

  partner Marc Staal

  reprised their roles

  from Vancouver as

  Canada’s shutdown

  defence pairing.

  don’t show up on the stats sheet: the three goals that Toews scored on goaltender Jeff Frazee in the shootout victory over the Americans.

  It seemed like the U.S., with players like Patrick Kane, Peter Mueller, and Kyle Okposo, had an advantage over Canada in the skills department going into the shootout. At the outset of the tournament, the conventional wisdom had been that the Canadians were going to be gritty, disciplined, and defensively sound but offensively challenged, that they could count on Toews for goals but would have to scramble to find others to chip in. That’s pretty well how it played out when Canada went undefeated in the opening round. Toews keyed the most crucial win in that round, a 6–3 victory over the United States in which he scored two goals, the second being a winner on a penalty shot.

  Before the semifinal, the Canadians were at risk of a false sense of confidence with that win and the Americans’ unimpressive run through the opening round—a loss to Germany meant that the U.S. needed an overtime win over Sweden just to avoid heading to the relegation games. The Americans, however, saved their best effort and most

  effective play for this showdown against their rivals and, for the Canadian teenagers in the lineup and thousands of fans who travelled to Sweden, comfort gave way to anxiety.

  After a close-checking and scoreless first period, the U.S. took a lead on a power play with an attempted pass by Taylor Chorney banking off Canadian defenceman Marc Staal’s skate and eluding Price. The defending champions were still trailing by that single goal deep into the third period but pulled even on a power-play goal by Luc Bourdon with less than 8 minutes in regulation.

  When the game went to four-on-four in the 10-minute overtime period, it looked tense. And when a high-sticking penalty to Kris Letang gave the U.S. a power play, it looked tenser still, especially from the penalty box where the fretful defenceman sat. Letang called it “the longest two minutes of my life.” Coach Craig Hartsburg sent out his designated shutdown defencemen, Ryan Parent and Marc Staal, who were reprising their roles from Vancouver a year before. They had been teammates on the Ontario under-17 team and in the Canadian under-18 program. Parent and Staal were the blue line’s bedrock and a good fit. Both hailed from northern Ontario, Parent from remote Sioux Lookout, Staal from Thunder Bay. Both played in the Ontario Hockey League, Parent for Guelph, Staal for Sudbury. It was a tough test for the two and the forward out there with the game on the line, Tom Pyatt, who had grown up playing with Marc Staal in Thunder Bay.

  The American power-play unit (Mueller and Jack Johnson on the blue line and Patrick Kane and Kyle Okposo up front) controlled play for the entire two minutes and the Canadian penalty killers could neither get the puck out of their zone nor get close enough to the bench for a line change. Parent was completely stranded on the opposite side of the ice, 180 feet from the Canadian bench. Others might have panicked, but Parent, Staal, and Pyatt went about their business. “It was lonely out there,” Parent said. “They had possession, but we could have got into trouble if we chased them and overcommitted. We were doing what we needed to do, pushing them out to the perimeter. Our job was to deny them the areas they had a chance to score from.”

  Over the course of the 10-minute overtime period, the Canadians never mustered a serious scoring chance and Price had to make 12 saves compared to two by Frazee.

  The anxiety was ratcheted up during the shootout. Many players on the Canadian bench kept their heads down almost prayerfully when their teammates took their turns. Any prayers weren’t answered in Canada’s first

  two turns, with Frazee turning aside Steve Downie and Bryan Little. When it came to the Americans’ second attempt, Mueller deked and beat Price. After he gave the U.S. the 1–0 lead, Mueller skated by the Canadian bench and gave a shrug with uplifted palms, as if to say that it was all too easy.

  Thereafter, Jonathan Toews took charge. On the very next attempt, Canada’s third, he wired a low wrist low past Frazee, the first of five consecutive attempts that would beat the U.S. goaltender. Because of the vagaries of the IIHF’s rules on shootouts, coach Hartsburg could send out shooters for more than one attempt. He sent Bryan Little back out in the fourth round and this time he beat Frazee. In the fifth round, Toews picked the top corner. In the sixth, Andrew Cogliano’s wrist shot again found the net. And finally, in the seventh round, Toews deked and beat Frazee—remarkably, it seemed like each of Toews’s goals in the shootout was more sure-handed than the previous one. The last made it 5–4 for Canada, with the Americans owning the last shot.

  Price needed to turn aside a shot and secure a berth in the finals. It was poetic justice that his save in the seventh round came on Peter Mueller. A high-scoring centre with Everett in the Western Hockey League, Mueller was a known quantity to Price. What’s more, Mueller tried a move on Price that he had used on a breakaway in a WHL regular-season game. Like Toews, Mueller had scored in his first two attempts in the shootout and it looked like this third might slip through

  Toews was the

  undisputed leader of

  the 2007 Canadian

  team, but he had come

  into the tournament

  with a shoulder injury

  and had not enjoyed

  much success to that

  point in his season

  with the University of

  North Dakota.

  Winger Darren Helm,

  here pushing a Czech

  opponent off the

  puck, brought strong

  two-way play and a

  physical presence to

  Canada’s checking

  line.

  Price’s pads, but the puck disappeared into or under the goalie’s pads within a hair of the goal line. Afterwards the Americans would protest that it at least merited video review, and some would claim it was in. No matter; Canada advanced to final against Russia.

  “I can’t put it into words,” Price said. “Playing hockey, I usually don’t get nervous. But this was really nerve-racking.”

  For Price, who gave up only seven goals in six games, the 2007 world juniors were vindication. He had gone to the evaluation camp in December ‘05 hoping to make the Canadian team defending the championship in his home province. Instead of a Team Canada sweater he was handed a bus ticket back to the Tri-City Americans. “I play for a team in the States so I didn’t really

  even get to watch the tournament,” Price said afterwards. “The one thing about getting cut is that you don’t give up. I wasn’t going to give up. I wanted to show the doubters. There are always doubters,” he said. “They’re out there.”

  Though he wouldn’t name the doubters, it was clear to whom he was referring: Those who criticized the Montreal Canadiens for selecting him with the fifth pick in the first round of the 2005 NHL draft, and those who cut him from the Canadian junior team the year before.

  Like any victory, the win over the U.S. wasn’t a solo or even duo effort
and it was full of subtexts, not the least of them Hartsburg’s decision to go with Toews three times in the shootout, a strategy that would have been ruthlessly second-guessed if the outcome had been different.

  There was still work to do. In the final the Canadian juniors would face a skilled and swift Russian team that had rolled over the host Swedes in their semifinal.

  The defending champions came out in the first period as if on an

  adrenaline high carrying over from their shootout victory over the U.S. Again it was Toews who set the stage. Canada had jumped out in front 1–0 on a goal by Andrew Cogliano in the first period, but the lead didn’t look safe at all. A few minutes before the intermission Toews drew a holding minor on Artem Anisimov and Bryan Little scored on the ensuing power play. On the next shift, with the Russians reeling, Toews scored the prettiest goal of the game, a roof-shot over goalie Semyon Varlamov’s right shoulder, to make it 3–0 for Canada. Six minutes into the second period, Toews set up Brad Marchand to extend the lead.

  After the fourth goal, the Canadians’ energy level dropped. Toews said it was “natural to let up with a lead like that.” It was also inevitable, given the frenetic pace of the game.

  The second half of the game belonged to Price. The Russians beat him

  twice on 10 second-period shots, which on paper looks like a mediocre performance. It was anything but.

  Late in the second period, he made the save of the tournament, one that will be up there with anything you see in any hockey season. Andrei Kiryukhin, the Russians’ most dangerous forward, was parked off the edge of the crease, on Price’s glove side. With Price kneeling and committed to the far post, the puck came over to Kiryukhin, who one-timed it. You could hear the air being sucked out of the arena, which was filled with Canadian fans who had travelled to Sweden. They were sure the Russians had scored once again. Kiryukhin seemed ready to raise his stick. And Danny Kurmann, the Swiss referee, was looking in the back of the net for the puck. Price was the only one on the ice and maybe the only person in the arena who knew he had it in his glove. “I couldn’t look,” forward Ryan O’Marra said. “I had my head in my gloves on the bench. I couldn’t believe it when I looked up and heard the Canadian fans cheering.” That save would have been reason enough to make the Russians believe it wasn’t going to be their day.