HALIFAX -- It was so quiet in the Halifax Metro Centre you could have heard a chin drop.
Thousands of them actually.
Norwegian forward Mads Hansen stripped Canadian defenceman Duncan Keith of the puck, while shorthanded. He made a dash, and you just know what kind it was, and finished a sweet backhand deke into a yawning cage behind Canadian goalie Pascal Leclaire. It was shocking. It was 1-1 with just about half a game to play. Norway and Canada were deadlocked in a defensive tong war at the world hockey championship. But if you were surprised, as so many of the 7,380 souls in the crowd surely had to be, you just weren't much of a hockey history buff.
Because this is basically par for the course, at least early in international tournaments. Plucky European goalie stands on his head, determined European teammates play tight defensive game, more skilled Canadians get frustrated but inevitably find a hero on their bench with the necessary determination and ability to win it on his own. It might actually be written down somewhere in the Hockey Canada team-building manual.
On Thursday, the goalie was Pal Grotnes, the hero Rick Nash, who found just enough room between the post and Grotnes's left pad to close the deal and win it 2-1 in the dying minutes. These two combatants know each other from last year's tournament in Moscow, when Norway stuck around for two periods and Canada finally edged them 4-2.
"We came pretty close last year, too," smiled Grotnes. "I got the MVP, me and Rick that game, too. It was deja vu. He had a breakaway in that game, too. I'm leading 2-0 in breakaways."
That's not an official stat at the worlds, but we'll let Grotnes have it because he was so good that he deserves to take something more than a 2-1 loss back home. He made 51 saves, to just 15 for Leclaire.
"He is normally a carpenter back home," said his coach Roy Johansen. "He's building walls."
The Canadians are 4-0 here, but they are still trying to build momentum, four lines and a power play and they are very much a work in progress. It doesn't always go according to blueprint, either, just like any renovation. Take Thursday, for instance. Their power play scored twice, but tried to be too pretty and squandered eight other opportunities, they took far too many penalties and allowed frustration to set in when Grotnes showed early on that he wasn't going to offer too many second chances.
"I think there is always reason for concern in our game because the goalie is the difference-maker," said Canadian coach Ken Hitchcock. "In our sport he can win games, he can steal games. I was a lot happier with our game today than against the Americans because we had structure.
"I think we've had players play better individually than we did today and we got a little bit frustrated when we weren't scoring and we forced things. But the Norwegian team is really, really well-coached. They have a commitment to defence."
And there is little doubt it has helped them upset Germany, take a point off Finland in overtime and push Canada to the very brink. Nash went coast-to-coast and tucked his winning goal past Grotnes with just 3:58 remaining.
"Rick Nash had good speed on his skates," said Grotnes. "He shot it between my toe and the post. There was a pretty good space there. I should have been more aggressive and poke-checked him. I'm a little bit disappointed in myself there."
And if fans are a little bit disappointed with the Canadians today, that, too, is par for the course. Captain Shane Doan has been down this bumpy road before, as recently as last year, after eking out close wins over Germany, Norway and Slovakia in the preliminary round.
-- Canwest News Service
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