‘I thought it was going to turn out different’: The agony of what-ifs for Canadian men’s hockey team
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Chris Jones reports from Milan.
Losing gold in overtime is a special kind of agony, and Canada’s men followed Canada’s women in knowing it, closing these Winter Olympics with bookends of heartbreak.
Both had captains with injured knees. Both had the weight of the country’s hopes on their shoulders and their higher expectations for themselves. Both had their chances to win it.
Both lost 2-1 to the United States.
It is one of the stranger sums of Olympic math: Hockey’s gold and bronze medallists are always different versions of thrilled. Only the silver medallists go home feeling empty.
For Canada’s men, it’s hard to say who hurt the most after, or for what reasons.
Sidney Crosby, who self-elected not to play when he felt unable to contribute, stood on the ice in his dry uniform, silver in his hair and around his neck, a portrait of late-career resignation.
“Unfortunately, in one game, anything can happen,” he said after. “There were so many opportunities that we could have won that game. But as a team, I don’t think there’s much more we could have done.”
Sidney Crosby reflects on Canada’s loss in the Olympic men’s hockey gold-medal game and says the decision not to play due to his injury was difficult but correct.
Macklin Celebrini, the 19-year-old who played with a young man’s invincibility, took a long time to lift his forehead off the boards before he walked to the dressing room with swollen eyes, as though he’d never considered that his teenage dreams might not come true.
Drew Doughty, who along with Crosby could have won his third gold medal, fought to keep his lips from trembling when he spoke.
“I thought it was going to turn out different,” he said. “I’m going to still be friends with these guys for the rest of my life. That’s never going to go anywhere. But it would have been nice, you know, seeing them in 20 years with a gold medal to share.”
And consider Connor McDavid, the greatest hockey player on Earth, his gifts coming with the seeming cost of his suffering a series of excruciating second bests. He didn’t speak to reporters after, choosing instead to find a quiet place to wonder what more he must do to win.
A different reckoning was possible for this unbelievable team, in however many ways.
The absence of Crosby will figure first in the stomach-turning catalogue of what ifs. How different might the result have been with him in the lineup? Would Canada have converted its two-man advantage in the second period? Would he have scored his second golden goal in overtime?
Canada also could have won if McDavid had scored on his breakaway in the second period, or if Celebrini had scored on his in the third, or if Connor Hellebuyck hadn’t made a ridiculous paddle save on Devon Toews, or if Nathan MacKinnon had put his late chance one inch to the right.
“I missed a wide-open net,” MacKinnon said. “Felt like it just wasn’t meant to be.”
American goaltender Connor Hellebuyck used the paddle of his stick to stop Canada’s Devon Toews in the third period, to keep the men’s Olympic gold-medal hockey game tied at 1-1.
Of course, it also wouldn’t have taken much for these men not to have played in this game at all — to have endured a more humiliating exit, a more vicious line of questioning.
They had needed to come back twice against Czechia in the quarterfinal before Mitch Marner won it in overtime. Then they had needed to come back from 2-0 down against Finland in the semifinal, advancing only after MacKinnon scored the game-winner with 35.2 seconds left.
Crosby had watched those games in the training room, so that’s what he did again for the final. “I stuck with that,” he said, just in case his little routine proved the difference between winning and losing a game of such fine margins.
Back in the 1970s, former NBA coach Gene Shue expressed his distaste for listening to hockey on the radio. “It’s like listening to a description of one continuous mistake,” he said.
A fan of basketball, a sport of constant success, might see hockey that way. On one level, it’s a game of hard surfaces and good and bad bounces. It’s a game of limited space to move the puck and unlimited ways to lose it.
But on a deeper level, on Canada’s level, hockey is a magnificent game, its beauty best seen in some ways in its most painful moments.
Jack Hughes of the United States scores for a 2-1 overtime victory over Canada in the Olympic men’s hockey gold-medal game.
Crosby is 38 years old. He was told in the third period that he should start putting on his gear, because that’s how he would receive his medal, regardless of the colour. He began getting dressed the way he always does. He put on his ancient shoulder pads, held together with zip-ties. He laced up his skates, as though he might still get the chance to play.
He slowed down when the game went to overtime. He didn’t finish getting dressed until it was over, when he put on his red sweater knowing that it might be the last time he wears it. Then he stood up and made one more of the countless walks he’s made to the rink, to step once again onto the ice.
It’s cold consolation in the minutes after such a stinging disappointment, but it’s important for Canadians to remember something that they already know deep down, the way Crosby will feel it in his bones in 20 years, when he shares a beer and three medals with Drew Doughty.
Hockey isn’t one continuous mistake. Neither is life. It’s one continuous opportunity, and we should be grateful for every game that means something.
We should be grateful for every chance at gold we get.
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