Sunday, February 24, 2002
One-shot deal
By STEVE SIMMONS -- Toronto Sun
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah -- One game to play, one more chance to make history.
This is what all of Canada has waited for, fifty long years of hearing other anthems played and watching other champions celebrate.
Fifty years of knowing that hockey is our game -- the national glue for a country forever in need of it -- but somebody else has been the Olympic champion.
For half a century, it has been somebody other than Canada.
All that can change this afternoon at the E-Center in the hottest ticket event and what is certain to be the loudest day of the XIX Winter Olympics. Team Canada vs. Team USA: One game to win, in an highly-charged atmosphere of pure tension.
One game for everything.
"For a whole generation of Canadians, this can be their Paul Henderson moment," said Shane Pearsall, the assistant chef de mission of the Canadian team at the Winter Olympics.
"There are a lot of young people in Canada who only know 1972 and Paul Henderson as a piece of history. This can be a great hockey moment for a new generation. I just have that feeling."
This is what makes the Olympics so special, so frightful, so full of uncertainty. There is no best- of-seven in hockey or skiing or skating. There are no second chances.
This is Donovan Bailey in the starting blocks on a Saturday night in Atlanta, with no margin for error. This is one gold medal race. One sprint. Winner take all.
For Mario Lemieux, the legendary Team Canada captain, out of retirement and in the Olympics, this is his chance to be the national icon that time and circumstance has prevented him from being. It is his chance to separate himself and take a step closer to Wayne Gretzky in national acceptance.
Even if that's not what he's playing for today.
Lemieux has always been the other star. Not as popular as Gretzky. Not as accessible or as English or passionate or as representative of our hockey culture.
But all that can change today. How he's thought of. How he's remembered. He has already won two Stanley Cups, starred in a Canada Cup, made the Hall of Fame, battled cancer and severe back troubles, and saved the NHL franchise in Pittsburgh. Now one more chance, one more step, maybe the last game of his career that has international meaning.
LAST CHANCES
A chance to inch closer to Gretzky, even though Wayne has made the most noise of the hockey tournament with his conspiratorial tirade the other day.
It isn't just about last chances for Lemieux. Steve Yzerman talked about it yesterday. How this is almost certainly his second and final Olympic Games. How much he wants gold. How somehow he seems able to skate on the ice even when he can barely walk off it.
This is how much they want gold.
This is how much they understand the place they find themselves in as Canadians.
Today, they are wearing the jersey of every kid who ever skated, the jersey of every fan who turned a radio or a television set on, the jersey of every Canadian who lives and who loves the hockey life.
This is Super Bowl Sunday, the hockey version. The day a nation and a television set and a hockey team become one.
One game to play, one game to win. One more chance for history.
PAST CHAMPIONS
1998: Czech Republic, Russia, Finland.
1994: Sweden, Canada, Finland.
1992: Unified Team, Canada, Czechoslovakia.
1988 : Soviet Union, Finland, Sweden, (Canada fourth).
1984: Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, (Canada fourth).
1980: U.S., Soviet Union, Sweden (Canada sixth).
1976: Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, E. Germany, (Canada did not participate).
1972: Soviet Union, U.S., Czechoslovakia, (Canada did not participate).
1968: Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Canada.
1964: Soviet Union, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, (Canada fourth).
1960: U.S., Canada, Soviet Union.
1956: Soviet Union, U.S., Canada.
1952: Canada, U.S., Sweden.
1948: Canada, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland.
1936: Britain, Canada, U.S.
1932: Canada, U.S., Germany.
1928: Canada, Sweden, Switzerland.
1924: Canada, U.S., Britain.
1920: Canada, U.S., Czechoslovakia.
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2002 Games Columnists
