by Al Strachan
It’s worth noting that Sather had put together more championship teams than that entire group combined. In fact, a single championship would have been enough to top that trio’s output. At that time, neither Clarke, Gainey, Gauthier nor Nicholson had created a Stanley Cup winner, a Canada Cup winner or any other kind of winner at the professional level.
As is almost always the case in groups of this nature, one personality would emerge as the strongest. This time, Clarke was that man.
Consequently, when it came time to build the team, it was built around the player Clarke most revered at the time: Eric Lindros.
This was before the many battles between Clarke and Lindros erupted, before all the insults, charges and counter-charges flew, before Bonnie and Carl Lindros became the two highest-profile parents in Canada. At this time, Lindros was seen as the cornerstone of the Philadelphia Flyers and was expected to maintain that status for years to come; and Clarke, as the GM of the Flyers, wanted to do everything he could to elevate the status of that team—not to mention its profits—by turning its biggest star into the league’s biggest drawing card.
The Olympic team didn’t have to be finalized until December 1997, and during the months leading up to the announcement, there was no shortage of speculation about the status of a pair of high-profile Team Canada veterans, Mark Messier and Gretzky.
Messier left no doubt as to his feelings on the matter. “I would love to play for the Olympic team,” he said. But the GM triumvirate was not moved. Long after it had been made clear that the top three centres would be Lindros, Joe Sakic and Steve Yzerman, it was finally decided that Gretzky would be on the team as well.
Messier, however, didn’t make the cut.
In many ways, it was not an unreasonable decision. For much of the NHL season, Messier’s play had not warranted his inclusion. But Messier’s leadership value, which never waned, could have been invaluable. In a tournament of this nature, playing in unusual surroundings under unusual rules and unusual governance, it was important to have the stability of someone who had encountered almost every conceivable hockey circumstance and who never accepted anything less than total commitment. The role was tailor-made for Messier.
When the press conference was held to announce the team, many questioners brought up the issue of Messier’s absence.
“I think the players understand the difficulty in selecting this team,” said Clarke. “It certainly doesn’t take away from their accomplishments in the National Hockey League or what they’ve done for Team Canadas and international hockey and everything else.
“We had to make some decisions, and they were really difficult decisions. But they had to be made, and we made them.”
The decision didn’t stun only Canadians. “I can’t believe he is not on the team after all he has done for Canada,” said Team USA defenceman Chris Chelios. “He’d be on my team in a heartbeat. I’m going to call [Team USA GM] Lou Lamoriello and ask him if we can get him a green card.”
The Canadian executive board—mainly Clarke—also made the decision to name Lindros captain.
“It’s Lindros because he seems to be the young horse that Canada wants to ride now,” said Clarke in explaining the decision. “Steve Yzerman and Joe Sakic will be the alternates because they’re the captains of the past two Stanley Cup winners.”
No one on the team had as much high-level international experience as Gretzky. He had been captain of the 1996 World Cup team and the three previous Canada Cup teams. But he couldn’t even wear an A this time. Gretzky, the greatest scorer in the history of the game, was to be just another player. It was an indication of the anti-Gretzky sentiment that prevailed among the management group, and in the end, it would cost them—and Canada—dearly.
Nevertheless, Gretzky was thrilled to be on the team. He said he fully accepted his new role, and as the Olympics approached, he made no effort to hide his enthusiasm. “I’m excited about it,” he said. “I think the whole hockey world is excited about it. It’s the first time professionals from every country get to participate in it, and it’s the first opportunity I’ve had to participate in it.”
When the National Basketball Association started to participate in the Olympics, the players insisted that they be accorded suites in a luxury hotel. Team Canada was to stay in the Olympic Village.
“I’m looking forward to that,” Gretzky said. “That’s the fun of the Olympics. We’re paid well enough that you can travel the world and stay in nice hotels anywhere you go. But how many times in your life are you going to get to stay in the Olympic Village?
“All of our guys want to do it. Nobody has said, ‘Why are we staying in the village? We’ve got to be in a hotel.’ Not one guy has said that, and I think it’s exciting. That’s part of what makes the Canadian team unique. Everyone is looking forward to being together in a room—three guys in some rooms.
“I wanted to be somewhere close by the action. That will be the fun of it.”
The American hockey players, unlike their NBA counterparts, accepted the situation but would have preferred a bit more seclusion. Not Gretzky. “My wife always tells me I’ll sit down and gab with anyone,” he laughed. “It doesn’t bother me. I don’t know why it doesn’t. There are times when there’ll be a crowd of people and I’m with a couple of friends and I’d like to sit down and be alone a little bit, but all in all, I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.”
Still, Gretzky knew that the Olympic experience was going to be a lot more than merely a carefree vacation. There were NHL games on February 7. The players were to leave for Japan on February 8, arrive on February 9, and play their first game on February 13.
“Our travel is bad,” agreed Gretzky. “It’s going to be tough on everybody, but it’s going to be such a big thing that I think everybody’s going to enjoy it. It’s going to be such a big high for everybody.”
It would also be a major challenge to Canada’s hockey supremacy.
“There’s obviously going to be pressure on Canada,” Gretzky said. “There’s always pressure on Canada. Look at all the debate we had when they named the team. There were four or five players that people said should have been on the team and other players that people said shouldn’t have been on the team. That’s a good example of why there is always going to be pressure on Canada. We look at it so closely.
“What makes it exciting is that so many good players from all over the world are going to be taking part and that everybody is on even ground. There are going to be at least four good hockey teams—Sweden, Canada, Russia and the United States.
“I think it’s going to be a huge boost for hockey, a big stepping stone to the next Olympics in Salt Lake City. Undoubtedly, the next Games in 2002 is going to push it to a whole other level.
“Kids who grew up in Canada always said, ‘I want to win the Stanley Cup and play in the NHL.’ By having guys like Eric Lindros and myself in the Olympics, kids are now going to grow up with two dreams. One of the dreams will be to win the Stanley Cup and the other will be to play for Canada in the Olympic Games. That’s good for the country.”
And, as was always the case whenever Gretzky played for his country, he did so eagerly and with pride.
“One thing you know about Canadian people is they’re proud to be Canadian,” he said. “My kids were born in the United States. They should be proud of their country, and they are, but I’m a Canadian. I was born in Canada and I’m proud of my country. That never leaves you.
“I’ve always looked at it as a privilege. We’re all thrilled by it. We’re all big kids at heart. We all love to play the game. I don’t think that ever changes for anybody.”
Canadians were not only happy to see Gretzky in the Olympics, they wanted him to be the flag bearer. When Sun Media’s internet site, SLAM! Sports, asked for opinions as to who should be the flag-bearer for Canada, Gretzky finished with twice as many votes as second-place Elvis Stojko.
A couple of weeks previously, The Hockey News staff selected Gretzky as the
top player in history by only the tiniest of margins, but in a subsequent poll of fans, he was a runaway winner.
It would have been a memorable moment in Canada’s sporting history: the best-known athlete this country had ever produced leading the nation’s Olympic entourage into the stadium, proudly bearing the Canadian flag. Granted, there was a conflict with the schedule of his NHL team, the New York Rangers, but had an overture been made to the NHL to modify the Rangers’ schedule accordingly, it would probably have happened. After all, the Olympic schedule had been in place for four years. There was no need for a last-minute alteration.
Instead, the usual political correctness of the COA (officially the Canadian Olympic Association, but widely known in sporting circles as Can’t Organize Anything) came to the fore and a French-Canadian freestyle skier got the honour. It didn’t even go to Stojko, the figure skater favoured to win a gold medal.
Any anguish that Gretzky might have felt at being shunned by the COA (very little) was more than compensated for by the response of the Japanese people when he arrived in Nagano. The crush was so great that there were serious fears for his safety.
“I’ve been in a lot of places, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Gretzky after escaping a crowd that even surpassed anything he had encountered in his heyday with the Edmonton Oilers, when he invariably needed a police escort to leave NHL arenas.
As soon as the Canadian team started emerging from the train that had brought them from Tokyo, there was a crush of Japanese fans. But when Gretzky emerged, it was a stampede. Older observers compared it to the scenes out of A Hard Day’s Night when the Beatles had to dodge mobs of screaming, hysterical fans. Younger observers compared it to scenes they had witnessed of some of the worst sale-day crushes at big department stores.
The crowd surged in on Gretzky, who was surrounded by a phalanx of television cameramen, and it was a miracle that no one was knocked down and trampled. Finally, the police moved in and cleared a path for Gretzky, who made it to the team bus while waving to the crowd and smiling at the screaming girls.
Not long afterwards, the Canadian organizers staged a news conference, and once again, their anti-Gretzky attitude came to the fore.
The event was held in an amphitheatre that was packed with media representatives from all over the world. This was their chance to hear directly from the famous hockey icon, and they weren’t going to miss it.
First, the brass sat at a table and answered questions for fifteen minutes. Then three players came out and followed the same format. Gretzky wasn’t one of them.
The world’s media sat patiently through the management’s segment, then listened fairly patiently to Yzerman, Sakic and Lindros.
There were shouts of “Where’s Gretzky?”
That was not a surprise. If Clarke and friends hadn’t realized before they left Canada what an international attraction Gretzky was, they should have managed to figure it out when they saw the mob scene at the train station. But they wouldn’t put him on the stage that night and give him a microphone, because to do so would suggest that he was at least Lindros’s equal, a view that would run counter to their declaration that Lindros had taken over Canadian hockey’s leadership reins from Gretzky.
Finally, the rest of the team was brought out onto the stage and stood well back from the apron. That was supposed to be the end of the affair, and many disgruntled journalists left. A number of us, knowing that Gretzky would accommodate us if he could, approached the stage, which had been declared strictly off-limits.
Gretzky saw me there, and without a word but with an inquisitive look and a pointed finger, asked if I wanted to come up. I nodded affirmatively, at which point he went over to whisper in Bob Nicholson’s ear.
Nicholson looked over, walked to the front of the stage and said, “Wayne says if you want to come up, he’ll talk to you.” I went up, a number of people followed, and Gretzky, in a move that no doubt annoyed Clarke—and infuriated the IOC officials—but delighted the media who had stuck around, answered everyone’s questions. As far as I know, it was the only time in Olympic history that the media were allowed up on the stage to do an interview after a formal press conference.
Once the tournament began, Gretzky made his usual contributions. He killed penalties; he worked hard; he sparked the offence. Team Canada breezed through the qualification phase, winning all three games by a cumulative score of 12–3.
The quarter-final game against Kazakhstan posed no problems, either—a comfortable 4–1 victory.
But now there was to be serious competition. In the semifinal game, the Canadians were to face the Czech Republic.
A few days earlier, in a casual chat with the great Russian star Igor Larionov (inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2008), I had suggested that there were four top teams at Nagano—Canada, Russia, the United States and Sweden.
“Don’t forget the Czech Republic, Al,” Larionov said.
The Czech Republic didn’t seem to have an awful lot going for it.
“They’ve got Dominik Hasek,” said Larionov. “Any time you’ve got Hasek, you’ve got a chance.”
It was a prophetic remark, and a warning that was not challenged by the Canadians. In their preparation for the game, they made it clear that, even though they had to be aware of the scoring prowess of Jaromir Jagr, Hasek was their primary concern.
“He’s a great player,” Gretzky said. “He’s one of the great players in the game. He’s right up there with Eric Lindros, Teemu Selanne, Peter Forsberg and Jaromir Jagr. He’s good.
“One guy doesn’t make a team, though. We believe in our team and we have to keep going at him. Obviously, he’s a big part of their team, but so is Jagr. We have to be solid defensively and, when we get the puck, go to the net.
“We have to crash the net, do what we can. He’s a good goalie, but we have to beat him.”
Even though the Canadians had rolled to this point, their offensive plan left much to be desired. The team had been built with a defensive priority and an expectation, based on the 1996 World Cup result, that the United States would be the team they’d have to beat. When the tournament didn’t unfold as expected, the Canadians struggled.
The Czechs weren’t much better. For almost fifty minutes, the teams cautiously engaged in a tight-checking affair, and neither was able to get a goal until Jiri Slegr put the Czechs ahead with a screened shot from the point. With ten minutes remaining, Canada appeared to be in trouble, but with only 1:03 left in regulation time, Trevor Linden tied the score to send the game into overtime.
In the NHL, overtime continues in twenty-minute periods until someone scores, but under Olympic rules, there were to be thirty minutes of overtime. If neither team could get the winner—and in this game, that was the case—the result was to be determined by a shootout.
It was the situation Canada dreaded: a shootout against Dominik Hasek with a spot in the gold-medal game on the line.
It was the middle of the night in Canada. The game had started at 1 a.m. Eastern time, but even so, much of the country was wide awake. The Canadian supporters in Nagano and those glued to their TV sets back in Canada listened to the announcement of the roll call of Canadian shooters.
Theoren Fleury. No problem. He’s a shifty player with good moves.
Ray Bourque. Concern began to creep in. If a defenceman was to shoot, why not Al MacInnis, with his blazing—and goalie-intimidating—shot?
Joe Nieuwendyk. That made sense. A great player with lots of experience.
Eric Lindros. Well, of course. He had been deemed the saviour of Canadian hockey. Everyone knew he’d be there, and then Gretzky would finish.
Brendan Shanahan. What? Where was Gretzky? The greatest scorer in the history of the game, and he’s not shooting?
Only the beginning of the shootout itself stilled the buzz over the decision. Fleury tried a high snap shot, but Hasek deflected it.
Robert Reichel deked Patrick Roy, and the puck hit one post, sli
d across the crease, hit the other post, and settled over the line. The Czechs led 1–0.
Bourque’s shot was almost identical to Fleury’s and was also deflected by Hasek.
Nieuwendyk deked to the right, but missed the net with his shot.
Lindros tried the left side, but hit the post.
Along the way, Vladimir Ruzicka, Pavel Patera and Jagr had been stopped by Roy. That left it all up to Shanahan. He, too, missed the net.
All five Canadian shooters had picked up the puck at centre ice and moved directly towards Hasek, even though European shooters usually skated far to the left or right on penalty shots and then came in for the shot. This forced the goalie to come out at an angle, then skate backwards and hope that he had the right alignment.
Joe Sakic, one of only two players to beat Hasek on a penalty shot during the league’s all-star skill competitions, missed the game with a sprained knee and wanted to get a message to the shooters, but he was in the upper reaches of the arena and no one had a phone. He tried to get down to ice level, but couldn’t get through the crowd.
His strategy was to start towards Hasek at speed. Hasek would come well out, but then go back quickly to counter the speed. At that point, the shooter should slow down. Hasek would be well back in his crease, giving the shooter large open areas of net and time to pick a spot.
But without this guidance, and with a questionable lineup that saw both Gretzky and Steve Yzerman left on the bench, the exercise was a futile one for Canada.
The Czechs advanced to the gold-medal game, and Canada’s Olympic dreams were shattered.
In the postgame press conference, the scrutiny centred on two things: the loss and Gretzky’s exclusion from the shootout.
Team Canada coach Marc Crawford made the usual coach-like noises about the former and refused to explain the latter.
“When it comes down to penalty shots, you go with your gut instincts,” he said. “We prepared a list before the game.”
That made the decision even worse. Not only had they made the wrong decision, they’d had plenty of time to mull over the situation. Yet they’d still got it wrong.
