Sunday, February 24, 2002
Talk isn't cheap
By AL STRACHAN -- Toronto Sun
SALT LAKE CITY -- The biggest rivalry in the National Hockey League is not Edmonton-Calgary, Rangers-Islanders or even Montreal-Toronto.
It is the Americans versus the Canadians.
It's evident in every dressing room in the NHL, every day of the season. Sometimes, it manifests itself in a morning-skate shootout pitting the Americans against the Canadians. It often surfaces in the partnership card games on the planes. It's always evident in the banter.
Steve Yzerman figures that roughly a hundred times this season, Chris Chelios has told him, "I don't care whether we win a medal or not, as long as we beat you guys."
It's a joke, but it's a joke with meaning. It's like the old Quebecois proverb, En riant, les chiens mordent (Dogs bite even while they're laughing).
"It's a fun rivalry," Doug Weight said, "but there's definitely something there. It's not just joking around to get under somebody's skin.
"It's definitely deep-rooted. It's not a hate. There's a respect. But it's a rivalry."
So now, as if it weren't enough to have these two nations battling for the Olympic gold medal in what Jeremy Roenick calls, "a one-game grudge match to show who's stronger," this intense U.S.-Canada player rivalry doubles the already sky-high stakes.
To put it into a fan's perspective, it would be like being a rabid Maple Leafs fan sharing a two-man office with a rabid Montreal Canadiens fan. But instead of those two teams facing each other five times a year, they meet only once every four years -- in a Stanley Cup final.
"I can't tell you how badly I want to beat them," said Weight, who will go head to head against St. Louis Blues teammates Al MacInnis and Chris Pronger.
"It's not just because I'm proud of my country, it's because of the crap I'm going to have to take for the next four years.
"It's not a hatred, but it's very, very serious and it goes on every day. I'm going to have to look at Prongs for the next four years and listen to this."
There had been a story making the rounds that Roenick said the Americans would, "kick the Canadians' asses."
"I didn't say that," Roenick said, "but that's not to say I wouldn't want to.
"They're our biggest rivals. They're the closest to us and we live with them day in and day out. We work with them and they're our friends and that's the way it's got to work. But this is what everybody wants.
"If you asked everyone on our team, 'If you could face any team in the final, who would it be?' There's no question it would be Canada."
Every player in today's monumental game harbours similar emotions. The animosity is kept under control. However, there's not the slightest doubt that this afternoon every player will be battling not only for the gold medal and the honour of his country, but also to guarantee his countrymen bragging rights in 30 NHL dressing rooms for the next four years.
Sometimes, the "us-against-them" shots are subtle. Sometimes they're more straightforward like the one delivered by Team USA coach Herb Brooks yesterday.
"We've proved over the last 50 years that American hockey is as good as any in the world," he said. "If you took a medal count over the last 50 years, Russia has dominated the gold medals, but we've had two. Sweden and the Czechs have one, and Canada has ... none."
SHAKING THEIR HEADS
Perhaps Brooks should worry more about the profundity of promoting hockey in a country where it needs all the help it can get.
NBC officials were shaking their heads in disbelief yesterday when Brooks closed the American practice to the media on a day when broadcast media from all over the world were looking for footage.
"They just don't get it," one NBC executive moaned. "Even when they're given a stage like this, they shoot themselves in the foot."
But today, with the gold medal and NHL bragging rights on the line, the spectacle itself will transcend anything Brooks could do the day before.
"We were looked upon as favourites," Roenick said, "and now we're here with the other favourites and that's the way it should be."
With bragging rights for four years on the line.
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2002 Games Columnists
