'The Hockey Canada Way' finally pays off at Women's Worlds
Canada has had a record of futility against USA that has bordered on embarrassing at the World Championship, but for one night it turned the tables and dominated
As a hockey superpower, Canada has some of the most talented athletes on the planet in both the men’s and women’s games. But there’s no country that loves its foot soldiers more than the one that wears red and white. The Hockey Canada Way is actually a real thing, where everyone plays a 200-foot game, is in impeccable physical condition, willingly accepts any role and is thrilled to go up and down the wing in hockey’s version of a chess game. And preferably they do it showing almost no individualism or personality.
Sometimes it works out well. Other times it doesn’t. Until Thursday night, it had been a disaster on the women’s side. You can throw out almost all of Canada’s games against any other opponent – with the exception of the occasional game against Finland – but they were on a run of futility in the games that really mattered. Since winning the Olympic gold medal in 2014 with a 3-2 overtime win, Canada had lost eight of the past nine games in World Championship and Olympic play, with the lone victory a 2-1 win in the preliminary round of the 2018 Olympics. They scored a total of 16 goals in those nine games.
They suffered the embarrassment of being relegated to the bronze medal game in the 2019 World Women’s Championship. If this kind of run of futility had occurred at the senior or junior men’s levels, Hockey Canada would have needed to host another navel gazing summit. For this year’s World Championship, Canada cut the likes of Loren Gabel, Daryl Watts and Elizabeth Giguere, all scoring threats and three of the past four winners of the Patty Kazmaier Award as the top player in U.S. women’s college hockey. Not only that, none of the three was chosen to be centralized among the 29 players vying to become part of Canada’s Olympic team. Hockey Canada told the 24-year-old Gabel and Giguere and the 22-year-old Watts to attend its development camp this summer – all three declined – and wait for the next Olympic cycle. It has almost certainly cost Hockey Canada the services of Watts, who will return to the University of Wisconsin for a fifth season, then get on with her life. Gabel and Giguere will be 29 by the time the next Olympics come and Watts will be 27. As Watts has said, why would she wait around for five years only to risk being cut again?
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Whether Hockey Canada made the right call on those players or the people who make those decisions are trying to prove they’re the smartest people in the room remains to be seen. There is a lot of hockey to be played between Canada and USA between now and the 2022 Olympics, potentially including the gold medal game at the Women’s Worlds next Tuesday night. But for one night, it was impossible to argue with Canada’s triumph of the collective over individual talent.
But it bears watching as things move along. As I said, sometimes it works, others it doesn’t. It certainly worked Thursday night when Canada administered a beatdown of the U.S. program that bordered on sublime. In Canada’s 5-1 win, the game was over almost immediately after it began, with Canada quicker and stronger on every puck and playing a dominant game. If the television crew hadn’t mentioned the likes of Hilary Knight, Kendall Coyne and Amanda Kessel so often, you would have been hard-pressed to know the American stars were even playing.
All of this came with Canada missing its top offensive player in Marie-Philip Poulin, who sat out after being hurt in the previous game against Finland. And the player who made the biggest contribution was Jamie Lee Rattray, a 28-year-old who has never made a Canadian Olympic team and started the tournament as the 13th forward. She scored two goals for Canada and set the tone with a ton of energy. Sometimes stars step up, which is something Canada has lacked against USA. And sometimes it’s players such as Jamie Lee Rattray, who took one of those 29 spots in the Olympic centralization program. Rattray certainly fits the profile for those at Hockey Canada who love their fourth-liners.
When Canadian coach Troy Ryan was asked about the key to his team’s success, he went into that coach-speak that Hockey Canada loves to hear, lauding the efforts of his team’s F-1s and F-2s on the forecheck and for playing a consummate team game. “To be honest, we were able to put four lines over the boards and 7 ‘D’ over the boards,” Ryan said. “Everyone was contributing to our team’s success. And I think that’s the best thing that’s happening to our team right now. There’s nobody who’s looking for the individual goal, they’re looking for team and everybody’s happy for everybody.”
That’s the kind of stuff that gets a slow clap from the powers that be at Hockey Canada. Whether it ends up providing the winning formula for this tournament, and far, far more importantly in Beijing in February, remains to be seen, but it certainly worked for one night. Even U.S. coach Joel Johnson was hugely impressed with Canada’s effort.
“I just really thought Canada was so good,” Johnson said. “By the time we generated some positive momentum (in the third period), the game was kind of out of reach. You can look for silver linings, but I think you’re kind of making it up. It certainly felt that way for us. We lost and Canada played really well and I give most of the credit to them.”