No. 249: LATVIA < KAZAKHSTAN / A meditation on the indignities of Canadian youth & That Supposed Hockey Holiday Tradition™

To the teenagers feeling the heat in Ottawa these last few days, my expression of consolation: It's not that it could be worse ... it has in fact been a lot worse and I was around for it.

AN EVENT in Ottawa on Friday wouldn’t have registered in the sports media in the U.S., nor much globally outside hockey hotbeds, but in Canada Christmas was officially cancelled after Latvia beat the host country’s shiniest exemplars of male teenhood at the world under-20 junior hockey championships.

The lads lost to boys in dingy maroon in 3-2 in an opening-round contest with the shoot-out stretching to the eighth round, but even before the playing of “Dievs, svētī Latviju” (the Latvian national anthem), heads of households were pushing their conifers through wood-chippers, re-boxing hanging ornaments and deflating Santas on front lawns in all ten provinces and the three territories. Other religious holidays were likewise suspended because of the cataclysm. There’s no other word to describe Canada’s best losing a hockey game to a country that Canadians can’t find on a map.

Not me, though I have that shirt, that hat and that chin. Check out the Tik Tok, worthwhile.

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In the wake of the defeat, millions across the Great White North have risked RSI from the reflexive handwringing and shit-talked the teen selects out of mounting anger. With a collapse so profound, it can’t just be bad puck luck nor an ill-timed collision with a hot goaltender—it just has to be systemic and someone must be blamed and shamed. Dave Cameron, the coach, is the obvious target of incoming fire, but a defeat so awful requires a carpet-bombing—if this team misses out on the medal round for the second tournament in a row, I’m expecting to find out that the roster was selected by Justin Trudeau.

The horror of the TSN panel here is truly delicious to me.

The Canadian hockey fans’ sense of entitlement is risible—the expectation is, simply, our best will best your best on the international stage.

In the women’s game, well, Canadian fans don’t like it, but they’ve become reasonably accustomed to the idea that two teams will vie for the gold: the U.S. and Us. It’s ever a coin flip and everyone else who comes out can compete for the bronze and a good seat at the final.

With the men’s game, though, there’s a crisis of confidence with every loss in every manner of competition. With the grown-ups it doesn’t come up that often, because the Winter Olympics are every four years and the tournament only really counts (to Canadian fans) if the NHL is on board. Yeah, rounded up, it’s 11 years since Sochi and 15 since Vancouver, a couple of gold medals for Canada by virtue of a total of two goals against U.S. teams in the semis and final respectively … but who’s paying attention to the margins?

The World Cup was goofy and shouldn’t really count—one side in the gold-medal game didn’t represent an actual country, but rather a cobbled-together quasi-NATO alliance with the Czechs opting out. And the annual IIHF world championships might be worth something in Europe, but to those sporting Hockey Canada merch they’re just meaningless exhibitions unless Canada happens to win. On such occasions the worlds are then elevated, and the Canadian hockey fans’ message becomes even more emphatic: It doesn’t even take our best to best your best.

Alas, Canadian hockey fans need such validation with the regularity of flu shots and thus do the annual world juniors fill the void … or at least they’re supposed to, if TSN’s programmers’ script rolls out as planned. The Hockey Holiday Tradition per the marketing department.

“The Holiday Ratings Drive sounds too craven, I suppose. “The Hockey Holiday Tradition” regrettably overstates it, though. We’re not talking about the ancient past—it’s not like the footage of ye old under-20s is in black-and-white, not like Howie Morenz and the Rocket skated in it. No, the under-20s weren’t even a thing until the 70s—a lot of Canadians heard Wayne Gretzky’s name for the first time when he skated in the tournament as an under-ager. Canada first won it back in ’82, but it was still more footnote than tradition.

I tend to date the “Hockey Holiday Tradition” back to ’87 and its catalyst was not glory but rather infamy. Yeah, that was the year when the Canadian teens were kicked out of the tournament after being goaded into a bench-clearing brawl with the Soviets, a.k.a. the Punch-Up in Piestany.

Now, if you think my thumbnail description of the event lays too much blame at the skates of Brendan Shanahan, Theo Fleury et al, all I can say is: “Do you know me at all?” I wrote a book about that game, When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game.

I spoke to virtually all those involved in that game and still drawing breath back in 2006, including the Norwegian ref who was utterly over his head going into the contest, scared shitless when mayhem ensued and living at the corner of Hiding and Denial by the time I tracked him down. You can find the book online or in a library—this is no advertisement, because my royalties long ago exhausted and I don’t make a penny from it. Suffice it to say, the U20s became national news when the Canadian kids got the rawest deal—I was about to type “the rawest deal imaginable,” but truly you couldn’t have couldn’t have dreamed up the surreal scenario with the assistance of the most potent psilocybin.

“The Hockey Holiday Tradition” only really established itself with Canada’s run of WJC golds in 1990s and the 2000s and, more to the point, with TSN taking a white-knuckled grip of the broadcast rights to U20s and all Hockey Canada properties. In pretty short order, the games drew outsized audience, surpassing numbers put up by NHL contests, be they run-of-the-mill mid-season dates or the Stanley Cup Final. In wrestling terms, nothing draws heat like babyface vs heel and in the bloodless Russians and arrogant Americans TSN could portray each class of homebrews as paragons of sublime skill and moral rectitude. How could it not sell? At least when it works, when you don’t drift too far away from the script (e.g., losing to Latvia).

I used to love the world juniors when I covered it back in the 90s and early 2000s, back when the hype seemed reasonable, when Hockey Canada allowed the media to have some decent access to the players and coaches. That is to say, the event was small enough to mine stories at ground level.

I remember walking into the Canadian dressing room after the gold-medal game in Boston in ’96 and sitting next to Jarome Iginla, Wade Redden and Alyn McCauley among others—no crush of cameras, no crowding, no management by organizers. Now, understand, I’m not talking about my POV but theirs. Jarome, Wade, Alyn and the rest had played hard and there had been tense moments, most of all a narrow victory over Russia in the semis, but they had a good time through it all. Yup, someone walked around with a case of beer and passed out victory cigars—they had their medals, made history such that it was and would soon head home. The gold-medal game drew maybe a couple of thousand fans in Boston, like Canada’s other games. The players’ time in Boston wasn’t a short-term occupancy of a goldfish bowl—it was a junior-hockey tournament, not a major media event.

I can’t exactly pinpoint when the hype became all too much for me. Could have been 2005 in North Dakota with Crosby, Bergeron, Perry, Webber and Getzlaf and assorted others, probably the most dominant team in the tournament history and operating in the vacuum created by the suspension and cancellation of the NHL season. Could have been 2006 in Vancouver when the final against Russia was drawing a crowd and money-drop that the Canucks could only envy.

The greatest shootout ever, Leksand 2007

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I do know that, for me, the paradigm had shifted by 2007 when two Swedish towns, Mora and Leksand, hosted the WJC. When Jonathan Toews and Carey Price led the Canadian team to victories over the U.S. in the semis and Russia in the final, they played before a sell-out crowd in Leksand’s Ejendals Arena—remarkable given that the venue had more seats (7,650) than the town had residents (6,000). For Toews, Price et al these were effectively home games. The stands were filled with Canadians who were vacationing at the U20s and staying in burgs a fair drive away because all rooms in the neighbouring towns were committed to the teams, officials, TSN broadcasters and the media. The arena was built as a home for the SEL Leksand team, but for the duration of the WJC it was merely a TSN studio.

No chance the U20s are going back to Leksand and Mora, mind you. Nor Fussen nor Pardubice nor even Canadian junior-hockey hotbeds such as Halifax and Red Deer. Now, to max out revenues, the tournament lands only in cities with NHL-scale studios, er, arenas. So, yeah, the big disappointment against Latvia went down in the big house in Ottawa.

For good or ill, we’re stuck with the world juniors for the next week or so in the Canadian sports media. Heaved sigh.

My buddy Roman Krivomazov with CKSA Moscow in 1999-2000.

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Those who have read How to Succeed in Sportswriting (without Really Trying) regularly know that I worked the WJC game against which all other Canadian flops are measured: Canada’s 6-3 loss to Kazakhstan at the 1998 in Finland. Thinking so little were their chances against mighty Canada, the Kazakhs started their back-up goaltender … a fella who reached out to me 18 years after the fact when he came upon a story I wrote. Check out: No. 53: NIK ANTROPOV, ROMAN KRIVOMASOV et al / The mouse that roared. Canada 3-Kazakhstan 6, still the strangest game in hockey history (and my largest bar bill). The loss to Kazakhstan wasn’t the only debacle that day—my own plight will be sure to entertain. (You’ll need at least a trial subscription to access this story in my vast archive.)

Back in 2010 I tracked down the captain of that Canadian team, Jesse Wallin. For a book about Canadian teams at the world juniors, I ghost-wrote Jesse’s first-person account of being on the sidelines on crutches while his teammates crashed and burned. These days Jesse is a scout with the Detroit Red Wings, the team that had drafted him in the first round back in ’96. When I spoke to him 15 years ago he was coaching the Medicine Hat Tigers in the WHL.

Thanks for reading.

Jesse Wallin, Team Captain '98

I was named captain of the ’98 team. Cory Sarich and I were the two returning players from the Geneva team. We had a great experience in ’97 and we had outstanding leadership in ’97, from Mike Babcock, from our captain, Brad Larsen, and from other players in the room. Everyone bought in and had faith. Everyone took a lot of pride and anyone who had to play a different role didn’t hesitate—Alyn McCauley was one of the best junior players in Canada , maybe the best, and Mike asked him to play the third line. It wasn’t a problem. He took it as a challenge and so did everyone else who was asked to do something different than he was used to with his junior team. We all understood how hard it was going to be to win that tournament.

In ’98 we had the talent to win gold again but it felt different, even before the tournament started. It just felt different. It’s hard to finger exactly why. It wasn’t just one thing. We had an inexperienced group but that wouldn’t be enough to explain how things fell apart. We might have been the favourites in ’98 and a lot of players on the team were more talented than players on ’97 squad. But in ’98, there were cliques on the team, just a different attitude on the team. A lot of the players were focused on the wrong things. They were worried about themselves first and foremost, taking an I’m-on-my-own-page attitude. What happened on the ice was a byproduct of that attitude and a loss of discipline off the ice as well.

When we left for Europe after the training camp I thought things would get straightened out but I knew we were in trouble after the first period of our first game in the tournament. We were playing the Finns in Helsinki on Christmas Day, a real challenge. When we went back to the dressing room in the first intermission, I felt like we were still in a good position to win—the game was scoreless and we were as good as the Finns. But I was shocked by what I saw in the room—one of our players slammed his stick and helmet down and started complaining about not being on the powerplay. That just wouldn’t have happened in ’97.

We showed that we had a pretty talented team in that game. We jumped out to a 1-0 lead in that game and Alex Tanguay scored to tie the game 2-all in the third period. But the Finns scored a goal with less than four minutes to go and won 3-2. We almost tied the game again right at the end. Maybe things would have turned out differently if we had, but there’s no way to know. The Finns ended up winning the tournament and we barely lost to them even though they had twice as many powerplays as we did and we were still supposed to be coming together as a team—supposed to be.

It turned out that we started to fall apart at that point. We lost to the Swedes the next game 4-0 and we didn’t compete. At that point we started to take undisciplined penalties, retaliatory penalties. We spent a full period of that game on killing penalties—a few would have been okay but we had unsportsmanlike penalties and roughing calls, penalties that really hurt us. We were taking retaliatory penalties right at the time when we needed to suck it up and take one for the team and be disciplined. We had a couple of guys who were benched after taking completely unnecessary penalties. It was embarrassing.

It looked like we might get it together in our next two games to advance to the quarter-finals. First we beat the Czechs 5-0 and then we beat Germany 4-1. My tournament on the ice ended in the German game. I broke a bone blocking a shot and I was in a cast and crutches the rest of the tournament. I learned the hardest way possible that you can’t lead a team from the sidelines.

I wanted to win a gold medal from ’98 even more than I did in ’97. Winning it once made me want it more the next time. I had come back from a broken arm that I had suffered that fall in a car accident and I probably came back too soon but that’s how much I wanted to play in the world juniors again. It was agonizing not to be able to play. What I saw the rest of the way was a lack of commitment and there was nothing I could do about it.

In the quarter-finals we played the Russians in Hameenlinna. It started out strangely. Our team had to wear the sweaters of the Hameenlinna club team in the first period because we though we were scheduled for red sweaters, not our whites. So we were the first and so far only Canadian team not to wear the Hockey Canada logo. Our white sweaters didn’t arrive until the intermission. That’s how typical of the game and the tournament—everything was just felt a little bit off. We still had a great chance to go ahead to the medal round. It was 1-all at the end of regulation and Eric Brewer hit the post with a shot from the point in overtime. But with 30 seconds left in the last minute of the overtime period, there were a bunch of mistakes, a shift that was too long, a safe play that could have been made and wasn’t, a pinch at the wrong time, and the Russians took the puck the other way and scored.

I thought that it could never get worse in hockey than that loss. Not even close.

In next round, we played the U.S. , a game that we should have been able to get up for, no matter what had happened against the Russians. But our team was really falling apart.

Two other guys were knocked out because of injuries and three others were benched for discipline reasons, showing up late and missing meetings. With a short bench we lost to the U.S. and it never felt like we were in the game. It was humbling watching the Americans celebrate.

Again I thought that it could never get worse than that loss. Again I was wrong.

We didn’t even show up for the seventh-place game against Kazakhstan . We should have been able to dominate that game, even with the injuries and a short bench. The Kazakhs even started their back-up goaltender. I remember going into the dressing room and yelling at the guys between periods. I don’t remember what I said but it wouldn’t matter now because it didn’t make a difference then. It was a complete collapse. We lost 6-3 to a team that had half a dozen sticks in the rack by their bench and skates that didn’t match.

I believe you learn something as a player and later as a coach from every experience you have with a team. I learned what was possible with the right attitude and discipline with the Canadian team in ’97. I learned the risks of having the wrong attitude and a lack of discipline with the team in ’98. I think things are different in a lot of ways today. The under-18 teams deliver players to the world junior teams who have a lot more international experience than back in the ‘90s. I was an example of that—I had none when I went to Geneva and there were players on our team in Finland in the same situation.

One thing that I learned as a coach in the Program of Excellence is that “discipline” doesn’t mean rules and no fun. I worked as an assistant to Pat Quinn with the Canadian team that won the world under-18s in Russia in 2009. It was an amazing thing to see how Pat was able to get his message across and to instill a team disciple without being draconian about it—it’s not all bad medicine if you just make it a habit. A team with good habits doesn’t even feel like it’s working with a tough system of discipline. It’s something I strived for with my junior teams in Red Deer these days. I wish it was something that we had in Finland in ’98.