Gold's worth priceless to a bunch of millionaires carrying weight of

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah - They skated around holding their flowers aloft. They hugged their children tight. They blew kisses into the crowd.

They were hockey players - all gruff, bruised and toothless - professional hockey players, millionaires most of them.

Flowers? Hugs? Kisses? What was this, full-contact figure skating? Forget a penalty box; these guys needed a kiss-and-cry area.

But the reaction was perfect because that's what you do when you win a game that felt like a thousand games, when you achieve something some people considered as important as their next breath, when you reach a goal you really, really, really, really wanted to reach.

The Canadians, 5-2 winners over the United States in the gold- medal game Sunday, coveted this. They were desperate and played that way. It would be hard to find another team that equaled their want. Unless you watched the Americans, who came awfully close to matching the passion, if not the play.

So, does anyone still think having the NHL participate in the Olympics is a bad idea?

"Going back to regular games is going to be a little anticlimactic, that's for sure," said U.S. forward Mike Modano. "The hockey that was played out there today, all the emotion and atmosphere ... I've never been a part of anything like that."

Worth noting here is that Modano has won a world championship. He also once won a trophy called the Stanley Cup.

But he did that with the Dallas Stars, a team that, when viewed through Olympic eyes, looks a whole lot more like a corporation. This game had nothing to do with paychecks or clock pushing or 401k options.

It was bigger than all those things. It was too big to be contained inside one rink, even one of these oversized international versions. It was so big fans began singing "O Canada!" on their own in the final 60 seconds. It was big enough the entire country could have participated in it. And perhaps did.

"Knowing that almost every TV back home was tuned in to this adds a lot of pride and emotion," Canadian Joe Nieuwendyk said. "I have to be honest, now that it's over, there's a lot of relief."

That showed when time expired and the Canadian players rushed the ice, tossing their gloves and sticks into the air, behaving completely like children. One of those players, Owen Nolan, was holding up a video camera, shooting footage that could prove historic. After all, the last time Canada's men won Olympic gold was 50 years ago.

None of this will happen Tuesday, when the NHL resumes. You won't see one of the Lightning skate around waving a flag, like Theo Fleury did. You won't see one of the Wild bring his daughter on the ice, like Nieuwendyk did. You won't see one of the Thrashers point into the stands at his mom, like Paul Kariya did.

There is quite a difference between a random Wednesday night in Edmonton and this Sunday afternoon outside Salt Lake City.

"Every shift was played with more and more intensity," Canada's Jarome Iginla said. "It was amazing. It just kept building. At the end, we were all exhausted. But when the horn went off, we forgot about being tired. We all just wanted to jump around."

Know what this was? This was the NHL playoffs featuring only the best players, the NHL playoffs to the 10th power. Take hockey to such dizzying speeds and amazing things can happen.

Mike Richter stopped a shot with his skate, when that skate was pinned behind and beneath him. Mario Lemieux missed a net so open he turned - the play continuing all around him - and raised his palm in that classic "what-the-hell?" gesture. Brian Rafalski, who as a defenseman is overly trained to skate backward, fell twice with no one near him, leading to one of Canada's goals.

Such enormous stakes can move a rational man to believe in the absurd. After the game, Wayne Gretzky, Canada's executive director, revealed the story of the magic Loonie.

The man in charge of the playing surface at the E Center is Canadian, and before the Olympics he buried a Loonie, a Canadian coin, under center ice. He did this for luck. In case you forgot, Canada's women also claimed gold in this building.

"It worked for us," Gretzky said. "It won us two gold medals. I don't know if he's gonna get fired now."

Gretzky had the coin in his pocket. (They dug it out immediately after the game.) He plans to present it to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

This easily will be his most unusual contribution, this coin worth $1 Canadian but worth millions to Canadians.

"We desperately needed to win this," said Gretzky, sounding nothing like a man who assembled an all-star team for a tournament that didn't feature a single trophy, let alone the Stanley Cup. "There was a lot of pressure, a lot of stress the last few weeks."

When it was over, the Canadian players lined up to receive their medals. That's when something strange happened. They didn't just stand and wait their turn. They instead crowded close together, inching toward the front of the line.

They were kids again, kids at an ice cream truck. And it had been five decades since their last Fudgsicle.

Copyright 2002
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