From The Archive: Total Domination

Welcome to this edition of "From The Archive". In this recurring series, we open The Hockey News' vault and display some of the top Vancouver Canucks related articles from the past. Today's article is Olympic-themed and comes from a special commemorative issue where Ken Campbell wrote about Canada's Gold Medal victory in 2014.

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SOCHI – Since women and the NHL started participating in the Olympics, Canada has won 70 percent of the gold medals. All in all, it’s a remarkable achievement, even for a country that takes the sport as seriously as Canada does.

The Netherlands has speed skating. Germany has bobsled. And Canada has hockey.

Winner of double gold at each of the past two Olympics, Canada has dominated best-on-best competition. And it should. But you have to wonder: is there really is something in the Canadian DNA that translated into gold medals at these Olympics tournaments?

Of course not. But sometimes it makes you think so. In the women’s gold medal game, Canada looked dead in the water, down two goals with four minutes remaining to a United States team that was cruising. Two goals and an overtime winner later, Canada was celebrating its fourth straight title. “I do think we have a mental edge when it comes down to playing in big games,” says Hayley Wickenheiser. “In our room, we just really believe we can win, no matter what. I’ve been in situations where we’ve won every game going into the final and lost every game (against the U.S.).

“We just think that it all doesn’t matter.”

That is probably the biggest reason for the men’s success – it didn’t seem to matter to anyone on the team that it had trouble scoring goals. That was largely because Canada spent six games with so much zone time and puck possession that the hockey analytics guys must have been jumping with glee around their mothers’ basements. It didn’t matter to Team Canada that Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Rick Nash and Corey Perry had combined for zero goals going into the gold medal game. All that mattered was winning and the Canadians were doing that.

This is the most dominant team Canada has ever produced in the modern era in any tournament at any level. In 1924, the first time hockey was played at the Winter Olympics, the University of Toronto Grads outscored their opponents 132-3. A little more firepower, it seems, on that team than the one that took gold 90 years later. But the competition was so skewed in Canada’s favor and other countries were so much in their infancy no valid comparison can be made.

This was a team full of NHL superstars, yet all of them managed to park their egos for two weeks in the name of winning a tournament. It was extremely well coached and well prepared. It had a D-corps that was so good last year’s Norris Trophy winner, P.K. Subban, played all of 11:41 in the tournament. It was so deep last year’s leading scorer in the NHL, Martin St-Louis, couldn’t land a gig as a regular winger.

There are many things to take away from these Olympic tourna-ments. On an individual level, Teemu Selanne gave the hockey world one last tug at its heartstrings, winning a bronze medal and being named most valuable player. Team-wise, it’s difficult to choose between the Latvians and Slovenians for the darling of the event, since both made the quarterfinals when they weren’t even supposed to win a game.

On the downside, it will be remembered for the poor play of the Russians, too many games with too few goals and for the colossal embarrassment that was Nicklas Backstrom’s expulsion, when he failed a doping test for taking an allergy medication and had to miss the gold medal game for Sweden.

But most of all it will be remembered for Canada’s dominance. If you argue the men’s and women’s teams are the best the country has ever produced, you won’t get a word of dissent from this corner.

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