99

by Al Strachan

  In this case, the teams battled through an overtime period with no scoring. The second overtime was also showing signs of settling nothing, but in the late stages, the Swedes bottled up the Canadians in their own end, and as the defenders became more and more tired, a Swedish goal became more and more likely.

  Sweden’s Johan Garpenlov ripped a shot that beat Canadian goaltender Curtis Joseph, but the puck hit the crossbar dead centre and bounced out. In those days, a team was able to ice the puck and get a line change, but when Coffey took possession, he was not ready to capitulate.

  Instead, he skated the puck out and passed it to Theoren Fleury, who fired it into the net with 12.5 seconds left. Canada was off to the finals.

  Even after blowing a third-period lead, the Canadians never lost their poise or composure and kept coming at the Swedes.

  “I wish people could actually see what it’s like in here after regulation time, or after an overtime period,” said Gretzky, hunched over by himself in a back hallway and watching the pool of sweat build up on the floor, drop by drop. “It’s very calm, very relaxed, and yet very efficient. Nobody really said anything, but when it was time to go out, everybody said, ‘Well, we’d better go out and win.’ ”

  Was it as draining as the 1987 Canada Cup, with its high-tempo overtime games against the Russians?

  “About the same,” gasped Gretzky. “But there’s a difference of about nine years.”

  The manner in which Team Canada had progressed had not been well received in some segments of the media. Even Gretzky, despite his brilliant start, had come in for some criticism, a fact that infuriated Sather. After delivering a couple of expletives, he said, “Do you expect a guy to paint a Mona Lisa every day? Most people do one. He has done thousands.”

  Gretzky shrugged it off. “We’ve been taking a lot of heat—some deserved, some not,” he said. “But we’re the first team in the finals.”

  Canada’s opposition in the final was the United States—a dream matchup for the organizers. It was also a dream matchup for the two teams involved. It is not a subject that gets a lot of media attention, but in the NHL there is constant conflict between the Canadian and American players.

  Canadians see themselves as having a God-given right to hockey supremacy, whereas Americans don’t narrow down the field quite as much. They see themselves as having a God-given right to supremacy.

  Americans sincerely resent the fact that Canadians see themselves as having a proprietary right to hockey, a sport in which they will occasionally allow others to participate as long as the interlopers don’t get delusions of grandeur. If the rest of the world wants to have high-level stars like Pavel Bure, Teemu Selanne and Jaromir Jagr, that’s fine. But as far as Canadians are concerned, only they can provide the true elite—Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard, Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr and Guy Lafleur.

  It’s not a subject that players often discuss publicly. After all, Americans and Canadians play on the same NHL teams. Creating rifts over nationalism is counterproductive.

  But when the Americans found out that they were going to have an opportunity to knock the Canadians off their perch in a three-game, best-against-best, head-to-head tournament, they were delighted. “They hate us, and we hate them,” Team USA forward Keith Tkachuk said. “It’s going to be hard-hitting.”

  That was fine with Sather. “We’ve got to play good, emotional, tough, old-time hockey,” he said. “Just get the gloves off and get it on.”

  Sather also employed one of his favourite psychological tricks: the portrayal of his team as an underdog.

  “They’re definitely the team to beat,” he insisted. “They’re the favourites. They’re strong in every aspect. They’ve got great forwards and an exceptional defence. I don’t see any holes in that team. They’ve got everything going for them. The first game is in Philadelphia. They’re younger. They’re hungry.”

  The Canadians got off to a good start, winning the first game 4–3 in overtime, but the Americans won the second game 5–2 in Montreal. It wasn’t a lack of effort on Canada’s part; it was a matter of too much effort. “The biggest thing,” said Gretzky, “was that in the second period, we seemed to get ourselves into trouble by being too aggressive.

  “All our chances in the past have come from getting the puck in deep and grinding it out and getting our opportunities. For about twelve minutes in the second period, we broke down a little bit and they took advantage of that. In the third period, we went back out, went back to dumping it in and chasing, and we were much better.”

  To this point, the team that was built in the model of the 1980s Oilers was true to form. The Oilers never followed the easy path. Instead of delivering knockout blows, they invariably let the opponent off the canvas for a while and then administered the KO.

  “I just hope the end result is the same as the Oilers of the eighties,” Gretzky said.

  As expected, play in the deciding game was intense, and the outcome was in doubt for most of the proceedings. But then came the controversial play, one that Americans accept without question but which Canadians still say tainted the result.

  Brett Hull, who is a Canadian by any reasonable standard but always played international hockey for the United States, broke the tie when he deflected a shot into the net with a high stick.

  To most Canadians watching the proceedings, there was no doubt that the apparent goal would be disallowed. It was covered by Rule 58(b): “A goal scored by an attacking player who strikes the puck with his stick which is carried above the height of the crossbar of the goal frame shall not be allowed.”

  As the CBC replay showed again and again, when Hull deflected the puck, his stick was even with his shoulder—or, at worst, his armpit. The crossbar is four feet high. Therefore, unless Hull was four foot nine with his skates on, the goal had to be disallowed.

  Replay judge Alex Thompson and officiating director Bryan Lewis were looking at replays when American GM Lou Lamoriello arrived on the scene and started insisting that the goal had to be allowed. Seconds later, Brian Burke, an American who was an NHL vice-president at the time, sprinted from his seat, barged into the room and started shouting that Hull’s stick was in a legal position.

  Burke was the boss of both Lewis and Thompson. The goal was allowed to stand.

  “There’s a natural letdown when you’re in a situation like that,” said Sather. “We had been hammering them all night long, and to get a goal scored like that against you on what was basically a nothing play is tough.”

  The Canadians were deflated, and seconds later, another goal went in, this time off a skate. Again, the play was approved on the video replay.

  Sather said, “Then they get another one that a guy punts in and you just have to assume it was a matter of fate.”

  Gretzky refused to make any excuses. “They came back,” he said, “and when you come back, it’s gutsy.”

  Gretzky, as Canada’s leading scorer, was not accustomed to losing in a major international tournament. But he had lost. He would never win another.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Just as the style of hockey changed during the course of Wayne Gretzky’s career, so did the technology affecting the game’s equipment.

  For the most part, Gretzky was a traditionalist. For his entire NHL career, much to the consternation of league officials—especially commissioner Gary Bettman, who sees the game only through a lawyer’s eyes—he insisted on wearing a tiny Jofa helmet that was all but useless as head protection. He liked to wear the same pair of hockey pants he had worn for years. His dinky shoulder pads were ragged from wear.

  But he was fussy about his sticks and constantly made modifications, even when he wasn’t switching models. When he played in the world junior championships in 1978, he used a CCM stick. He had no choice; CCM was a sponsor and provided the sticks.

  But by the time he got to the NHL, he used a Titan TPM 2020, which was as different from today’s sticks as a war club is from a chopsti
ck.

  It was basically wood, but nothing like the ash sticks that were a staple in the NHL until the late 1960s. Those were simply two pieces of ash glued together. The Titan was slightly lighter and definitely stronger. The shaft had a fibreglass core covered with wood; the blade was composed of laminated wood over a plastic-sole insert that went right up into the heel of the stick to prevent cracking or splitting at the bottom. Once the two parts were joined, they went into a press that bonded the units together. They were then coated with a fibreglass and wood finish.

  The stick was durable, but it had what some players perceived as a drawback in that the plastic in the blade prevented any modifications. This was not a concern for Gretzky, who used a stick that was almost straight. A curve would make backhand shots more difficult and, thanks to the treasured advice he got from Gordie Howe as a youngster, a backhand shot was a major part of Gretzky’s arsenal.

  The only change he made to the blade was to cover it with black tape and then add a light coating of talcum powder.

  “There are two reasons I do that,” he told me in 1984. “One is superstition; I like to have powder on my stick.” When he was a youngster, he had seen another player do it and, for no good reason, he followed suit. He played well that night and a superstition was born.

  “The second reason is that the powder will stop loose ice sticking to the stick so you don’t have to knock the snow off the stick or worry about it affecting the puck.”

  The powder wouldn’t last for an entire game, but since Gretzky changed sticks frequently, using two each period, that didn’t matter.

  Even though he left the blade alone, the shaft of the stick was another story. He modified that constantly.

  “I use the sticks exactly as they come from the factory, except that I cut them down a bit,” he explained. “The longer the season goes, the more I cut off.

  “Earlier in the season, I use a longer stick because you’re still a bit out of shape and you’re sometimes behind the play a bit. With a longer stick, you can reach a bit further. I gradually cut off a bit more as the season goes on, and by the playoffs, I’m cutting off about four and a half inches.”

  We were once out for a social evening, not long after Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs had been caught using a corked bat, and our discussion turned to baseball. Sosa’s defence had been that he didn’t know the bat was corked. I suggested that he might be telling the truth. Gretzky gave me a look of stunned disbelief. “He knew,” he said flatly.

  To a guy playing pickup hockey, a slight change in a stick goes unnoticed. But to an astute professional like Gretzky, playing at the elite level, the stick is almost an extension of the body. He clearly felt that Sosa would be as familiar with his bat as he himself was with his stick.

  John Pagotto, who was the product manager for Titan when Gretzky was their most famous customer, told me a story that clearly illustrates this point.

  “One time we sent him some sticks,” he said, “and the guy in the factory had sanded about an eighth of an inch too much off his blade. Wayne noticed it right away and called me the same day he got them.

  “He said, ‘There’s something wrong with my sticks. Can you check on it?’

  “I went back to the factory, because we always keep one stick after we send them a few dozen. He was right; there was something wrong. An eighth of an inch! He’s incredible.”

  Gretzky used the Titan stick until the end of the 1989–90 season. That summer, he attended the Greg Norman Challenge, a golf tournament, and afterwards joined in a bit of light entertainment with Norman, Ivan Lendl and Larry Bird in which he used an Easton aluminum stick.

  With an athlete other than Gretzky, that fact would be perceived as inconsequential. But when Gretzky endorsed a product, he would never be seen in public using a different brand, let alone on network television.

  Sure enough, his contract with the Finnish company Karhu-Titan had lapsed, and Gretzky had switched to Easton, an American company. Furthermore, he had switched from wood to aluminum. I reported the development in the Globe and Mail at the time, but it was ignored by the rest of the Canadian media until October, when Gretzky made an official announcement. As was so often the case, the media then jumped to baseless conclusions and criticized him.

  On CBC Radio, it was decreed that Gretzky had made the change for financial reasons. Anyone who knew Gretzky would know that there was not the slightest chance that he would risk his hockey reputation, not to mention his personal reputation or his thirty-million-dollar NHL contract, for a relatively small endorsement fee from a stick manufacturer.

  The critics also said that it was an indication of Gretzky’s deteriorating skills that he needed an aluminum stick to provide a harder shot. In fact, aluminum sticks don’t provide a harder shot. Until an eye injury forced him out of the game, Al MacInnis routinely won the hardest-shot competition using a wooden stick.

  “Obviously, it’s a big change for me,” explained Gretzky, “but the two things I like in a hockey stick are consistency and stiffness. I was able to get that with the Titan, but I’ve found that the aluminum stick has that at half the weight. That’s what I’m really excited about—that I can get the things I want in an aluminum stick, but it’s not as heavy.”

  The Easton stick he used in Los Angeles was silver, and there were a few half-hearted complaints from general managers and coaches around the league that the glare negatively affected their players. Nobody took them very seriously.

  Gretzky had hoped to use a chrome-blue Easton stick in St. Louis, but he didn’t stay there long enough for the sticks to be delivered. However, when he moved to the New York Rangers for the following season, the blue stick matched the team’s colour scheme perfectly.

  In between, he played in the 1996 World Cup, and used a black, white and red Easton stick.

  While he was in New York, Gretzky bought a share of a stick-manufacturing company in southern Ontario that had brought back the Hespeler brand, once the choice of many players in the six-team NHL. By that point, when he had become more of a playmaker and less of a scorer, he found that a return to a wooden stick served his purposes better than an aluminum stick or the composite sticks that were becoming the mainstay in the league. As well, the new wooden sticks were mostly a Styrofoam-wood laminate and a fraction of the weight of the old Titans.

  Gretzky would never use a composite stick. While it would allow him to shoot harder, it would make puck-handling and pass receiving more difficult. Shooting harder was not his priority.

  The Hespeler 5500 that Gretzky used in New York had blue trim. His 1998 Olympic stick was the same model, with red trim. He would have preferred to have the Olympic rings in the design on the shaft, but was aware that the five-ring logo is jealously—and legally—protected. In fact, the Olympic logo was at the heart of one of the major battles between the NHL and the International Olympic Committee when participation in the 2014 Olympics was being discussed. The NHL wanted the right to use the logo, but, as usual, the IOC was withholding permission.

  To avoid any such battle, Gretzky had a design burned into the stick’s butt end that had three interlocking rings and a rounded WG instead of the other two rings. To prevent counterfeits, each stick was numbered.

  Unfortunately, no one will ever know how that particular stick would work in a shootout.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  For years after he won his first Stanley Cup in 1984, Wayne Gretzky repeatedly said he had only one remaining hockey dream: He wanted to play in the Olympics and, if the dream were to be fully realized, win a gold medal.

  For most of his career, there was no hope of that dream becoming reality. Canada sent only amateur teams with an occasional sprinkling of borderline professionals to the Olympics, and Gretzky didn’t qualify on either count.

  But in 1998, it appeared that he would finally get his chance. Even then, it was no sure thing.

  Every aspect of Olympic participation is always heavily politicized, and in the case of
Canada’s 1998 hockey involvement, the political manoeuvring resulted in what can only be called a disaster.

  Right from the start, the signs pointed to an impending fiasco.

  More than a year before the Olympics were to begin, there was nothing but confusion about the manner in which the plan to put together Team Canada would be implemented. This was the first time that an elite-level professional team would represent the country, and naturally enough, the professionals wanted to run the team. But the bureaucrats who ran the amateur hockey establishment weren’t ready to go gently into that good night.

  In December, 1996, Murray Costello, the president of Canadian Hockey, asked Glen Sather to be in charge of the team. He told Sather he would be the executive director.

  But within days, the vista changed. “Costello offered me the job, but now the job is being part of a committee,” explained Sather.

  Because Olympic involvement was within the purview of Hockey Canada, it was decided that its vice-president, Bob Nicholson, and a squad of general managers would pick the team and coach. Then the GMs were to disappear and leave the operation of the team to Nicholson.

  “I don’t want to be involved if that’s the situation,” said Sather who had fired the rest of the managerial committee formed to run Team Canada in the 1984 Canada Cup.

  “I have no problem being involved in the committee,” he said in what was at best a stretching of the truth and at worst an outright lie, “but whoever is in charge of this committee has to be an NHL general manager. Bob Nicholson may turn out to be the best general manager in the world, but it doesn’t matter. It has to be an NHL general manager.”

  That was the end of Sather’s short-lived involvement.

  Eventually, it was decided that there would be a managerial committee, but it would have a lot more authority than had been proposed originally. In keeping with that decision, three NHL GMs—Bob Clarke, Pierre Gauthier and Bob Gainey—were named.