Thirty Years of the Game at its Best

by Gare Joyce

  We couldn’t have been better prepared than we were before the final. For all of our games, our coaches—Marc Habscheid and his assistants Mike Kelly and Mario

  Durocher—were giving us detailed scouting reports on the opposition. Everything was broken down and we all knew our roles and what we had to do to be successful. The coaches and scouts would be working opponents’ games; at practice we’d watch video. Everything that matters was covered—it was a football mentality, and we dissected opponents as much as possible. It was my first experience with that kind of NHL-quality advance work and I’m sure it was for a lot of the others on our roster. I thought it was great. We were working with an amazing amount of support. And Marc, Mike, and Mario knew everyone on the roster really well. During the summer and in the tryout camp, they were watching us and talking to us all the time, on and off the ice.

  It was a funny thing—we knew how strong the Russians were, but fans probably didn’t. The Russian group played their round-robin games in Cape Breton and there weren’t even highlights of the games on television. They didn’t play in Halifax until their semifinal game against the Finns. But we had seen them on video and we knew what they were capable of.

  The media had focused on Alexander Ovechkin during the tournament and before the final, and that was understandable because everyone had projected him as the first pick in

  the 2004 NHL draft. But as good as he was, Ovechkin skated on the Russians’ third line. They had a lot of big and talented guys up front. And with the scouting reports, we knew what we were up against.

  The Russians just came with so much in the third period. I was playing beside Steve Eminger on the blue line and we had worked together all through the training camp and the tournament. We were on the ice when the Russians scored the tying goal about four minutes into the third period. Their top line, Igor Grigorenko, Andrei Taratukhin, and Alexander Perezhogin, came down on us on a three-on-two and a pass squirted through to Grigorenko, who put it past Fleury. Yuri Trubachev scored what turned out to be the tournament-winning goal with nine minutes left in regulation. Over those last minutes we struggled to get

  Winger Pierre

  -Alexandre Parenteau

  scored 12 minutes into

  the first period of the

  final to give Canada a

  1–0 lead against the

  Russians.

  Pierre-Marc Bouchard

  (left) celebrates after

  setting up Parenteau

  with the opening goal

  in the gold-medal

  game.

  anything going. We just couldn’t mount any offence at all and ended up with only four shots on goal in the third period. That wasn’t going to get it done. Our best wasn’t good enough—that’s all there was to it. It ended up being 3–2, but, really, it didn’t feel like a one-goal game in the third period.

  It was hard to watch the Russians celebrating on the ice after the game and we were hugely disappointed. That said, I still think of the world juniors in Halifax as my best experience in the game. The support we got from the fans there was amazing. I’ve played in front of bigger crowds in the NHL, but none louder or more enthusiastic. Even away from the arena we had a sense of the energy and excitement in the city, and I think our team fed off that. It really didn’t begin and end in Halifax. Everyone talks about how this team comes together over a few weeks for the tournament, but that’s not the whole story. I had played with Steve Eminger, Derek Roy, and others with the Ontario under-17 team back in 2000. I had played with a bunch of guys who were on our roster at the summer under-18 tournament. And there was the summer development camp. You get to know the other players pretty well over the course of that time, and even those players who come up from other parts of the country work within the same sort of system. You don’t start preparing for

  this tournament in the tryout camp. The process begins when you get the call for the under-17s. And it doesn’t end at the tournament either. I’ve stayed in touch with a lot of the players on that team—any time we’ve played against each other in the pros we’ve met up in the hallways of the arena after the game. It’s a different feeling than you might get with teammates from the pros. With those teammates you may never have been part of something big. But in the Program of Excellence, all of us who played shared something very special. We played for our country, and had the added bonus of playing in our country. It’s maybe a little like being war veterans—at the risk of sounding overdramatic: we went to war. Everyone in that room before the third period of the final knew that we would be tested like never before. We went through something many people can only imagine. Words on a page can’t express the tension we were feeling at that moment or the disappointment of watching the Russians come away with their gold medals. I’ve been lucky enough to play for the Canadian team that’s gone to the Spengler Cup the last couple of years. Any time Hockey Canada calls, I’ll answer.

  Matt Stajan and other

  Canadian forwards

  struggled to skate

  through the stronger

  Russians. Even though

  the Canadians carried

  a one-goal lead into

  the third period, they

  knew the Russians

  were surging.

  Standing beside a

  disappointed Derek

  Meech during the

  medal presentation

  after the gold-medal

  game, Marc-André

  Fleury was for the

  second year in a row

  the most prominent

  player for the

  Canadian juniors,

  albeit for the most

  heartbreaking reason.

  January 5, 2004, is a day that Marc-André Fleury would like to forget. That’s the day Canada’s star goalie went between the pipes in the WJC gold-medal game against the United States. More than that day or that game, there was a moment, a play in the third period—something that seemed routine, even inconsequential in the lead-up; something that was over in a split second. That moment is what the goaltender wishes he could erase from his bank of memories. Many Canadian hockey fans feel that way, too. So do all of Fleury’s teammates who were on the ice, or on the bench, in Helsinki at that moment. But it haunts Fleury like no one else.

  The funny thing is, people seem to have forgotten everything leading up to the play. Let me refresh your memory and throw that awful moment into context.

  At the beginning of the third period, the Canadian team, under the guidance of head coach Mario Durocher, was ahead 3–1 over the United States in the final game thanks to two goals by Nigel Dawes and one by Anthony Stewart. Canada seemed to be in complete control of the situation and on its way to winning its first WJC gold medal since 1997. Nothing should have been taken for granted—Canada had seen third-period leads evaporate during the final games of the previous two tournaments.

  Still, neither of those teams had looked as dominant as this one. No team they had played in the tournament had come within three goals of Team Canada,

  With a 3–1 lead going

  into the third period

  of the championship

  game against the

  United States, it

  looked like Fleury

  and his teammates

  were going to bring

  gold medals back to

  Canada for the first

  time since 1997.

  and they were coming off a 7–1 thrashing of the Czechs in the semi-finals. Though the Americans had been medal favourites heading into the tournament, in Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, Dion Phaneuf, Brent Seabrook, Ryan Getzlaf, and of course Sidney Crosby, the Canadian team was loaded with guys who could step right into the NHL. If there was one thing these players should have had after two periods, it was confidence.

  “I remember that the mood was calm in the locker room in the second intermission,” said Durocher, who had been an assistant coach under Marc Habscheid at th
e 2003 championship in Halifax 12 months earlier. “The only thing that we reminded the players, especially our defencemen, was to be on the lookout for the stretch pass beyond the red line, a rule with which our players weren’t familiar at the time compared to the American university players.”

  No one expected what happened next to the Canadian squad, especially to the 19-year-old Fleury. The Pittsburgh Penguins had drafted him with the first overall pick largely based on his impressive performance as an underager in Halifax the year before. The Penguins then tried to rush Fleury onto the NHL roster, where the youngster sometimes struggled, in the fall of ‘03. As the

  promising young star started to fade in the big league, the Penguins ended up loaning him to the WJC team in the hope of getting him work and boosting his confidence.

  And it seemed to be working. Playing against the best junior-aged players in the world, Team Canada had allowed only five goals in the five games heading into the final against the Americans. And after two periods, the much-touted Americans had managed only one.

  In the Americans’ dressing room before the third period, coach Mike Eaves was trying to rally his squad, and looking for offence. He decided to shuffle his lines in the last frame, putting Ryan Kesler with Zach Parise and Steve Werner on his top line. Eaves’s second line would feature his son, Patrick, along with Drew Stafford and Patrick O’Sullivan.

  The changes paid immediate dividends.

  Less than five minutes into the third, O’Sullivan scored on Fleury, and reduced the lead to one goal.

  A little more than two minutes later, Ryan Kesler finished off a play started by defenceman Dan Richmond—one of the long stretch passes the Canadian coaches had warned their players about in the intermission.

  Panic then set into the Canadians’ play with the score suddenly tied at three.

  “Marc-André became extremely nervous, much like every member of our defensive squad,” Durocher said. “I thought of taking a time out after the third American goal in order to calm things down, but a commercial break was imminent and I thought that we would be able to regain our composure then. I wanted to keep my time out for the end of the game in case we needed it.”

  If he had a chance to do it over again, Durocher would almost certainly have done it differently.

  The United States continued to pressure the Canadian defence, and then—with 5:12 to go in the third period—came the play, the one that haunts the coach and his players. And no one more than Marc-André Fleury.

  With the puck lying near the crease, and open ice in front of him, Fleury made what looked like the safe play—he leaned into a shot to fire the puck out of the Canadian end. But instead of clearing the zone, the puck hit defenceman Braydon Coburn in the chest.

  Then, with Fleury out of position at the top of the crease, and his defencemen too far away, the team could only watch helplessly as the puck somehow bounced into the net.

  Hockey is a game of bounces, and this one cost Canada a gold medal.

  Patrick O’Sullivan was credited with the goal and suddenly the Americans were leading 4–3, their first lead of the game. O’Sullivan would never score a bigger goal with less effort.

  Two photos from the

  shocking sequence

  on the Americans’

  winning goal in the

  gold-medal game:

  Marc-André Fleury

  came out his crease

  and tried to clear the

  puck, but it bounced

  off defenceman

  Braydon Coburn.

  Despite his best

  efforts, the goaltender

  could only helplessly

  watch the puck roll

  across the goal line.

  “Marc-André and I were confused as to who should play the puck,” said Coburn after the game. “I thought that he wanted to play the puck but he only wanted to clear it away from the front on the net.”

  Over the last five minutes of regulation, the Canadians tried desperately to find a tying goal but time wound down. For the first time in WJC history, the United States had won gold.

  After the game, Marc-André Fleury was inconsolable. He felt that he had let the entire team down after it had played brilliantly throughout the tournament. In the seven years since, Fleury has won a Stanley Cup and an Olympic gold, yet the memory of Helsinki is still clearly painful. And that’s perfectly understandable: This had been the biggest game of his life up to that point, a chance to make good after carrying a team that was just 20 minutes away from gold the year before. “That play is now part of hockey history,” Fleury said. “Every time a similar situation arises, TSN brings out the footage as part of a montage of the worst blunders. I have no choice but to live with it for the rest of my career.”

  The hard times for the teenager from Sorel, Quebec, didn’t start or end there. After the WJC tournament, Fleury returned to the Penguins. Later that month, after 12 losses in his last 13 NHL games, Fleury was reassigned to the

  Through two periods,

  Fleury and his

  teammates were

  almost unchallenged,

  thoroughly outplaying

  a U.S. team that

  featured Ryan Kesler.

  The only time the

  Canadians trailed in

  Helsinki was during

  the last 5:02 of the

  gold-medal game.

  Jeff Tambellini

  (number 19) and

  captain Daniel Paille

  create havoc in

  front of American

  goaltender Al

  Montoya.

  Cape Breton Screaming Eagles. Upon his return to the junior ranks, Fleury had a good run, going 8-1-2. “I always believed in Marc-André Fleury,” said Pascal Vincent, his coach at the time. “He was so good and he had done so much for us since the age of 16 that I knew he would bounce back.”

  However, during the playoffs, Fleury faltered—and, after three straight losses to Chicoutimi, Vincent had to give the No. 1 job to Martin Houle. So a goaltender who had been Canada’s No. 1 for the last two WJCs ended his junior career sitting at the end of the bench at the Centre 200 in Sydney, Nova Scotia. The Screaming Eagles, who had finished second overall with 103 points, lost in five games to the Saguenéens, who had ended the season 28 points behind them in the standings.

  It should have been the end of the torment for Fleury, but it didn’t even stop there. Pittsburgh assigned Fleury to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the American Hockey League, but coach Michel Therrien had him start only one game in the playoffs, a game that he lost.

  If 2004 had been the ruin of Marc-André Fleury, it would have seemed cruel, if not tragic. Eventually, though, Fleury got his game back on the rails and more. Not only would he go on to win a Stanley Cup with the Penguins, but it was his incredible, acrobatic save on Detroit’s Nicklas Lidstrom in the dwindling moments of Game 7 that preserved Pittsburgh’s one-goal lead and won them the Cup. It was the kind of heroic save goalies dream of making, at the biggest moment of his career and the perfect time for his team.

  If anything could erase the memory of that botched clearing attempt in 2004, it was that save. Mario Durocher thought Fleury took too much blame back in Helsinki. “Sidney Crosby and Ryan Getzlaf both missed great opportunities to put the game out of reach of the Americans at the beginning of the third period,” he said. “When the score was 3–1, those goals would have broken the Americans’ back.”

  There were so many good things that came out of the 2004 WJC. Jeff Carter and Dion Phaneuf were named to the tournament’s all-star team and Nigel Dawes ended up the top scorer with six goals and five assists. In six games in Helsinki, Canada scored 35 goals and allowed only nine. During those six games, Mario Durocher’s team trailed during only eight minutes and 42 seconds. All that is easy to forget.

  What people remember is what still weighs most heavily on the mind of the goaltender who watched helplessly when his clearing attempt ended
up in the back of his own net. You needn’t shed a tear for Fleury, though. There had been many remarkable performances by goaltenders en route to the world junior championships—by Jimmy Waite, Manny Fernandez, Marc Denis, and José Théodore, among others. In the narrowest of victories they managed to avoid the unlucky bounce that burned Fleury. In his two world championship tournaments Fleury had come away with silver, steeping himself in glory but for that awful moment. The other goaltenders with whom he’ll be compared do have gold medals, but he alone has a Stanley Cup ring.

  Corey Perry had doubts

  about winning a place

  on the Canadian roster.

  He ended up playing on

  the wing beside the two

  best-known players

  in the lineup: Sidney

  Crosby and Patrice

  Bergeron.

  It wasn’t exactly a secret at the time, but Corey Perry knew the makings of something special were there with Team Canada at the 2005 WJC. He just didn’t know if he’d be a part of it.

  Starting with the late-summer camp in Calgary, Perry, along with the other invitees, all fought for a spot on the deepest, most talented Canadian team in the history of the world junior championship. That team was stocked with the players from the impossibly rich 2003 draft, many of whom had played for Canada in the ‘04 tournament in Helsinki. The NHL lockout that year ensured half a dozen players who’d normally be playing in The Show—centre Patrice Bergeron had already played a full season with the Boston Bruins, for pity’s sake—would be made available to Team Canada.

  True, Perry had some credentials of his own. He was coming off a 113-point season with the London Knights, he’d been a first-rounder in that ‘03 draft, and he’d been a late cut of the ‘04 team. But all that résumé earned him was an invitation to the selection camp in Winnipeg—which is why, when the phone rang on cut-down day, Perry’s first thought was, “This can’t be happening again.”