by Gare Joyce
Turned out it wasn’t. Turned out Perry would play a role on the best-ever team in the history of the WJC.
Centre Mike Richards
played with a physi-
cal edge that keyed
Canada’s dominance
of the field leading up
to the medal round.
But there was a price to pay.
“I thought I was getting cut again,” says Perry. “Then [head coach Brent Sutter] called and said, ‘Do you want to be the 13th forward? If you do, you have to cut your hair.’
“That was a sacrifice I was willing to make.”
It wouldn’t be the last time someone took one for that team.
The kids from Grand Forks have since morphed into a collection of the game’s greatest stars—and, less than a decade after their starring turn in North Dakota, their accomplishments continue to stagger. Six players from Sutter’s team would win a gold medal with Team Canada at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The graduates included Sidney Crosby, generally regarded as the game’s greatest all-around player; Perry and Ryan Getzlaf, who’d win the Stanley Cup in Anaheim as 22-year-olds; and Mike Richards and
Jeff Carter, who’d help form the nucleus of the Philadelphia Flyers that made the Stanley Cup final in 2010. The blue line featured Shea Weber, Dion Phaneuf, Brent Seabrook, and Braydon Coburn. Six of the players on that roster went on to become captains of their NHL teams. As a group, they were talented. They were mature. They were focused. And, for all that, their greatest achievement was not in meeting the great expectations which had been placed on them.
It was in exceeding them.
“The biggest thing is we started in August with a highly competitive camp,” said Sutter. “There was one goal and one goal only and that was to be a totally dominant team. We wanted to make sure the players understood the coaches were very serious about the way we wanted them to play. They got the message and it just carried on from there.”
And everyone connected with that team shared the feeling.
“We were kids but you kind of realized what we had,” said Perry. “That was a stacked team.
“We had that feeling going into every game. Brent had a game plan for us in every game and we didn’t take anyone lightly. We didn’t want to be scored
on. That was our whole mindset. Grind things out. Then guys started scoring. We were just running teams out. That was the kind of team we were.”
Perry, as things transpired, had an interesting time of it all the way around with that team. That year, Team Canada featured 12 veterans from the ‘04 team that lost the gold medal in Helsinki to the United States on Marc-André Fleury’s infamous clearing gaffe late in the third period. Canada had also gone seven years without a gold medal, and that drought, coupled with the returnees, ensured motivation wouldn’t be a problem.
Then again, this group didn’t need a lot of help in that department. At the August camp in Calgary, Sutter divided the players into two teams, then watched as Phaneuf and Colin Fraser, who were teammates with the Red Deer Rebels, dropped their gloves in one of the first scrimmages.
“That’s the kind of team it was,” the coach said.
By the time the December selection camp rolled around in Winnipeg, the competition was even more fierce and Perry found himself battling a handful of players, including Eric Fehr of the Brandon Wheat Kings, for the final forward spot. In that final inter-squad game Perry scored three goals, which punched his
The Canadian blue-
liners didn’t just shut
down opposing
forwards—they
punished other teams
for simply trespassing.
Here, Dion Phaneuf
decks a Swedish
forward in the opening
round.
Patrice Bergeron was
in an unprecedented
position in Fargo: He
made his debut in
the WJC after having
played a full season
with the Boston Bruins
and having won a gold
medal at the senior
men’s world champi-
onships in 2004.
ticket for Grand Forks. In the pre-tournament schedule, he then received a battlefield promotion when Jeremy Colliton, a rugged, two-way winger with the Prince Albert Raiders, suffered a knee injury. Colliton would come back and play one game for the maple leaf in Grand Forks before he was scratched from the tournament. Perry would move up and take his place.
His linemates? Crosby and Bergeron.
“You couldn’t ask for much more than that,” he says.
“Through that process there were a couple of players who were right there,” said Sutter. “It came down to Corey and a couple of others in the last exhibition and Corey just took it to another level.”
Which also pretty much describes what happened with the team.
Following the selection camp, the group repaired to the Manitoba resort town of Gimli, where they celebrated Christmas at the home of former NHLer Ted Irvine. Irvine, as it turned out, is the father of professional wrestler Chris Jericho, and Jericho and some of his wrestling colleagues made a video wishing the junior team good luck.
Thus fortified, the team travelled to Grand Forks and, in their four round-robin games, they beat, in order, Slovakia, Sweden, Germany, and Finland by a combined score of 32–5. Perry, Bergeron, and Crosby would form the nominal
No. 1 line, but the dropoff from their unit to the rest of the lineup was imperceptible. Getzlaf centred a line with Carter and Andrew Ladd. Richards played with Anthony Stewart and a bit with Nigel Dawes. The fourth line, such as it was, consisted of Stephen Dixon, Clarke MacArthur, and Fraser and they played a huge role throughout the tournament.
“I never looked at who was our 13th forward or our first line,” said Sutter. “I looked at it as we had a unique group and they were going to determine who was going to play and how much they were going to play.
“They just kept getting better and better. It was exciting to watch. We didn’t match lines too much. On that team, we didn’t have to.”
Still, the Perry-Bergeron-Crosby line led the way, offensively at least. Bergeron topped the team in scoring, Crosby was second in goals with six, and Perry recorded seven points in the six games. Bergeron and Crosby remain close friends from that experience.
“Good players don’t always play well together,” said Perry. “But we just clicked and it happened pretty quickly.”
Following the round robin, Canada would get its biggest scare of the tournament, relatively speaking, in the semifinal game with a 3–1 win over the Czech Republic. But even that score was a tad misleading. Czech goalie Marek Schwarz, the tournament’s all-star ‘keeper, stopped 39 of the 42 shots sent his way while his teammates mustered a puny 11 shots at Canadian goalie Jeff Glass. (It became a running joke in Grand Forks when Hockey Canada officials brought Glass out for post-game media scrums. By the end of each night he’d faced more hard questions than he had testing shots.) The win over the Czechs set up the gold-medal game against the Russians. Again, motivation wouldn’t be an issue.
The Russians were led by Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin, who had been taken first and second respectively in the 2004 draft. They had also dismantled a strong American team—Ryan Suter, Drew Stafford, Phil Kessel, Ryan Callahan—7–2 in their semifinal game.
Before the gold-medal game, Ovechkin, who was playing in his third WJC, heard his name mentioned as he walked by a TV monitor.
“What are they saying?” he asked a media type.
“They’re saying Canada is going to play the Bergeron line against you with Phaneuf and Weber,” Ovechkin was told. “Good luck,” he sneered.
Luck, however, was the last thing the Canadians needed. Luck was something Ovechkin was going to run out of before the first intermission
By the time the final rolled around, Grand Forks had almost become an unofficial Canadian city. Hocke
y-mad fans from Winnipeg and environs had made the three-hour trek down the highway for the entire tournament, making each
Corey Perry, here skat-
ing against Germany,
says head coach Brent
Sutter kept the team
“on an even keel and
made sure everyone
checked their ego at
the door.” Ego might
have been the only
thing that could have
stopped the 2005 team.
Canadian contest a virtual home game. The final would be played in front of another rabid, red-clad sellout crowd of just under 11,000 at the magnificent Ralph Engelstad Arena.
They got their money’s worth. In the first period, Ovechkin was hit by, in order, Crosby, Phaneuf, Richards, and Bergeron. He then came out for one shift in the second period before he excused himself for the evening.
Getzlaf, meanwhile, scored 51 seconds in and the Canadians drove Russian starter Anton Khudobin from the game early in the second period. The Canadians, in fact, were leading 6–1 midway through the second when they finally took their foot off the gas.
That suited the Russians, who were playing like they wanted the night to end as quickly as possible. When they’d won gold in Halifax two years earlier, the Russians trash-talked the host team during and after the final. Ovechkin and his teammates would go out quietly and peacefully this time.
“We went out and dominated physically,” said Perry. “Guys knew what they wanted and we didn’t stop. We just kept going and going.” Then the final horn went. Then it all started to sink in.
The Canadians had done to the tournament field what Genghis Khan did to Asia Minor. Over the six games of the tournament they outscored their opposition 41–7, allowing an average of 17 shots on goal per game in the process. They took apart the mighty Russians, holding Ovechkin and Malkin off the scoresheet while allowing just 11 shots on goal over the first two periods. They were never seriously challenged in the gold-medal game or the tournament. They set out on a mission. The mission was accomplished to the fullest extent possible.
“The kids were focused and they were prepared,” said Sutter. “They just wanted to get better and it was great to watch them come to the rink every day. They knew what they wanted.”
OK, this team didn’t exactly need a master coaching job, but Sutter laid out a plan for them four months before the tournament and received the maximum buy-in from every player on the roster.
“He kept on us,” said Perry. “He didn’t want our heads to get too big. He kept us on an even keel and made sure everyone checked their ego at the door and played for their country, not for themselves. He’s a tough guy to play for but he gets the best out of players.”
And there was a lot to get out of that group. Bergeron, who led Canada and the tournament in scoring with 13 points, was named the tournament MVP but it could have gone to Carter, who had seven goals, or Getzlaf, who had 12 points and played a huge two-way game. Phaneuf, Carter, and Bergeron were named to the tournament all-star game. Crosby could have been named. Weber didn’t record a point but played with Phaneuf on the fearsome shutdown pairing. And, for all that, the most impressive thing about this team was the whole was still greater than the sum of those considerable parts.
The real measure of the team, moreover, is still being counted. The next season, 12 of Sutter’s players would step into the NHL. And no one imagines that the legacy of this team ended in Vancouver, when Olympic golds were draped around the necks of Crosby, Bergeron, Richards, Weber, Seabrook, and Perry. No other team so fully lived up to the Program of Excellence’s central objectives: in the short run, to win the world junior championships, and in the long run, to prepare the country’s best players to compete in major international tournaments, the Olympics foremost among them.
“It’s crazy when you look at the guys on that team and what they’ve been able to do at a young age,” said Perry.
Crazy? Maybe. But what that team accomplished in Grand Forks was real enough.
Luc Bourdon
(pictured at the 2008
tournament) heard
cheers at Vancouver’s
GM Place, the
arena where he had
hoped to play for the
Canucks.
As is often the case with close friends, the pair was a study in contrasts.
Kris Letang was a city kid from Montreal. Luc Bourdon was from the tiny fishing community of Shippagan on New Brunswick’s northeast coast. Letang was a little more worldly; a little more certain of himself and his place. Bourdon, for his part, was just taking his first steps into the bigger world and learning about the possibilities that awaited.
On the ice it was a similar story. Letang was an undersized defenceman who compensated for his lack of mass with skill and an outsized hockey sense. Bourdon was a thoroughbred, a size-and-speed blueliner who played on instinct and impulse.
“When he hit guys, he’d just destroy them,” says Letang.
So, superficially at least, they didn’t have a lot in common. But it was a funny thing. From the moment they met at a summer camp in 2004, before they joined the Val-d’Or Foreurs, Letang and Bourdon discovered something about each other that made all their differences seem irrelevant.
“We were great friends from the first time we met and it grew,” says Letang. “We used to hang out after every practice. We had races. We shot pucks. We tried to push each other. That’s the way I remember Luc: how passionate he was; how much he loved the game and I was the same way.”
But Letang has another memory of his friend; a memory so pure and powerful that it gives him comfort when he thinks about Bourdon, who died in a motorcycle accident near his hometown on May 29, 2008. At the 2006 world junior championship in Vancouver, they were part of a Team Canada that put together one of the most improbable runs in this country’s history at the WJC. A year after a super team had demolished the field in Grand Forks on the way to a gold, head coach Brent Sutter would mould a far-less-celebrated group of players into a team that didn’t have the star power of the ‘05 squad but was just as efficient.
Canada would win all six tournament games, blasting Russia and Evgeni Malkin 5–0 in the final to capture gold before a sellout crowd of 18,000-plus at GM Place.
Letang and Bourdon played every game in that tournament on the same defensive pairing. They were also on the ice together when the final horn sounded in the gold-medal game; friends and teammates forever. It’s not an aspect of the Program of Excellence that draws cheers or shows up in newspapers or on sports-casts, but it’s something that looms large for players in every lineup: when a team is brought together, the seeds of friendship are planted. The players share a special experience—living and playing together for a couple weeks in the summer, then gathering again in December for the most important games of their career to that point.
“It was just unbelievable,” says Letang. “Everything. The crowd, the emotion. And I was able to share it with my friend.”
“He had this charisma about him,” Sutter says of Bourdon. “He was intense but he was also loose and guys were drawn to that. It was a terrible, terrible thing that happened. He had such a tremendous life ahead of him.”
________
If ever a team was a reflection of its coach, it was the Canadian entry at the ‘06 WJC. The year before Sutter had won with a group that included, among others, Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, Shea Weber, Dion Phaneuf, and Brent Seabrook. That team simply required a coach who could open the door to the players’ bench. The ‘06 team was different.
For starters, there was just one returning player—defenceman Cam Barker, who’d missed the latter stages of the Grand Forks tournament with mononucleosis. Many on the team were unproven and unheralded. There was no go-to star, no elite first line. There were no big scorers, no big reputations. There was, however, balance and quality throughout the lineup, and if Sutter did
n’t have a team that would overwhelm with firepower, he did have one that could wear down the opposition through its diligence and determination.
In the end, it was the perfect Sutter team—a “wolf pack” that was committed to the greater good and the coach’s vision.
“They didn’t have as much talent but our work ethic and leadership was just as strong [as the ‘05 team],” Sutter says. “It was exactly the same game plan. The guys were on a mission. They wanted to be as good as the team in ‘05. They wanted to be as dominant.”
And if they didn’t earn any style points along the way, they met their goal. The Canadians would surrender just six goals in the tournament, shutting out Finland in the semifinal and the Russians in the gold-medal game. Goalie Justin Pogge, who was something of a surprise selection
over Carey Price before the tournament, was the team’s MVP for the tournament, but the larger story was the totality of Canada’s team game and the work of the head coach.
“A lot of coaches could have won [with the ‘05 team],” Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson said after the win over the Russians. “There aren’t a lot of coaches who could have won with this team.”
If there was a player who epitomized Sutter’s grand plan it was forward Steve Downie, a fireplug who’d been a late invite to the Team Canada summer camp and who carried some baggage on to the squad. The season before, Downie had been involved in a much-publicized fight with Windsor Spitfires teammate Akim Aliu over a hazing incident. That summer he’d also been a first-round selection of the Philadelphia Flyers, and when Downie arrived at the camp, Sutter explained the way things would be on his team.
“Obviously there was so much going on with Steve,” says Sutter. “Basically it was just getting him into a situation where he was really focused. I never had an issue with his emotional level. I just wanted him disciplined. We spent time with him on a daily basis and he was huge for us.”