Sunday, February 24, 2002
'I'm not angry': Drolet
By STEVE BUFFERY -- Toronto Sun
SALT LAKE CITY -- When the Canadian women threw their sticks and gloves in the air and piled on goaltender Kim St-Pierre after winning the gold medal on Thursday, Nancy Drolet sat in front of her television and wept.
Not out of frustration or sadness. But because she felt heartfelt joy for her former teammates and friends on the national women's hockey team.
"I was so happy for the girls," Drolet said yesterday from her Vancouver home. "I think it's so fantastic for women's hockey in Canada and I can't wait to see them when they get back.
"I'm very, very happy."
An integral part of six gold-medal winning world championship teams since 1992, and the third all-time leading point getter on the squad, with 112 in 108 international games, Drolet's world came to a crashing stop on Jan. 14 when she learned that the coaching staff had decided to make a last-minute roster change and she was the odd girl out. Shattered, Drolet took the advice of some people around her and launched the appeal, albeit reluctantly because she didn't want to distract her now former teammates from their task of bringing the Olympic gold medal to Canada.
And when the ruling came down against her, Drolet accepted the decision with class and wished everyone well.
And so, on Thursday night, the soft-spoken forward sat down in front of the TV set, alone, and watched the underdog Canadians slay the favorite Americans 3-2. It was in the final seconds that she began to cry, but not because of what might have been. Not because she realized that she had missed out on the greatest moment an athlete can experience by just over a month. But because she was just so happy for the girls she had travelled the world with and fought in the trenches with. The same girls who had shed tears of pain with her when they lost to the Americans in the gold medal game four years ago in Nagano. Now they were the Olympic champions, and Drolet decided that she too needed to celebrate, although in her own low-key way.
"The girls on the team know that I never, ever drink, but after the game I had a gorge (sip) on a beer," she said, with a laugh. "But that was it, because I had a hockey game of my own right after."
Drolet's club team, the Vancouver Griffins, were playing the cross-town rival Jets in a playoff match that same night. And while not exactly Canada-U.S., for Drolet, every game is an important one, a test of her skill and character. Against the Jets, she scored four goals in the Griffin's 6-0 victory.
"It was great because I felt extra motivated by the girls on the national team," she said.
The one thing Drolet did not do after the gold-medal game was to try to contact her old teammates. She wanted the girls to have their time together and she didn't want to become a distraction. But she did talk to her best friend on the team, Danielle Goyette, who joined the national squad with her back in the 1991 season.
"I was just so happy for her because she had been through so much, her father dying before Nagano and all her injuries," Drolet said.
"She's always been an inspiration to me."
Drolet understood exactly what Wayne Gretzky had said after the Canadian men's team pulled off a close victory in an earlier game -- that it's harder to be in the stands than on the ice, because you just can't do anything to help.
"That's why I didn't want anyone to be with me during the game," she said. "I was too nervous."
And so, while the Canadian team returns home in triumph this week, Drolet will finish the season with the Griffins and then travel back to Quebec and set up her summer hockey school -- and prepare for the future. At 28, she still loves the game and hopes to reclaim a spot on the national squad.
"I'm not angry," she said. "Nobody on the coaching staff or with Hockey Canada wanted to do anything bad to anyone (when the cut was made). A decision had to be made. That's hockey. I've been with the program since 1992 and it's been a great experience in my life."
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2002 Games Columnists
