Canada seeking net upgrade after men’s hockey loss to U.S. at Beijing Olympics

Opinion

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This article was published 12/02/2022 (1305 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING Eddie Pasquale stared blankly into space and shook his head in the universal body language of a goaltender who just allowed his second stinker of a two-goal hockey game.

For Pasquale and Canada’s men’s hockey team, Saturday’s 4-2 defeat at the hands of the United States was not exactly a banner follow-up to a tournament-opening win over Germany. But at least the loss clarified a couple of important points.

For one, if there’s an aspect of Canada’s game that would have been a hot-button storyline both with NHLers in the tournament and without them, it’s goaltending. With NHLers, Canadian hockey fans would have almost certainly been feverishly debating the right choice as the national No. 1, especially in a year when the country’s long-standing go-to puck-stopper, Carey Price, hasn’t taken a start after entering the league’s player assistance program to seek treatment for substance abuse.

And without NHLers — well, two games into the Olympics and head coach Claude Julien was clearly kicking tires on the best option among the other netminding options in Canada’s closed loop. It goes without saying that Pasquale, currently playing in the KHL after a three-game pit stop with the Tampa Bay Lightning a few years back, could probably use a rest. Not that a lack thereof was to blame for Pasquale allowing the goal that made it 4-2, this with Canada making a compelling push for the tying goal in the game’s latter stages.

It was the kind of slapshot NHL goaltenders stop 100 times out of 100, launched by former Leafs forward Kenny Agostino from a step inside the blue line with no distracting traffic in the frame. Alas, the simplest of saves somehow eluded Pasquale. As the puck seeped through him, the energy simultaneously drained from Canada’s previously buzzing attack.

“No doubt that fourth goal kind of took the wind out of us a little bit,” said Julien. “It’s easy to talk about that fourth goal and say it went though him … That’s hockey.”

It’s certainly hockey when played by professional players who aren’t quite world class. Still, it wasn’t all Pasquale’s fault. Canada also benefited from not-quite-textbook goaltending from the game’s get-go, when Mat Robinson made it 1-0 on a bad-angle gift of a goal from the right half-boards that somehow found its way through Strauss Mann’s five-hole.

Still, while Mann righted his particular ship, making some big saves as Canada peppered him late, Pasquale was also largely responsible for the U.S. goal that made it 3-1, on which a behind-the-net misadventure with puck handling led to a turnover and an unsuccessful scramble to return to the crease, all of which allowed American forward Brendan Brisson to deposit an easy backhander into a gaping net.

“I have to make those saves,” Pasquale said. “If I make those two saves it’s 2-2 and we’re in OT.”

He wasn’t wrong. Which is why Swedish leaguer Matt Tomkins figures to be up next in net. But goaltending at this level — heck, at any level — is never a sure thing. So let’s just say Team Canada fourth-stringer Justin Pogge — in whom Toronto’s NHL team once believed so wholeheartedly that it considered Tuukka Rask an expendable asset — might want to stay loose.

For the north-of-the-49th crew, it was a tough loss. But at least it settled a debate. It was on the eve of the Olympic opener when it was pointed out that Canada is not the betting favourite to win the gold medal. The team from Russia, which won gold in Pyeongchang four years ago, was the heavy chalk. Depending on which bookmaker you consulted, both Finland and Sweden had slimmer odds to stand atop the podium than the team wearing the maple leaf. And rightly so. The last time there were no NHLers at the Olympics, four years ago, Canada’s cast of Euro-pros took themselves out of the gold-medal running with an egregiously soft semifinal loss to Germany. And where was the evidence that Hockey Canada, under newly installed general manager Shane Doan, had things figured out this time around?

“Guys know we’re underdogs,” said Jason Demers, the veteran defenceman.

But not everyone on the roster was sold on that line of thinking. After the win over Germany, forward Eric O’Dell was asked about Canada framing itself as an underdog.

“Uh, I don’t think so. I think our team’s really, really good. I don’t think we have that underdog mentality,” O’Dell said. “I think we’re top of the tournament. I think we have the best team.”

Don’t get it wrong: Canada still has every chance to prove it has the best team. But as it sits, with a 1-1 record heading into Sunday’s game against China, no one’s particularly impressed. Everyone in a red and black sweater had a theory about what went wrong beyond the goaltending on Saturday. Too many turnovers. Shoddy neutral-zone coverage. Patent overconfidence.

“We might have thought it was going to be easy after getting that first one,” said Daniel Winnik, the ex-Leaf who had an impeccable game, setting up the Corban Knight short-handed goal that was one of Canada’s bright spots.

Julien, for his part, pointed to a 20-minute stretch of action that included the latter 10 minutes of the first period and the opening 10 minutes of the second frame, wherein the U.S. turned a 1-1 tie into a 3-1 lead.

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“I think that’s where a lot of the damage got done,” Julien said.

There was no arguing with that. Four years ago it was a space-cadet start to the Germany game that put Canada in a hole from which it couldn’t extract itself. On Sunday it was an inexplicable lack of intensity for a long stretch of an important game. In short-tournament hockey, the margin for error simply isn’t big enough for such intermittent effort.

“We can’t sit around now and be sad for ourselves, be sorry,” said defenceman Max Noreau. “We kind of — at least I did — lived it four years ago in that Germany game (in the Olympic semifinal). We had to regroup. So this one’s not as bad. It’s not a do-or-die like that one was. We’ve just got to learn and get better.”

Learn, and learn fast. Unless the goaltending gets upgraded, Canada’s an underdog here. It better start playing with the 60-minute ferocity of one.

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