by Rob Simpson
This, in any Olympic tournament, is when the nail biting begins. The pools cross over for the quarters, meaning seed one from Group A plays seed four from Group B, A2 vs. B3, A3 vs. B2, and A4 vs. B1.
In what was the coolest environment of the men’s tourney, outside of the Finland versus Sweden final, the Russians and the Canadians faced off on February 22, 2006, at the Esposizioni, for bragging rights in their longtime rivalry and the chance to move on.
The Espo was rocking an intimate but very noisy
sea of red. I sat in the stands with former Team USA women’s star and future Hockey Hall of Famer–turned broadcaster Cammi Granato, just above NBC’s broadcast position, about fifty feet above centre ice. It was an expansive, makeshift media section. She was one of the analysts for the women’s games, having been surprisingly, controversially, left off the USA roster that year. We did our own off-air analysis of the men’s games and laughed our butts off as her husband, Ray Ferraro, sat in front of us doing the actual commentary.
The Russia–Canada game was intense, as the teams traded chances but remained scoreless into the third period. It was just ninety seconds into that final stanza, with Canada’s Todd Bertuzzi off for interference, that Alexander Ovechkin streaked down the wing from our left to right and unloaded a slapper that beat Brodeur inside the far post for what would be the game winner. Half of the red sea leapt to its feet; the other half went quiet.
Canada failed to tie it on three consecutive power plays and gave up a meaningless goal to Russia with twenty-three seconds remaining. The final minute of their effort had completely deteriorated into frustration and chippy-ness. They lost 2–0 for the third time at the Olympics. Party over.
The Americans weren’t nearly as interesting. It was a classic case of not getting over the hump. They just didn’t have it. They were obviously paying too much attention to the travelling contingent of hot blonde hockey fans from Riga, sitting just above the glass in the right-wing corner, when they tied the Latvians 3–3 to open the Games on February 15. The next day, they beat Kazakhstan 4–1, before losing three consecutive one-goal games to Slovakia, Sweden, and Russia.
In the group-crossover quarterfinal do-or-die against Finland, the Americans actually made a game of it, tying it 2–2 early in the second after falling behind. But one never got the feeling the score was legitimate or the effort sincere. Olli Jokinen scored twice in the third period, the Yanks scored late to make it somewhat compelling, but Finland moved on 4–3.
It may have been the subconscious lack of confidence in goaltending that did Team USA in. Rick DiPietro, who wasn’t exactly sterling in their final loss, was the main man. The backups were Robert Esche and John Grahame. The trio didn’t exactly instill a world-beater sense of invincibility.
Officially, Canada finished the Games in seventh place, the USA in eighth. Their early exits from the hockey tournament led to their next challenge: finding flights home. And it was every man for himself. Flights had all been booked for a later date, with a medal-round appearance being somewhat presumed. Instead, the two teams drank together at expat bars while awaiting their new transportation arrangements. I remember running into USA extra defenceman Hal Gill, then a Bruin, and his wife at an ATM across the street from Murphy’s, a popular Irish pub.
“Trying to get outta here,” said “Skillsie.” Many of the North American players were hoping to put the Games behind them as quickly as possible, and returning home early would mean a chance to skate with their NHL teammates who weren’t at the Olympics. Formal NHL practices started back up a few days before the medal round wrapped up in Italy.
There were other Bruins participating at the Olympics in Torino. I found rookie defenceman Milan Jurcina entertaining. “Jerky” was an amiable kid, who attempted to use his size and competitiveness to overcome shortcomings in skating and skill. He became a regular on the blueline for Slovakia at international events.
Marco Sturm would have represented Germany, but he was suffering through the first of many knee injuries that would eventually limit the latter portion of his NHL career. He finished with 273 points in 556 games played in an NHL career that ended in 2012.
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Recent Bruin–turned–San Jose Shark Joe Thornton drew plenty of interest at the Olympics as well. Despite the general media frenzy around Thornton and his high-profile trade, I didn’t pay that much attention. Not a big fan of his overall demeanour towards winning and losing during our brief time together in Beantown, and a strong proponent of “The Joe Thornton Trade,” I didn’t really follow or approach “Jumbo” during his mixed-zone visits. I think I grabbed some audio from him on only one occasion at the Games.
Less than three months had passed since his trade had rocked the hockey world. I went into the Bruins dressing room post-game, as I always did, the night of November 29, 2005, in New Jersey. Thornton had lost a defensive zone draw to Devils centre John Madden in the final minute of regulation. Madden won the puck cleanly, flipped it over to Alexander Mogilny, who ripped a shot past Boston goalie Andrew Raycroft for the game winner. The Bruins had blown a 2–0 lead and now had a three-game losing streak. They had lost nine of ten, having just recently ended a six-game losing streak in Toronto.
I’ll never forget the interview Thornton did with two writers and myself after the loss, and this after getting burned on the face-off. We were crammed just inside the visitors dressing room door, and somewhat rushed, as the team hastily prepped for the post-game charter flight home.
“We’re fine, we’ll be okay,” Thornton repeated. I knew some surfer dudes from living in Hawaii for five years, but the hockey man in me, and the hockey reporter in me, watching this team flail in the early season, didn’t appreciate the beachy response. Dude, you’re not fine.
Yes, as captain, he was generally always willing to talk post game, which is commendable, but the mantra was far too routine, far too casual, and never laced with urgency. After the loss to the Devils, his response seemed unfathomable to me.
The next night, a Wednesday, I was out with my assistant, Abby, at The Druid pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, down the street from where I lived that season. NESN showed up on my caller ID.
“Uh oh, what the heck is this?”
I stepped outside the noisy bar to hear SportsDesk coordinating producer Rob Wallace’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Simmer, where are you?” he asked.
“In Cambridge. What’s going on?”
“The Bruins just traded Joe Thornton,” he declared.
It really happens: my jaw actually dropped.
“Can you come in?”
Uh oh. I was conflicted. Of course I was interested in the opportunity to jump on SportsDesk live with anchor Hazel Mae to handle this gigantic sports story. But I was also two or three glasses of wine deep. I was buzzed, and, besides, I wasn’t really confident I could bring any significant historical perspective to Thornton’s tenure in Boston. I was only twenty-six games into my first season with the Bruins. I weighed the benefits and the potential pratfalls of going on the air or not going on the air, and made the right decision. I’d been around the business long enough to know that the factors working against me, especially the wine buzz, could do great harm to my career, while the potential downside of not going on the air that night hardly existed. My decision was made even easier knowing that NESN had the option of calling on Kevin Paul Dupont, Hockey-Hall-of-Fame-honoured writer for the Boston Globe, as an analyst to break things down.
I loved the trade from the get-go and was clearly in the minority when I said so. From the perspective of leadership and chemistry, I felt the Bruins had been treading water. They needed what some refer to as a change in culture. Thornton could pile up points all he wanted, but the Bruins would never win a Cup with him as captain. And they didn’t. Boston General Manager Mike O’Connell traded Jumbo to the Sharks for speedy German winger Marco Sturm, stalwart
defenceman Brad Stuart, and a third-line centre, Wayne Primeau. The fans went nuts, the reporters who behaved like fans went nuts, but to many in the hockey world, the reasoning was clear.
“O.C.,” as O’Connell was known, went through hell. The Boston fans ripped him and chanted for his dismissal at games. The former first overall pick in the 1997 Draft, Thornton was one of those “homegrown” Bruins that Boston hockey fans loved. They felt betrayed. Making it worse, Thornton went on to win the Hart Trophy as league Most Valuable Player in 2006, the first time a player traded midseason had ever done so.
Small picture, short view: a tough pill to swallow; big picture, long view: trading Thornton was the best thing the Bruins could have done in the new millennium. Among other things, the salary cap space he freed up allowed for the long-term signing of future Cup champion captain Zdeno Chára.
“Yeah, well, don’t be surprised if the Bruins win a Stanley Cup before the Sharks do,” I said more than once. I’m a staunch believer in four essential factors in the sport of hockey, with its firehouse mentality requiring everyone fully on board for one another; they’re what I call the Four Cs: coaching, chemistry, commitment, and character. As an observer, I was convinced the Bruins didn’t have them all with Thornton, and his change of scenery would do everyone a world of good.
O’Connell lost his job with eleven games remaining in the regular season. Head coach Mike Sullivan lost his job during the summer. The men allegedly responsible for the horrible pre-lockout player personnel strategy that actually led to the dysfunctional roster and the shitty record, owner Jeremy Jacobs and his senior advisor, hockey legend Harry Sinden, lived to see another day.
The team had let its impending free agents walk before the autumn 2004 lockout, the extreme negotiating tool that cost the NHL and its fans an entire season. They had structured and timed contracts to expire before the work stoppage, an event everyone knew was coming three years in advance. The 2004–05 owners’ lockout was utterly premeditated in an effort to secure a salary cap system of player revenue control for the league. But instead of a swath of free agents being available on the cheap, which the Bruins had hoped for coming out of the work stoppage, they were left with scraps. Via trade or free agency, Boston scrambled to fill the roster they had gutted by acquiring an aging Alexei Zhamnov, who missed most of the next season with a broken ankle, role player Dave Scatchard, limited power forward Brad Isbister, Brian Leetch, a great leader and Hall of Fame player on his last legs, and former Bruin Shawn McEachern, most of this in a desperate August 2005 signing binge.
By the way, before he was fired, O.C. also traded the Bruins other 1997 first-rounder, eighth overall pick, Sergei Samsonov, who actually won the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year in his and Thornton’s first season. “Sammy” was an undersized left wing with great hands who had reached his ceiling and was moved to Edmonton for Marty Reasoner, Yan Stastny, and a second-round pick that turned out to be future Stanley Cup–winning core player Milan Lucic.
Not only did Boston go on to win the Cup before San Jose, who has yet to win one, but O’Connell eventually got his name on the silver chalice as well. In fact, he did it twice as an executive in the hockey department with the Los Angeles Kings. The Sharks, coy, almost mocking of the Bruins and O’Connell at the press conferences following the Thornton deal, have been consistent playoff failures. In the summer of 2014, they actually stripped Thornton of his team captaincy. In 2015, they failed to make the postseason. In 2016, they made their first-ever trip to the Stanley Cup Final and lost to Pittsburgh, and in 2017, they lost to Edmonton in the first round. By the way, Boston returned to the Final a second time in 2013 and lost to Chicago.
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The only other Bruin at the Torino Olympics was P.J. Axelsson, also known as “Axie,” for whom I had a keen interest. P.J., from his given name Per-Johan, always found time to talk hockey or life with me every time I approached him in the Bruins dressing room. We’d chat after practices. I’d work him into the informal rotation of post-practice or game sound bites I needed to get on camera on a regular basis for NESN. He was quirky, in that Swedish way: kind of flighty, yet aloof, like he was always in a hurry but had nowhere really to go. He wore those tight Euro suits with straight legs, baby-blue flood pants, and the like. He gave thoughtful answers, even after a loss, and generally smiled a lot. Plus, I had a fascination with Sweden — namely, the allure of Swedish women — and had narrowly missed several opportunities to get to Stockholm. I’d eventually make multiple trips to the beautiful country full of beautiful people, but it hadn’t happened yet, and my curiosity and imagination about everything Swedish ran in overdrive.
In Torino, I made sure I checked in with Axie after every Team Sweden practice or in the mixed zone after his games. I was at all of them, and there was a secondary practical reason. NESN.com and Boston.com had me filing stories and a daily Olympic diary, which was the least I could do for them. The network had allowed me to go overseas for almost a month to work for someone else, an agreement I had arranged at the time of my hiring the previous fall. I had garnered the Olympic gig before I got the NESN job, and there was no way the latter was going to cancel out the former. Since management let me miss a handful of regular-season games, I happily agreed to provide some exclusive Olympic coverage for them in return.
Sweden started slowly and gradually got hot as the condensed tournament moved along. They were only the third seed in their group coming out of the preliminary round when they beat Switzerland 6–2 in the cross-overs to advance.
On February 24, Team Sweden whipped the Czech Republic in the semifinals to advance to the gold-medal game against their bitter rival and next-door neighbour Finland, who had shut out Russia 4–0. The championship game would take place on Sunday, February 26.
It was after the quarterfinal game that I had a momentous conversation with Axie, as he stood covered in sweat in the mixed zone. It wasn’t a premeditated request; it just sort of hit me. But at that moment with Axie, given the significance of my job, the fact that it would likely be my only journey to the Games, and the fact we were both there from Boston, I cautiously and respectfully asked P.J. if, after the Games were over, I could have one of his sticks. I’m not an autograph or memorabilia collector by any stretch, I just thought that in this case an Olympic souvenir would be especially meaningful. Axie said, “Sure, absolutely.” I wished him good luck and off he went.
On the final weekend of the Olympics, with only two games remaining in the tournament, I was now on a hockey vacation. My research wasn’t required, with the intense scrutiny on, and preparation for, only four teams being handled by many other production people and the announcers themselves. I sat behind Doc and J.D. and watched the Czechs win the bronze medal over Russia on Saturday, and then simply looked forward to the gold-medal game. The eve of the final contest would be a festive night out in Torino.
During the Czech win, I ran into NHL referee Paul Devorski, one of the four men, two refs and two linesmen, officiating the final on Sunday.
“How you feeling about the game tomorrow, Devo?”
I asked.
“Scared shitless,” he said without changing his
expression.
His blunt reply caught me off guard and I thought it was funny, but it really seemed like he wasn’t kidding. He’d called big games before, but not in Europe, and not in a match between two bitter Scandinavian rivals and neighbours for the Olympic gold medal.
Devorski and fellow referee, Slovakian Milan Masik, would do an outstanding job. There would be no controversy.
The Palasport Olimpico rink was packed, raucous, and tense. I sat next to Doc and J.D.’s stats man, Ben Bouma, in the media zone of the stands for the first period. I could literally hear them calling the game au naturel from a couple seats away.
Finland scored first, with the lone goal of the first period. Kimmo Timonen from Selänne at 14:45 on the power play. In the second
period, the Swedish Red Wings (there was an entire five-man unit from the Detroit roster on Team Sweden) took over. Henrik Zetterberg and Niklas Kronwall both scored on the power play to give Sweden the lead. It didn’t last. With exactly five minutes left in the second, Ville Peltonen would tie things up on assists from the Jokinens, Jussi and Olli (no relation).
Twenty minutes (or more) left in the game to determine a winner, and it took all of ten seconds. On the opening face-off of the third period, Finnish centre Saku Koivu broke his stick, and in the time it took him to skate to the bench to get a new twig and get back into the play, the Swedes had taken advantage of what amounted to a brief four-on-three. Nicklas Lidstrom scored what would turn out to be the winning goal with a slap shot, at four-on-four even strength, on drop passes from Mats Sundin and Peter Forsberg.
That left nineteen minutes and fifty seconds of tension and frustration for Finnish fans. Their team had two power plays in the third and rang a shot off the goalpost, but they couldn’t put one behind goalie Henrik Lundqvist. Tre Kronor were Olympic champions for the second time in history.
When the horn sounded, the Swedes went nuts. In an emotional ceremony, the two teams lined up at either end of the ice on rolled out carpets to get their medals. After the medals were presented, the Swedes went crazy again. Players skated all over, looking for family members and friends and Swedish fans and began tossing sticks and equipment into the stands. Some threw elbow pads, helmets, pretty much anything they could take off.
That’s when I thought of Axie and spotted him almost at the exact same moment. He had tossed his gloves somewhere, and as he approached the far glass by the benches, he had his stick aloft, with one hand at the base, sort of in a ready-to-launch position. Just as he was starting the motion of sending that stick flying, he pulled it back, and then stepped off the ice and handed the stick to the Swedish equipment manager on the bench.
