MILAN — This hockey team so many call the best they’ve ever seen, they never stopped believing.
But they will concede they flew a little close to the sun.
“You look down the bench, and you see the players we have on our team, and you know no one’s going to quit, and we have a great chance of coming back,” says Drew Doughty, calmed by two Stanley Cups and two Olympic gold medals, and now a heart-in-throat 4-3 overtime thriller over Czechia as he goes for three.
“But as the time keeps ticking, you’re like: Holy f—… this isn’t ideal. But I never stopped believing. And look what happened.”
Uh, yeah, this was less than ideal.
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Team Canada — the juggernaut that steamrolled through the preliminary tournament at Milano Santagiulia Arena — hadn’t trailed in a best-on-best Olympics since 2010 in Vancouver.
Yet here they were, first down 2-1 and now down 3-2 against an inspired and injury-causing Czech side that had found its A game against the Group A champs.
Only three minutes and 27 seconds stood between the underdogs and the Czechs’ greatest upset since Wayne Gretzky (who was in the building Wednesday) got skipped over in the shootout.
“I mean, I’ve been in Game 7 OT before,” Canada’s Thomas Harley said. “(This) was more stressful.”
Stressful because the sleepy Czechs, skating on fire and fumes after Tuesday’s survival match over Denmark, had spread their weapons and checked with precision. They had made good on their clean looks and began to shell up to kill clock and Canadian dreams.
“This might be the best team ever,” Czech sniper David Pastrnak had warned of Canada. “Let’s put the respect aside a little bit and try to take their game to them. Offensively, their power is incredible.
“You know, we have nothing to lose. So, we’re gonna go out there and leave it all out there.”
But stressful, too, because today’s villain, Radko Gudas, had taken out Canada’s heart-and soul captain, Sidney Crosby, halfway through with a right-leg-crunching hit.
In pain and unable to return in the third period, Crosby addressed his teammates at intermission: “Go get it, boys.”
Do it for Sid.
Canada wanted to deliver for the guy who has delivered so much to it.
“We didn’t want this to be Sid’s last game at this Olympics,” coach Jon Cooper said.
Memories of Nagano 1998 danced in the ether.
A nation clenched.
“Everybody knows how big these games are, how important they are, especially when you’re playing the Czechs. They’re known for really cherishing these opportunities, and they love playing in world tournaments more than anybody,” Brad Marchand said. “We knew they were going to come out extremely hard. And they did.”
Whooped by Canada 5-0 last week — only because, Martin Necas quipped, “We knew we’re not going to win two in a row against Canada” — the Czechs submitted their best effort of these Winter Games.
“We know we can play with anybody and showed that today. That was our best game,” Gudas said. “We battled for each other, we skated for each other, we laid our body on the line for each other.”
The Canadians needed a dominant second period — outshooting the underdogs 17-5 in the frame — and a power-play conversion (Celebrini to McDavid to Nathan MacKinnon) just to tie the thing once.
And after Ondrej Palat’s controversial go-ahead snipe off a late rush (more on that below), they were desperate for more magic.
Not ideal. Yet, no panic.
“The group is super comfortable being uncomfortable,” Cooper said of his star-studded bench. “It was calm. Everybody had complete faith in whoever was going over the boards. It just felt it was like a matter of time. It was going to happen.”
“We know what we have in this room,” Macklin Celebrini added. “But at the end of the day, it’s a one-game knockout. One mistake can ruin it all.”
Seconds drained.
“Our country needed a goal. Nick Suzuki answered,” Cooper said.
Suzuki’s hard forecheck and ensuing slot tip of a Devon Toews point shot gave his nation new life.
A breath.
“Just kind of a lot of joy,” Suzuki said. “I wanted to do something to help the team, so it was obviously a big goal to tie it up and send it to overtime.”
Which goal was bigger, Nick, yours or Mitch Marner’s?
“Definitely Mitch.”
Marner had delivered a three-on-three OT dagger once before draped in this red sweater. At the 4 Nations Face-Off over Sweden. But Marner’s dance and dangle through three Czech defenders and nifty far-side backhand past a locked-in Lukas Dostal has supplanted 2025’s heroics as the new Biggest Goal of His Life.
“Same kind of emotions. Just shock and excitement and something really cool,” Marner said. “Now it’s even more special. I have my son (Miles) here with me. He’s pretty young (nine months). He probably won’t remember. He’s probably sleeping on Mom. But it’ll be something cool to look back at one day with him and just kind of show him where he was and what he was doing in this moment.”
“I thought he wasn’t a big-game player,” Brandon Hagel teased. “But he just showed the world.”
Marner describes this quarterfinal’s emotions as a “roller coaster ride, ups and downs,” but one built on trust. In goalie Jordan Binnington, who stoned Necas on a clear breakaway. In Suzuki, filling in at centre for Crosby. In a relief and a joy and a victory that was always waiting around the corner.
“I can’t even explain a feeling like that,” Doughty said. “Even before he did score, I had flashbacks of 4 Nations, and was like, ‘Oh, something could happen here.’ And, man, it’s a sick goal.”
Marchand describes Marner’s moment as “massive relief” and “extreme excitement” wrapped into one.
“In these tournaments, it can end on a bounce. It’s stressful, but it’s exciting,” Marchand said. “We won our first games 5-0, 5-1, 10-2. So, it’s good to have a little adversity and keep us a little more humble, maybe.”
Yes, adversity has now smacked the Canadians as hard as an angry Gudas. Crosby’s status for Friday’s game is unknown.
As the tournament’s top seed, Canada will face the lowest remaining seed in the semifinal.
If Sweden (7) defeats the U.S. (2) Wednesday night, that would be the Swedes. If Team USA advances, Canada gets Finland (4), who rallied to defeat Switzerland (5) in another OT thriller.
The Finns could very well provide a test just as stiff as those relentless Czechs.
“They came in here saying, Canada ain’t beating us twice — and they were nearly right,” Cooper said.
“This is the Olympic Games. This is the best of the best. This is why all the players want to come to this, because they want to show who they are, and they want to flex. And if you think you’re rolling through this tournament, you’re sorely mistaken.
“Yes, we like the fact that we won the first three games and didn’t have to play for the qualification game. Hell, yeah. But that doesn’t mean you’re gonna keep on winning. It doesn’t mean because you got the Maple Leaf on your jersey that, ‘Hey, oh my gosh, you’re gonna be first.’ You’ve got to work to that. And the guys in there know it.”
Fox’s Fast Five
• Celebrini continues to wow.
He became the first teenager to score in an elimination game in a best-on-best tournament, then got promoted to the top power-play unit in Crosby’s absence.
He assisted on two more, including Marner’s winner, picking up his ninth point and surpassing Evgeni Malkin (Russia, 2006) for most points by a teenager in an NHL-participation Olympics.
As the dust settles on Celebrini’s three-point night, only his centreman, Connor McDavid, stands ahead of him in Olympic scoring.
• Marner takes us through the biggest goal of his life:
“Just saw Mack going up the ice with it, and then was debating on staying high by the blue line or coming back. Ultimately tried to come back and just give him a spot if he wanted to drop it or not.
“He did, and then from that point on just tried to get the blue line, tried to see what my options were, see if I could kick it out to him and then just saw a little bit of a hole and a gap there that I was lucky enough to shoot through. Then, from that point on, just tried to get it in a spot that I could go kind of in and out with and get it off my stick far side.
“Adrenaline. Trust in your skillsets, I guess, that you work on so hard throughout the summer. You just trust yourself to make a play there. Lucky enough, I was able to.”
• Cooper was asked about Czechia having too many men on the ice during Ondrej Palat’s 3-2 go-ahead goal — which was celebrated by six men.
The coach smiled and walked away without a word.
• Czech starter Lukas Dostal didn’t blink about the opportunity to take the crease less than 24 hours after defeating Denmark Tuesday.
“Playing in Europe before, we always played back-to-back. It was always Friday-Saturday or Saturday-Sunday. So, I have no problem with playing back-to-backs,” the goalie stated.
What about at the NHL level, though?
“Actually, this season, I got pulled against Dallas in the middle of the game (an 8-3 loss on Dec. 20),” the Anaheim Ducks star said. “I walked to the tunnel and Q told me, ‘Hey, be ready for tomorrow. So, we played back-to-back (versus Columbus), and then we won the game.”
• Juraj Slafkovsky has led his tiny country back to the Olympic semifinal. He compared the accomplishment to the bronze medal Slovakia won in Beijing, sans NHLers.
“It’s probably 100 times better,” Slafkovsky said. “You’ve got the best players over here, and we managed to come here and go to the semifinals. It’s big for me, big for our country, big for every supporter we have.”
Added Erik Cernak: “Amazing. Before the tournament, if we would say we’re gonna make semifinals, probably people would laugh at you. But we did it, and it’s not done yet.”
