Canada’s Olympic redemption tour opens with a bang against Germany

Opinion

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This article was published 10/02/2022 (1306 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING You’d be excused if you’re approaching the impending run of Canada’s men’s Olympic hockey team with a certain level of wait-and-see standoff-ishness, or maybe even a slight disdain.

It’s nothing against the players wearing the national sweaters this time around. Really it’s the Omicron variant that ravaged the NHL back in December that’s the culprit. But if the world were a slightly different place, Thursday’s tournament-opening matchup would have been the stuff of global marquees. Even Canada versus Germany, not exactly a classic hockey rivalry, would have been Connor McDavid versus Leon Draisaitl, the Edmonton-based Hart Trophy winners squaring off in just one of many long-awaited showdowns in the kind of best-on-best hockey none of us have been able to enjoy since 2014 in Sochi.

Instead, with the NHL having long abandoned the five-ringed detour in a push to squeeze in all 82 revenue-generating games, Canada’s first night on Beijing ice had a decidedly anti-climactic feel. Not that there was anything wrong with an honest battle pitting Canada’s Daniel Winnik against Germany’s Korbinian Holzer, to name a couple of ex-Leafs involved in Canada’s 5-1 dismantling of the defending silver medallists. It’s just that Canadians who’d been dreaming of seeing, say, 2010 golden-goal scorer Sidney Crosby finally teamed with Nathan MacKinnon and McDavid instead got 2010 Olympic gold medallist Eric Staal in a lineup with the likes of Mason McTavish and Jack McBain. Not to diminish the careers, past and pending, of the latter trio. But there’s a distance from great to good, and sometimes it’s a chasm.

“We’re all here for the unfortunate reason that the NHL isn’t here,” said Winnik, the GTA native last seen in the NHL in 2018 and most recently of the Swiss league. “We’d all like to see (the world’s best players) here, as well. But it’s the situation at hand.”

Don’t get it wrong: for a lot of Canadians, pair the flag and the five rings and it’s enough to make the tournament destination viewing. Certainly that’s what the rights holders are hoping. For Canadians with any kind of a memory, mind you, there was another reason to at least take a guarded approach. The last time a collection of non-NHLers represented Canada in the quest for gold, it was a matchup with Germany that produced a low moment in recent Canadian Olympic hockey history — specifically Canada’s lamentable semifinal loss at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. Not only did that ignominious defeat squash Canada’s bid at winning a third straight men’s Olympic gold medal, it came at the hands of a not-so-mighty hockey nation that, before 2018, had counted a 1976 bronze medal as its Olympic highwater mark.

The egregiousness of that loss helps explain why, four years later, only three players remain from the team that salvaged a bronze in Pyeongchang: centreman Eric O’Dell and defencemen Maxim Noreau and Mat Robinson.

“We all know we’d like to have that one back,” Noreau told reporters this week.

So give O’Dell credit for arriving at the rink clearly seeking revenge. His merciless levelling of German defenceman Marco Nowak in the game’s opening throes forced the giveaway that led directly to the Alex Grant goal that made it 1-0 Canada. And from that moment forward, the Canadians largely dominated the rink. Four years after a stunned squad found itself down 3-0 to Germany in the biggest game of most of their lives, a largely new group of non-NHLers found itself up 3-0 midway through the first period. It wasn’t a direct comparable; it wasn’t a medal-round tilt to define a quadrennial. But Canada’s passes were crisp, their shifts short, their hits sharp. They played the way a team largely made up of relative journeymen ought to play — hungry and a little desperate. It was one game against Germany. But it was promising stuff.

“We came out really hot, came out fast,” said O’Dell, who acknowledged German payback was on his mind. “You can just tell by today how well we play together.”

If the holdovers from 2018 can relay the lessons of lost opportunity, Team Canada GM Shane Doan brought along credible voices with more positive international experiences, most notably Staal, who’s wearing the captain’s C.

Now, Vancouver 2010, this is not. But Thursday offered at least a few indications that this is a version of Team Canada that might grow on folks. Not that Jeremy Colliton will get a chance to take credit; though Colliton acted as head coach for Thursday’s game, Hockey Canada announced the imminent return of Claude Julien, who broke some ribs in a practice fall in the lead-up to the Games but was given the OK to fly to Beijing. Julien watched the game from the stands on Thursday. He’ll reassume his duties behind the bench Saturday (Friday night in Toronto) against the United States.

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“It’s huge,” said Winnik, speaking of Julien’s return. “A coach with his experience, and what he’s been through, to have a voice like that around the room. It’s just like having Eric (Staal). It’s a very calming voice.”

Considering Canada panicked its way out of a shot at a gold medal four years ago, the dose of calm could come in handy. So will the injection of tantalizing youth that wasn’t around in the 2018 iteration of the NHL-less Olympics. On Thursday 19-year-old defenceman Owen Power led all Canadians in ice time and looked ridiculously poised in doing so. Power’s University of Michigan teammate Kent Johnson, also 19, registered two assists in a nifty clinic of playmaking prowess. And all around the young phenoms, the grinders kept grinding, the journeymen played with jam. It’s just one game, but it’s a recipe that just might work.

“A lot of people have got stuff to prove,” Jason Demers, the veteran defenceman, was saying this week. “A lot of guys are on redemption tours, trying to claw their way back in or show that they can play in the NHL or the KHL or anywhere. So it’s going to make for a nice mix. It’s going to be really competitive. And I think we’re going to make everybody forget about the NHLers as quickly as we can once it starts.”

It’s just one revenge game against Germany. And time will tell if anyone’s going to forget about the NHLers. But if Canada keeps showing up with its fangs bared and its youth enabled, this could be a redemption tour even the skeptics want to sink their teeth into.

Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk