Lords of the rinks: fifty years to the day since winning its last gold medal, Team Canada broke its Olympic drought with its `stupid' dump-and-chase style - NHL - hockey

American coach Herb Brooks called it "stupid" hockey.

Twenty-three hockey players--and all of Canada with them--called it golden.

Canada won its first Olympic gold medal in 50 years for doing what has made Canadian hockey players famous--or infamous: playing hard-nosed, in-your-face, dump-it-in hockey.

During an Olympics in which people got fired up about the Swedish torpedo, the skill of the Europeans and big-ice hockey, good, old-fashioned hard work wound up winning the day and the gold medal.

The Canadian coaches designed a game plan that used Canada's strength--big, fast, physical forwards--against what they perceived to be the Americans' strength, a smart, veteran group of defensemen capable of moving the puck to the speedy American forwards.

In their 5-2 win, the Canadians dumped the puck into Team USA's zone and then focused on banging the defensemen, trying to take advantage of what they perceived as a lack of speed. Brooks, on the eve of the game, had called such a Canadian tendency to employ a dump-and-chase game "stupid."

"Playing that style is their style, their philosophy in Canada," Brooks said. "They like that style. I think the game is a little more profound than that. I think the ability of the players can allow them to do so much more.

"If you look at ... basketball and football, possession is the name of the game. It seems kind of stupid to me to work hard to get the puck and then say, `I'm going to give it back to you, then try to get it back again.'

"That's going to be (Canada's) style on this rink, the small rink or out in the parking lot."

Stupid? Maybe.

Effective? Definitely.

Whether Brooks' comments were part of a mind game, trying to get Canada to change its game because he knew his defensemen wouldn't escape under a sustained attack by the big Canadian forwards, remains a mystery.

What is certain is that Canada coach Pat Quinn didn't buckle under the pressure and try to play a freewheeling game with the speedy Americans. Team Canada's coaching staff stuck to its game plan, a strategy it outlined as early as September's orientation camp in Calgary--before the full roster was chosen.

As promised, Canada got the puck in deep on the U.S. defensemen and hit them at every opportunity.

"We have so many big forwards and powerful defensemen," Canada assistant coach Ken Hitchcock says. "We played a power game. That's exactly what we did. Our whole mind-set was we have so many physically strong players, we needed to make (the Americans) play in their own end more than they wanted to."

The key to the U.S. team's success in the tournament was the ability of its defensemen to hit their forwards with passes out of their own zone. The tactic worked flawlessly, especially in games against Finland, Belarus and Germany. Team USA's strength was the speed of its forwards, and when the defensemen were given time to move the puck, those forwards got the puck on the fly, using the big ice surface to great advantage.

But Canada's forechecking effectively prevented the U.S. defensemen from sending the puck speeding up the ice. That forced the forwards to stop, come back and help. The result: A lot of the Americans' speed advantage up front was neutralized, and their scoring opportunities were limited to odd-man situations that resulted from Canadian turnovers. Their ability to create off the rush, which was especially apparent during the game against Germany, was curtailed.

"They did exactly what we expected, dumping it in hard," U.S. defenseman Aaron Miller says, "and getting a body on us. They did it all night. They made it tough to get that first pass, not like the other teams.

"I don't know if that's the way it would go every time we played them, but this time they were the better team."

When Team USA did manage to get a pass away, the Canadian defense did a wonderful job of stepping up in the neutral zone, picking it off and putting the puck back into the American zone.

"I felt we had to take advantage of them down low because they had terrific offensive skaters, and they tried to play an offensive game," Quinn says. "The whole U.S. approach was a counter game. If you give them the puck (at their blue line), they can hurt you. We wanted to keep the puck away from their forwards."

Another key factor for Canada was Quinn's strategic ability to neutralize the U.S. team's top scoring line of Mike Modano, John LeClair and Brett Hull. Quinn used two lines against that line, one centered by Mario Lemieux and the other by Joe Sakic. For the most part, they shut down the three U.S. forwards.

"They are such terrific hockey players, they can make chicken salad out of that other stuff we put in fertilizers," Quinn says of Lemieux and Sakic. "I thought their presence and leadership would affect (the Modano) line, even if it was in the minutest detail."

Any tactic can be lauded after a win, but it doesn't work if the team doesn't get good goaltending. Canada goaltender Martin Brodeur's performance paralleled that of his team, and Team Canada executive director Wayne Gretzky says that one of Brodeur's 31 saves--getting his toe on a shot by Hull in the third period with Canada ahead, 3-2--was the play that won the gold medal.

Everything came together and ended a half-century drought for Canada in the Olympics.

"Fifty years ... it became an albatross," Quinn says. "But we just got better with each game ... I'd like to take this team and barnstorm like the Globetrotters.

"This is a legacy for Canadian hockey that we want to pass on."

The legacy hasn't always been something worth passing on, at least at the Olympic level. Canada failed to win a medal in 1998 in Nagano, losing in the semifinals to the Czech Republic in the now famous shootout in which Dominik Hasek shut down Brendan Shanahan on the last attempt, allowing the Czechs to advance to the gold medal game against Russia. Canada lost the bronze medal to Finland.

Flyers general manager Bob Clarke, who was Canada's G.M. in Nagano, says the biggest advantage the 2002 version of Team Canada had over the 1998 edition was mobility on the blue line. In 1998, Canada had Ray Bourque, Al MacInnis, Rob Blake, Adam Foote, Chris Pronger, Eric Desjardins and Scott Stevens on defense. All are--or were--great NHL defensemen, some Hall of Famers, but speed was not their collective forte. Clarke says the 1998 team simply didn't have enough fast, puck-carrying defensemen who could generate offense.

"That's the key to breaking the trap a lot of the European teams liked to play," Clarke says.

Although MacInnis, Blake, Foote and Pronger were back this time around, the newcomers--Scott Niedermayer, Ed Jovanovski and Eric Brewer--brought more speed, especially Niedermayer.

"He was holding out in 1998, so we didn't have him," Clarke says. "The other thing is that Pronger is four years older. In 1998, he hadn't won the Hart Trophy and the Norris Trophy. He's taken over since then. He was a good player in 1998; he's a great player now. Jovanovski has really come on. He's a big man who can skate. We didn't have that kind of mobility."

The speedier Canadian defense did a good job of stepping up in the neutral zone and joining the rush against the Americans. That was evident when Pronger joined the rush and set up Paul Kariya for Canada's first goal.

"They played very aggressive," U.S. captain Chris Chelios says. "Their defensemen, I thought, made the difference joining the play, adding a fourth player to the attack. We caught them cheating a couple of times, but they had the confidence to do it."

They also had something else that helped make a difference.

"They have a certain pride about their hockey," Chelios says. "It might be the only game they're good at, except for curling and a couple of other things. All kidding aside, they're a proud group of players."

"A big monkey is lifted off of Canada's back," Team USA forward Jeremy Roenick says. "Both teams deserved to be here, and they got the big goals today. It was a great game. Today was their day."

Correspondent Chris Stevenson covers the NHL for SLAM! Sports.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Sporting News Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group