"You have to line up the moon and the stars to win," said coach Mike Babcock, ahead of the Men's Olympic Hockey tournament, and boy did he ever deliver all he could to make that happen.
Cosmic forces may have had a hand in a plucky Latvian team knocking off a perennial threat to Canada's hockey hope--Switzerland. They must have had something to do with Shea Weber's stick remaining intact, as he unleashed the slapshot that propelled Canada to their penultimate showdown with their greatest rival, the USA.
Something galactic must have brought an uncontested but hobbled Swedish team to the Gold Medal Game--a winning result rendered nearly impossible before the Canadians ever laid their hands on them; the last of their supremely talented centremen relegated to the sidelines, as Nicklas Backstrom was pulled from the game for failing a drug test due to a seven year regimen of popping a single antihistamine a day. Something other-worldly intervened with Backstrom and Henricks (Sedin and Zetterberg) participating in this critical contest.
Something astronomical pushed Gustav Nyquist's first period shot onto the goal-post, and by some miracle, instead of kicking the puck into his own net, Carey Price quickly gobbled it up; Sweden's final glimmer before Canada took the most lustrous award available to them.
The sky was clear for Babcock to pull the elements together, and through the thick brush of criticism and second-guessing, he emphatically emerged, vindicated by the truth he authored: "Does anybody know who won the scoring race? Does anybody care? Does anyone know who won the gold medal? See you, guys." With that, Babcock pushed past the moon and the stars, and rode off into a golden sunset.
The Canadians had the luck you need to win an Olympic Gold Medal, but they never relied on it. They wrote this story with the kind of effort that rendered the names on the back of their jerseys synonymous. Canada's jaunt through the tournament was an exposition of the most selfless variety of hockey you could watch, and the design was brilliantly conceptualized by hockey men of legendary status, and executed by hockey men who came and left as champions.
Babcock, with his associate coaches Claude Julien, Lindy Ruff and Ken Hitchcock decided it was imperative to have three right-handed shooting defensemen and three left-handed shooting ones. Together, these men, with some great consultation from big-ice guru Ralph Krueger designed a system that pushed the most skilled offensive players in the world to commit to team defense above all else. The result was perhaps the most exceptional defensive performance hockey's ever witnessed.
Canada held the opposition to three goals in six games with stifling back-pressure and excellent but mostly reliable goaltending from Carey Price. And Babcock and his disciples recognized Price was the man for the job after much deliberation over his lack of experience, especially in contrast with Roberto Luongo's golden pedigree, nevermind Luongo's 6-0 shutout of Austria in his only action of the tournament.
The goals were hard to come by. No cosmic power could be relied on to convert wave after wave of scoring chances for the Canadians. The players never abandoned the plan in the face of mounting frustration and agony. And amazingly, through nail-biting moments the Latvians and Americans put Canada through in the elimination rounds leading to the Gold Medal Game, a sense of loss never came into the equation.
Canada's hockey team was as dominant as a team can be in two one-goal wins. And it was Babcock's plan that brought to light that characteristic calm Canadians are known for. This team was prepared to win the closely contested games you'd expect in the medal rounds of the Olympics, and every game before the Gold Medal Game reinforced that feeling of preparedness.
They say that winning is in the details, and a summer camp ball hockey session--a national punch line at the time--showed how meticulously planned this win was. Meticulous particularly describes how the Canadians dismantled their opposition, and in their final performance, they became an unstoppable machine.
There was no luck in Jonathan Toews finding the game's first goal. A 200-foot shift for Toews and linemates Jeff Carter and Patrick Marleau produced the opportunity one of Canada's most prominent leaders capitalized on. The team's captain, Sidney Crosby, scoreless coming into the finals--just like Toews--forced a turnover in the defensive zone and carried it all the way down the ice to beat Henrik Lundqvist. And Chris Kunitz--Canada's Olympic whipping boy--put a cherry on top with a fantastic individual effort.
The moon and the stars made their appearance in Sochi's sky shortly after Babcock and the boys belted out the only national anthem heard at the Bolshoy Arena during the Olympics. They shine on in Canada.
Majestic.