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Chris Jones reports from Milan.
In any city in Canada other than Cole Harbour, Nathan MacKinnon would be the favourite son.
“HOME OF SIDNEY CROSBY,” the town sign boasts over a pair of later additions. First, there’s a commemoration of the town’s receipt of the 2018 Lieutenant Governor’s Community Spirit Award. And then, almost as an afterthought, MacKinnon is congratulated for his 2022 Stanley Cup.
Maybe now, after MacKinnon scored with 35.2 seconds left to lift Canada to a thrilling 3-2 win over Finland in the men’s hockey semifinal in Milan, he’ll receive closer to equal billing.
Timing has played into the uneven affection. Crosby is eight years older than MacKinnon. He also has three Stanley Cups to his one, and two Olympic golds to his none.
Personality has, too. Crosby and MacKinnon, who return to Cole Harbour each off-season and skate together all summer long, are unlikely friends, beyond their ferocious competitiveness.
Nathan MacKinnon scored with 36 seconds left in regulation as Canada advanced to the Olympic men’s hockey gold-medal game with a 3-2 win over Finland.
Off the ice, at least, Crosby is warm, thoughtful, easygoing. MacKinnon is harder edged, almost strangely focused on the game and its gears and levers. He doesn’t smile or blink very often, and he sometimes seems confused by his fellow humans and their feelings.
“It was a five-man effort,” MacKinnon said of his goal. “Obviously happy one squeaked in.”
Jon Cooper, his admiring head coach, wouldn’t allow him his usual understatement. “He got rewarded for the wall battle right before that. He won that wall battle and kept everything alive. He’s probably not giving himself enough credit.”
He rarely does. But in a game that had room for him to be the special one, MacKinnon took it.
Crosby did not dress, after he injured his knee in the quarterfinal against Czechia. He had been fitted with a brace and had skated on Friday morning, and there was hope he might play against Finland until an hour before the puck dropped.
Crosby couldn’t go, and a murmur went through the still-filling arena.
Nathan MacKinnon’s goal with 36 seconds left in the game gave Canada a 3-2 victory over Finland, allowing them to reach the Olympic men’s hockey gold-medal game.
Then the Canadians fell behind, first by one goal, and then by two, and the murmuring turned into something shriller.
In the second period, Sam Reinhart’s tip brought Canada back within one.
The Finns played desperate, suffocating hockey, but with less than 10 minutes left in the game, Shea Theodore tied it.
“There’s not much you can do when you’re down 2-0 other than keep pushing,” Theodore said after.
MacKinnon was one of Canada’s principal engines. “At the end of the day, we’re playing for our country,” he said. “That’s all the motivation I need to play my best.”
He took the next faceoff. He waited, hunched, at centre ice, in position before everyone else. Music pounded. The building seethed. Cooper shouted from the bench how important that shift might prove — the Canadians were playing relentlessly, like men possessed, and they needed to keep their momentum.
MacKinnon nodded and banged his stick again and again, looking to all the world like an animal begging to be unleashed. It was electric, and he was the source of the charge.
Connor McDavid reflects on being Canada’s captain, and Nathan MacKinnon’s dramatic late winner.
He was asked after how he felt in that moment.
“Just trying to win the draw,” he said. “Small things out there.”
So, his diminishment is partly his fault.
But it’s also ours. The first question at his and Cooper’s post-game news conference was about Crosby and whether he might play in Sunday’s gold-medal game.
Cooper smiled wryly. “He has a better chance of playing that than he did of playing today.”
Nathan MacKinnon is the reason that Crosby and the rest of Canada will have the chance to play in that game at all.
The Finns challenged his goal for having been offside in the buildup. The officials took a long time to decide, and for a few anxious minutes, it felt as though MacKinnon might be robbed of the glory he’d earned.
It was finally deemed a good goal by the thinnest of margins: the width of Macklin Celebrini’s skate blade.
“You’re excited,” MacKinnon said. “Then with the challenge, you get a little nervous.”
He does have feelings, after all. We should remember that he does.
Upstairs at Cole Harbour Place, the town arena, there are two trophy cases. One holds treasures from Crosby’s childhood and career. MacKinnon’s, off to the side, is less reverently curated, with fewer fingerprints on the glass.
The only place they have been treated as equals is inside, over the ice, where matching banners hang in the rafters.
“The home of Sidney Crosby,” one reads.
“The home of Nathan MacKinnon,” reads the other.
Now, because of MacKinnon’s late-game heroics, the twin prides of Cole Harbour might share a gold medal, too.
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