LionDen
02-16-2006, 01:26 PM
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Canada's Jarome Iginla takes one of his squad's 50 shots on goal. Italy had 20 and lost 7-2.
Gretzky won't prove distraction like T.O.
Team Canada's dominance in opener shows squad's resolve to win gold
TURIN, Italy - If Team Canada fails to defend its Olympic hockey championship, people will blame Wayne Gretzky, but they’ll be wrong.
Barely 24 hours after arriving in Turin, the Canadian men were on the ice, fighting jet lag as much as a persistent, if overmatched, Italian team. Forget practice — the players barely had enough time to say hello to each other before they took to the ice. Even so, after allowing Italy to tie the game at 1-1, the Canadians skated off with a 7-2 victory and left the arena with nary a word about Gretzky.
That’s no surprise. Gretzky is the team’s chief executive. He’s not on the ice, not behind the bench, and the questions he’s fielding about his wife’s alleged involvement in the gambling ring are out of their earshot.
And no matter how hard the Canadian and international media tries to turn the Gretzky story into a Team Canada story, it’s not going to happen. If Gretzky is a distraction, it’s on the level of a mosquito bite.
The scandal isn’t going to go away, despite Gretzky’s pronouncement on his arrival Tuesday that “it’s over and done with.” He acknowledged that if Team Canada fails to strike gold, he’ll be blamed, but there is really no connection between his problems and the team’s performance.
Hockey players are notorious for being happy-go-lucky, glad-to-be-here-eh? guys whose field of vision doesn’t extend much beyond the boards around the rink and the beers after the game. It’s hard for something to be a distraction if they don’t even notice it’s there.
The fact that they can hop off a plane, introduce themselves to linemates they may never have played with and go out and put up seven goals says pretty much everything about how oblivious these guys are.
Besides, Gretzky is the Great One, the biggest icon in the game, and the players are more likely to rally around him than to be divided by the controversy. This isn’t Terrell Owens making himself bigger than the team. This is Gretzky saying he didn’t have anything to do with his wife’s little side business, and if that’s what he says, that’s what Team Canada will choose to believe. If anything, it will make the team stronger.
Strong tournament field
That doesn’t mean the Canadians are going to win this tournament. A number of teams could knock them off, including the Czech Republic, provided goalie Dominik Hasek, who left his team’s first game against Germany with a leg injury, can return to action. Finland and possibly Russia could also challenge, (Forget the United States; the team should make the medal round, but isn’t nearly as strong as the silver-medal team of four years ago.)"
A bigger problem than Gretzky is the talent on the blue line. Olympic hockey is played on a bigger rink than NHL hockey, and the additional room makes for a more wide-open game. That helps Canada’s offensive players, but puts more pressure on the defense.
A couple of months ago, that didn’t look to be a problem. But then Ed Jovanovski and Scott Niedermayer went down with injuries and didn’t make the trip. Jovanovski is one of the league’s best defenders and Niedermayer won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top blue-liner during the 2003-2004 season. And players like that can’t be replaced.
Whatever deficiencies Team Canada has didn’t show up against Italy. The team started slowly, as would be expected after the long trip in and the lack of practice and familiarity. But once it got rolling, it was no contest.
After the game, the Canadian press, which covers this team like the U.S. media is covering Bode Miller, wasn’t interested in Gretzky. They’d worked him over the night before when team executives held a press conference after their arrival in Turin. All they wanted to know now was what happened on the ice.
In the real world, players meet the media in the locker room after the game, and there’s plenty of time to talk about just about anything. In the Olympics, all media contact is in what’s called a “mixed zone,” where reporters line one side of a barricade and the players walk on the other side on the way from the arena to the locker room. Interviews are brief and players move from one station to another, dropping sound bites in their wake. If they don’t want to talk, they just keep moving.
The arrangement serves to insulate the players from annoying questions about their leader and further minimize distractions.
Yes, Gretzky’s a story that’s not going to go away. But for Team Canada, it’s barely background noise. As they showed against Italy, they’re here to play hockey.
Mike Celizic for MSNBC
Canada's Jarome Iginla takes one of his squad's 50 shots on goal. Italy had 20 and lost 7-2.
Gretzky won't prove distraction like T.O.
Team Canada's dominance in opener shows squad's resolve to win gold
TURIN, Italy - If Team Canada fails to defend its Olympic hockey championship, people will blame Wayne Gretzky, but they’ll be wrong.
Barely 24 hours after arriving in Turin, the Canadian men were on the ice, fighting jet lag as much as a persistent, if overmatched, Italian team. Forget practice — the players barely had enough time to say hello to each other before they took to the ice. Even so, after allowing Italy to tie the game at 1-1, the Canadians skated off with a 7-2 victory and left the arena with nary a word about Gretzky.
That’s no surprise. Gretzky is the team’s chief executive. He’s not on the ice, not behind the bench, and the questions he’s fielding about his wife’s alleged involvement in the gambling ring are out of their earshot.
And no matter how hard the Canadian and international media tries to turn the Gretzky story into a Team Canada story, it’s not going to happen. If Gretzky is a distraction, it’s on the level of a mosquito bite.
The scandal isn’t going to go away, despite Gretzky’s pronouncement on his arrival Tuesday that “it’s over and done with.” He acknowledged that if Team Canada fails to strike gold, he’ll be blamed, but there is really no connection between his problems and the team’s performance.
Hockey players are notorious for being happy-go-lucky, glad-to-be-here-eh? guys whose field of vision doesn’t extend much beyond the boards around the rink and the beers after the game. It’s hard for something to be a distraction if they don’t even notice it’s there.
The fact that they can hop off a plane, introduce themselves to linemates they may never have played with and go out and put up seven goals says pretty much everything about how oblivious these guys are.
Besides, Gretzky is the Great One, the biggest icon in the game, and the players are more likely to rally around him than to be divided by the controversy. This isn’t Terrell Owens making himself bigger than the team. This is Gretzky saying he didn’t have anything to do with his wife’s little side business, and if that’s what he says, that’s what Team Canada will choose to believe. If anything, it will make the team stronger.
Strong tournament field
That doesn’t mean the Canadians are going to win this tournament. A number of teams could knock them off, including the Czech Republic, provided goalie Dominik Hasek, who left his team’s first game against Germany with a leg injury, can return to action. Finland and possibly Russia could also challenge, (Forget the United States; the team should make the medal round, but isn’t nearly as strong as the silver-medal team of four years ago.)"
A bigger problem than Gretzky is the talent on the blue line. Olympic hockey is played on a bigger rink than NHL hockey, and the additional room makes for a more wide-open game. That helps Canada’s offensive players, but puts more pressure on the defense.
A couple of months ago, that didn’t look to be a problem. But then Ed Jovanovski and Scott Niedermayer went down with injuries and didn’t make the trip. Jovanovski is one of the league’s best defenders and Niedermayer won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top blue-liner during the 2003-2004 season. And players like that can’t be replaced.
Whatever deficiencies Team Canada has didn’t show up against Italy. The team started slowly, as would be expected after the long trip in and the lack of practice and familiarity. But once it got rolling, it was no contest.
After the game, the Canadian press, which covers this team like the U.S. media is covering Bode Miller, wasn’t interested in Gretzky. They’d worked him over the night before when team executives held a press conference after their arrival in Turin. All they wanted to know now was what happened on the ice.
In the real world, players meet the media in the locker room after the game, and there’s plenty of time to talk about just about anything. In the Olympics, all media contact is in what’s called a “mixed zone,” where reporters line one side of a barricade and the players walk on the other side on the way from the arena to the locker room. Interviews are brief and players move from one station to another, dropping sound bites in their wake. If they don’t want to talk, they just keep moving.
The arrangement serves to insulate the players from annoying questions about their leader and further minimize distractions.
Yes, Gretzky’s a story that’s not going to go away. But for Team Canada, it’s barely background noise. As they showed against Italy, they’re here to play hockey.
Mike Celizic for MSNBC