So it wasn’t so much what Mario and I did. Had Larry not gone to the net and had Dale not taken the backchecker out, we may never have scored. It goes back to Mike. Mike had enough confidence in Dale, Mario, and me—three offensive guys—to make the play.
Seeing the puck go in the net, we all had a feeling of elation. You could feel it right through that whole building. Larry Murphy called it the last of the “good versus evil” games.
Twenty-Nine
THE 1991 CANADA CUP
Three things about 1991 stand out for me: the first is Eric Lindros, the second is Mark Messier, and the third is the strength of the American team.
Mike Keenan was now coaching in Chicago. I think there are only four players who played together in three Canada Cups from 1984 to 1991: Mess, Paul Coffey, Brent Sutter, and me. Three of Mike’s guys made the team: Eddie Belfour, Steve Larmer, and Dirk Graham. We had one of the biggest camps ever, fifty-four guys. And even without Mario, Ray Bourque, Stéphane Richer, John Cullen, and Mark Recchi, we had some tremendous players.
Midway through training camp, Mike came up to me and said, “You know, Gretz, I want Eric Lindros to be on this team.” Who wouldn’t want Eric on their team? Even as a teenager he was a truly intimidating hockey player. At 6’4” and 235 pounds, his size alone made him someone you’d have to watch out for. But he could skate with anyone, he could stickhandle in close like a much smaller man, and his shot was a bomb. He could go through you, or he could go around you, and an open-ice hit from Eric Lindros was like stepping in front of a bus. Ulf Samuelsson found that out in our round-robin game against Sweden. Samuelsson is a big boy, but Eric absolutely rocked him. That was the end of the tournament for the Swede. Then Lindros knocked Martin Rucinsky of Czechoslovakia out of the tournament as well.
Mike Keenan told me that Eric would be captain of Team Canada someday, and so he wanted him to be around the guys on our team. I thought, “Wow, you’re the coach, whatever you think, it’s fine by us.”
That 1991 team was stacked—possibly the most talented Team Canada I ever played on. We were deep. We were defensively dominant. If there was a weakness, it was up front, particularly with Mario Lemieux out of the lineup with a bad back. Toward the end of training camp, Keenan took me aside and told me he thought we needed Mark Messier if we were going to win. I told him I’d give Mark a call. When I reached him, he said, “I’ll be there tomorrow.”
That year, for the first time ever, the Russians weren’t as much of a factor. It was the middle of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and so everything was up in the air. One hundred Soviet players had left for the NHL, teams in Europe, or North American minor leagues. Tikhonov was still in charge, but he left some of his best players, like Pavel Bure, Valeri Zelepukin, Evgeny Davydov, and Vladimir Konstantinov, at home because he was worried that they’d defect. In the end, the U.S.S.R. didn’t even qualify for the playoff round.
The team that had the best chance of beating us was Team USA. The kids who had been inspired by the American victory at Lake Placid were just coming of age, and they were an impressive group. Players like Chris Chelios, Tony Granato, Brett Hull, Brian Leetch, Joel Otto, Craig Janney, Jeremy Roenick, Pat LaFontaine, Kevin Miller, Joey Mullen, Gary Suter, and Mike Modano had all grown up wanting to play hockey. Team USA was going to be a powerhouse.
Just a glance at that list tells you the American team in 1991 wasn’t going to have a problem putting the puck in the net. Imagine Pat LaFontaine, Brett Hull, and Mike Modano on the power play. And they weren’t going to be any fun to play against either. The U.S. was a tough, tough team. Midway through the round robin, after Czech right-winger Tomas Jelinek checked an American player, fracturing the guy’s shoulder, Chelios knocked out Jelinek’s front teeth with a cross-check.
But we had a really good tournament, moving through the round robin undefeated because our team was so deep. We rolled four lines and six defensemen. It was maybe the best hockey team I’ve ever played on as far as overall strength goes. We had chemistry, size, skill, commitment, and goaltending. Our six defensemen, Paul Coffey, Al MacInnis, Eric Desjardins, Scott Stevens, Larry Murphy, and Steve Smith, along with our goaltender, Bill Ranford, made it almost impossible to score against our team, simple as that.
We played our final game of the round robin against the U.S.S.R. in Quebec City. Keenan told me that Eric would be my roommate while we were there. No offense to Eric, but he was the last guy I wanted to hang out with in that particular city. A lot of people there were upset with Eric. Before the draft, he warned the Quebec Nordiques that he wouldn’t report to camp if they chose him. They picked him anyway, he refused to report, and the two sides were locked into a battle of wills. His agent, Rick Curran, said that he’d talked to Bobby Orr, who advised Eric not to lose his late teenage years by playing somewhere he didn’t fit. But the Nordiques’ fans were furious that Lindros seemed to think that he was too good for their team. To make matters worse, an Associated Press article said that Steve Yzerman wouldn’t report if he was traded to the Nordiques, either. But in fairness, it wasn’t anything against the French for either of those guys, and it wasn’t about the team. In 1991, the Nordiques were a young, exciting team with young guys like Joe Sakic, Owen Nolan, and Mats Sundin on the roster. It was about exchange rates and taxes. (Yzerman could fill up for $17 in Detroit, while a tank cost $44 in Quebec.)
I could see both sides of the argument. But I was also aware that Eric was getting bomb threats and that people were threatening to shoot him—and now Mike wanted me to share a room with him. I did not relish the prospect. I mean, I don’t even like driving fast. I owned a Ferrari and drove it in second gear—to this day I’ve never had a speeding ticket. And I don’t like heights, either. So I told Mike, “No way. Listen, I’ll talk to the media. I’ll calm people down. I’ll do everything I can to protect him, but I am not going to risk getting blown up.” I think Mike thought I was kidding, and so he put us together anyway. I didn’t sleep a wink.
We tied the Russians 3–3, and Eric may have endeared himself to fans in Quebec City by scoring on the power play in the first period to tie the game up. We went on to beat Sweden in the semifinals in what was Borje Salming’s farewell to Maple Leaf Gardens. And then we faced Team USA in a best-of-three final.
• • •
I talked earlier about how, just before playoffs on March 22, 1990, I injured my back in a game against the Islanders. As a result I’d missed three out of ten playoff games that season. And now, in the first game of the Canada Cup final, on September 14, 1991, I was checked from behind by Gary Suter. That started up my back spasms again and I was out for the rest of the tournament.
With me gone, Mess and Coffey stepped in. Everybody loves the “Win one for the Gipper” moment in the dressing room. Guys really rally around it. But Mess did something different. He knew that the team had to get back to a levelheaded kind of focus at the drop of the puck. He didn’t want guys looking for revenge on Suter, and he didn’t want anyone thinking about how things might have been different if I had been in the lineup. So between periods, Mess told the guys to play as if I’d never been on the team. That way there wouldn’t be a hole. The guys responded, and Canada won the first game 4–1.
Game Two was a couple of days later, and the media was all over Gary Suter for what a lot of people thought was a questionable hit. I can’t say it was fun, but if I had been a little closer to the boards it probably would have been just another bruising hit. I have never believed it was Gary’s intention to injure me. Trust me, I’ve been hit harder than that, and I guarantee that a few American players were hit harder than that by our guys.
In Game Two, the score was tied at the end of the second period. The coaches were in the dressing room and everyone was upset. Mike’s Chicago guys took over the room and calmed things down. And when they got back on the ice, Steve Larmer scored a shorthanded goal, making Suter the goat. Dirk Graham got
the insurance goal.
It was a big win for us, but still, it was scary how well the U.S. played. The difference between them and the Russians was that the Americans played our game. Their coach, Bob Johnson, was just a very positive, great guy. He’d coached the Flames during some of the biggest battles against the Oilers, and he’d just coached the Penguins to their first Stanley Cup that year. Sadly, he was diagnosed with brain cancer during training camp, and his assistant, Tim Taylor, had to take over. But right to the end, Bob saw it as his mission to develop U.S. players. In a letter, one of the last things he told his players was that “U.S.A. hockey needs identity. This is our chance to reach out for some.” It was just a matter of time before the Americans had the same number of great players we had.
• • •
The Canada Cup had been an Alan Eagleson project from the very beginning. At one time he was arguably the most powerful guy in hockey. As an agent he represented the best player in the world at the time in Bobby Orr, as an executive he ran the players’ union, and as a businessman he rubbed elbows with the owners. He was so close to the Canada Cup that when the Soviets packed up the trophy to take it home in 1981, Eagleson personally wrestled it back as they were getting on their bus. But complaints by agents Ron Salcer and Ritch Winter and the former director of the NFLPA Ed Garvey led to an investigation by a reporter, Russ Conway, which found that Eagleson had been embezzling money from the NHLPA and the players he represented.
The FBI and the RCMP got involved, and Eagleson was forced to resign from the Hockey Hall of Fame. He lost his Order of Canada. And in 1998, he would be sentenced to eighteen months in prison. As he read out Eagleson’s sentence, the judge said, “Power corrupts.”
So in 1996, as he was being investigated, Eagleson was out of the picture. The Canada Cup became the World Cup of Hockey. The tournament was split into two divisions, with the Czechs, Finns, Germans, and Swedes in a European pool and the Canadians, Americans, Slovaks, and Russians in a North American pool.
This time, we knew we had to be ready for the Americans. And we knew they would be coming for us. I’d just finished the season with Brett Hull in St. Louis and then signed with the Rangers as an unrestricted free agent on July 21, 1996. Both the U.S. team’s captain, Brian Leetch, and their goalie, Mike Richter, were my new teammates. But when you play international hockey, you play for your country. So no matter how much money you make or who you play for professionally, I think most guys will agree that your country comes first.
People ask me who the most underrated hockey player is, and I’d have to say Brian Leetch. Yes, he’s won the Calder (1989) and the Conn Smythe (1994) and the Norris (1992, 1997), but he was such an incredible teammate. With his energy and abilities, along with his willingness to block shots and do everything possible for the team, he had the heart of a lion.
Leetch, who was from Connecticut, had been in the bantam playoffs in Massachusetts, staying at a hotel with his team, when the tape-delayed Miracle game came on TV. He remembers running around the hallways with the other boys, doing what eleven- and twelve-year-olds do at a hotel, when the parents and coaches rounded them up and gave them a little background on the political climate and what a big underdog the U.S. was. Leetch told me that every time the U.S. scored, they’d jump up and down on the beds and throw pillows around.
By the 1996 World Cup, the Americans had guys like Brian who’d played through different Olympic teams and had experience in Canada Cups. Added to that, they had Mike Richter, who’d given their first great goaltending performance since Jimmy Craig. Mike had been the U.S. backup goalie at the ’88 Olympics, and since then he’d continued to get better. He was always searching for a way to get the most out of himself, whether it was through nutrition, or training, or psychology. He’d worked on positive thinking and imagery before it became mainstream for athletes. When the Rangers let John Vanbiesbrouck go to the Florida Panthers in the 1993 expansion draft, via a trade with Vancouver, they’d obviously decided that Mike was their guy. And then of course he won the Cup in ’94. In ’96 he was not only the best goalie in the United States, he was possibly the best in the world.
Team USA added more and more players to the mix, guys who were not just good NHLers. These guys were the stars on their teams. They had speed to burn in Mike Modano and Dougie Weight, and they had a pure sniper in Brett Hull. But they could also play what we thought of as the Canadian game: the Hatcher brothers on defense and guys like Keith Tkachuk, Billy Guerin, and John LeClair up front. And they had a warrior in Chris Chelios. He was the Americans’ answer to Mark Messier. Every game was a Game Seven when Chelly pulled on the Team USA sweater. They didn’t just want to beat us—they wanted to beat us at our own game.
Mind you, we brought a very physical team to that tournament. We had a lot of big boys, led by Eric Lindros, who by then was dominating the NHL, but they were also guys who played to intimidate, like Scott Stevens and Brendan Shanahan. The stage was set for fireworks. And the teams didn’t disappoint. Keith Primeau and Bill Guerin scrapped in the pre-tournament, then went at it again only twenty seconds into the round-robin game, as Claude Lemieux and Keith Tkachuk also squared off. We won Game One of the finals in Philadelphia, but we needed overtime to do it.
Then we lost Game Two. I think it’s safe to say that we outplayed them in Game Three in Montreal. We’d bombarded them in the second period, but Mike Richter kept them in. Then we scored early in the third to go ahead 2–1. But we did not manage the lead well. You could feel the Americans gaining confidence. Brett Hull made a great tip, reaching behind and deflecting the puck down, and so we were 2–2 late into the third. And then less than a minute later Tony Amonte scored again. Suddenly we had to open up to get back into the game, and the Americans buried two more. And all of a sudden it was over. They’d won. It was kind of stunning.
I think what hurt us was losing Mark Messier in the second game. Mark was the guy who brought us all together. He was back in Game Three, but everyone could see he was not 100 percent. Especially in the third period, when we were holding on to a lead, Mark was the kind of guy who could really make a difference.
They scored four goals on us in just over three minutes in the third, and that may be why it felt so disappointing to us. After such a close, hard-fought series, it was tough to see the team come apart like that, even for just a few minutes. I’ve said it before: hockey is a game of emotion. You can let that carry you to victory, but when you lose, it can be crushing. I am not surprised when I see guys cry when they lose a long playoff series. It’s not that they’re feeling sorry for themselves. It’s that the emotion can carry you down as quickly as it carries you up.
But hockey players also learn how to move on. And as disappointing as that loss was, there were a lot of positives in that tournament. The game was growing. It wasn’t just Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the final every year, with Sweden and Czechoslovakia playing for third place. Finland was coming on, and now the United States had beaten a strong Canadian team. Honestly, it would be boring if Canada won every year.
Now we had a true rival right next door. It didn’t feel good at all at the time, but that was a good thing.
Thirty
THE 1998 WINTER OLYMPICS
In 1988, the Winter Olympics were held in Calgary. Canadians couldn’t help thinking about the American home-ice victories in 1960 and 1980. They wanted a “miracle” of their own. But Canada didn’t even finish in the medals (despite having Andy Moog in net).
For years, Canadian hockey fans would watch as everyone else celebrated gold medals and grumble that if only we could send our best players, we would show them how it was done. In 1998, we were going to get our chance. Back in 1992, when the NBA put together a dream team for Barcelona, Summer Olympic basketball changed. And in 1998 at Nagano, Japan, the same thing happened in hockey. The NHL was finally going to allow pros into the Games. We were going to get our Dream Team.
I was probably the last player chosen. After our World Cup loss two years earlier, Team Canada was going with a younger crop. I understood that, but it meant no one really knew where I fit in. I was the old guy. In fact, I ended up playing only one more year of professional hockey after that.
Philadelphia’s GM, Bobby Clarke, was the new guy in charge—and just as Glen Sather had built his Canada Cup teams around the Oilers, Bobby was building his Olympic team around the Flyers: Eric Lindros, Rod Brind’Amour, and Eric Desjardins.
We all met in Vancouver, and then traveled as a team on a charter flight to Japan. Remember the top part of 747s? That’s where all the coaches and managers were holed up. They were bringing the players up one at a time to meet with the guys and to explain the rules, roles, and responsibilities. Assistant coach Wayne Cashman and I were good friends, so he let me know that I’d be playing a little bit on the power play, and was probably sort of going to play on the fourth line, and was I comfortable with that? I basically said, “Yes, that’s how I was raised. You earn your ice time. If I’m playing well I’m sure I’ll get on the ice, so I’m not worried about it.”
There was a lot of chatter in the media and behind the scenes about how the hockey guys were going to get special treatment—that we’d run roughshod over the Olympic Village and stolen the limelight from the other athletes. That didn’t happen. I don’t mean this to sound egotistical, but our team actually helped bring all the Canadian athletes together. In the Canadian common room, we got the CBC TV feed with Ron MacLean and Brian Williams. We made plans with the other athletes to hang out together: “All right, what time are we meeting in the common room? What are we going to watch tonight? Who’s playing ping-pong?” When snowboarder Ross Rebagliati came in after he’d won gold for the giant slalom, Brendan Shanahan was the first guy to jump up and shake his hand. It was such a cool moment—his win was our win. We were one big team for Canada.
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