Team Canada defender Renata Fast remembers a time when she really didn’t look forward to playing against the Americans. And it wasn’t because the women’s hockey powerhouses make up one of the most — if not the most — intense rivalries in all of sport.
Fast likes the intensity. It was the thought of what could go wrong that irked her.
“It used to be scary, to be honest with you,” the 27-year-old from Hamilton, Ont., told Sportsnet in a recent interview. “The first year and a half that I was with the national team, playing against the Americans was the hardest challenge ever. It just seemed like, if we got down a goal we were never coming back.”
But the tables have turned for Fast, and for her team. As Canada gets set to meet Team USA to close out Olympic round-robin play — the puck drops Monday (today) at 11:10 p.m. ET — the Canadians come into the game with some recently hard-earned confidence.
It’s something you could safely assume about a team averaging nearly 10 goals per game at the Olympics, but the major gains were made for Canada well before the Olympics.
“Personally, I believe that over the last two years our team has really shown that we are the best in the world,” Fast says. “Even in difficult situations we’re able to find ways to win. We’ve shown ourselves we’re capable of doing it.”
That’s in large part because of what happened last year. The Americans headed into the 2021 world championship as defending champions and winners of five straight. It had been nine years since Canada last won a world title. Forward Laura Stacey, who made her world debut with the senior team in 2017, puts it this way: “Since I joined the national team program, I have a ton of silver medals – I even have a bronze.”
But last August in Calgary, Canada’s losing streak on the biggest stages stopped. Canada came back from a two-goal deficit and won gold in overtime against the Americans. Stacey and Fast and a whole bunch of their teammates added a long-awaited gold medal to their collections.
“That was huge for us,” says forward Blayre Turnbull, who had a pair of goals in Canada’s opener, a 12-1 win over the Swiss. “I think it allowed us to understand that we have what it takes to beat them when we need to. It gave us a little more confidence that we were able to take with us when we played them earlier this year, but also when we were training and competing in practices. It really allowed us to be in the head space that we needed to be in.”
That head space is key. For Turnbull and for the 12 other members of this team who were at the last Olympics, a mental shift had to occur when it came to approaching games against the Americans.
“Coming away from Pyeongchang with a silver medal, I think it crushed a lot of us,” says Stacey, who has four goals in three games in Beijing. “When you are that close and you lose in a shootout, it affects you a lot. I think it affected our team a lot. It’s really hard to not get into that mental side of it and lose confidence and lose faith. Losing beats you down.”
It’s a cliché, but long-time members of this Canadian team say they’ve learned from their losses. And it hasn’t been easy.
“That’s something we’ve really worked on,” Stacey says. “That mental side of the game: how can we bounce back, how can we become a resilient and unphased kind of team. I think that’s where we are now.”
“A lot of the confidence we gained was mental,” adds Fast, who picked up her second assist of the tournament in Canada’s latest victory, a 6-1 win over the ROC. “A lot of mental skills work was being done behind the scenes to get us in the right state of mind to know that we’re just as good.”
Canada players huddle before a preliminary round women’s hockey game against Switzerland at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, in Beijing. (Matt Slocum/AP)
Alternate captain Brianne Jenner says the pandemic gave her team extra time to dial in on important off-ice aspects of the game. “We were kind of forced to change the way that we found improvements. We weren’t able to have a lot of camps, we weren’t able to play games or train together as much as we’re used to, so we focused on what we could and that was mental skills performance, team culture, areas where we could actually make gains,” says Jenner, who’s averaging two points per game in Beijing. “I think going through that together has bonded us. The group has become so great at adapting and making the most of whatever’s in front of us.”
Both Canada and the U.S. have had to adapt since their opening games in Beijing. Team USA is without one of its best players, since forward Brianna Decker was injured in the first period against Finland, and won’t return. Melodie Daoust, the 2021 world championship MVP, is day-to-day for Canada after she was injured in Canada’s opener. The losses are immense, not just for the teams, but for the tournament itself to be missing out on two of the best players in the world.
And the most physical game of this tournament is ahead, still. “If anybody was watching our games we played against the US earlier this year, there were scrums and tussles in each one of those games. A lot of penalties,” Turnbull says. “We’re two very, very competitive teams and the desire to beat our strongest opponent is really strong.”
Jenner feels the rivalry has even gained some spark in the last year. “With us being able to capture a world championship, I’m sure that’s something that isn’t sitting well with them, just like when we lose it doesn’t sit well with us,” she says. “And there’s something about the Olympic years. It gets a little rougher, we face them in the lead-up to the Olympics and we start to get to know each other really well. It heats up even more.”
So, get ready for what will (almost) definitely be a fiery preview of the gold medal final. And know that this Canadian team is in a different place than it was the last time they were on this stage.
“The attitude on the bench, it doesn’t matter if we go down 2-0, we’re so calm, cool and collected,” Fast says. “That’s the identity of the team that I see.”
Calm, cool and collected — it sure beats feeling a little scared.
