WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah – Dan Craig must have figured Team Canada would need all the help it could get. That’s why Craig, the NHL’s ice technician and a native of Edmonton, Alberta, buried a lucky charm at center ice before the tournament began. It was a Canadian loonie – a small coin worth a dollar – and the man who put Team Canada together brought it to the news conference Sunday after a convincing, 5-2 victory over Team USA in the gold-medal game. “I’m happy for the Canadian people,” Wayne Gretzky said. “They waited a long time for this.” Five decades, to be precise. Gretzky thanked Craig and drew loud laughter when he wondered if Craig would get fired. Finally, Gretzky could smile. Finally, the pressure was off. Finally, Canada had another gold medal, 50 years to the day of their most recent one. Game-breaking forwards Joe Sakic and Jarome Iginla combined for seven points in the victory, and Team Canada shut down the high-scoring American line of Mike Modano, Brett Hull and John LeClair in one of the most anticipated hockey games of all-time. Sakic was named the tournament MVP with seven points (four goals, three assists) in six games. Team Canada beat the odds and a couple of long streaks to gain the victory. U.S. coach Herb Brooks was unbeaten at the Olympics (10-0-2), and Team USA hadn’t lost a home game in 70 years, going 21-0-3 in its previous 24 games. The day before the game, Brooks criticized the Canadian dump-and-chase style of hockey, calling it “stupid.” His team couldn’t handle it yesterday. Canada’s big and bruising defense combined with a versatile set of forwards to stifle the high-flying Americans. Gretzky and Canadian coach Pat Quinn said their game plan was to exploit Team USA’s smallish defensemen and make them play deep in their end. “Our game plan from the first shift was to get it in and have (Owen) Nolan and Eric (Lindros) and those guys bumping and cycling,” Gretzky said. It made for an NHL-style game at times, which might not have scored big on artistic merit, but it was effective. In fact, it was a brilliant defensive effort. The Canadians allowed exactly one good scoring chance while protecting a 3-2 lead for most of the third period. That occurred when Martin Brodeur kicked aside Hull’s one-timer with 4:50 left. Less than a minute later, Iginla took a pass from Steve Yzerman and whipped a wrist shot off goalie Mike Richter’s glove and barely over the goal line. Sakic added a breakaway goal with 1:20 left. Brooks thought his club was tired. He pointed out that while Team USA had a tough semifinal match against Russia, the Canadians cruised past Belarus. “I thought it was a matter of legs,” Brooks said. “I thought they had better legs than we did. We had a tougher route to the finals.” Asked if this was the sort of game the world wanted to see, Brooks said, “Anything I can say sounds like sour grapes. I’ve just got to sidestep that one.” The game opened with the sellout crowd of about 8,300 roaring and waving flags. Some paid more than $2,000 for a rink-side seat. Most rooted for Team USA, but Team Canada enjoyed a solid backing, as well. Tony Amonte opened the scoring at 8:49 when he drilled a wrist shot between Brodeur’s pads. It was one of the few odd-man breaks Team USA would get. Paul Kariya tied it at 14:50 when he took a pass from Chris Pronger and beat Richter cleanly. Mario Lemieux fooled Richter when he allowed Pronger’s pass to go between his legs in the slot. Lemieux lifted his stick as if he would play the puck. “It was unreal,” Richter said. “He doesn’t just (let it go), he actually puts his stick there to play it, then moves his stick. It was a beautiful play, a play that you have to honor as a goalie. Obviously, I honored it a bit too much.” Lemieux, incidentally, said he will rejoin the Penguins on Tuesday. He said he doesn’t know yet whether he will play in back-to-back games Wednesday and Thursday. He said recently that he has been skipping back-to-back games – which he also did at the Olympics – because he wanted to get ready for this tournament. But it was also because he was hurting. “I didn’t play any in the last couple of months because of my hip surgery,Ó Lemieux said. “Whatever happens after this, I’ll do my best for my team and the city of Pittsburgh. Hopefully, I can get back and get the guys back in the playoffs.” Iginla scored a back-breaker with 1:27 left in the first period, and Lemieux had a golden chance to make it 3-1 midway through the second but misfired a foot from an open net. Brian Rafalski tied it with a power-play goal at 15:30 of the second period before Sakic put Team Canada ahead for good with another late goal. With Jeremy Roenick in the penalty box, Sakic’s wrist shot hit U.S. defenseman Brian Leetch and eluded Richter. For the Americans, it was a bitter defeat. Several players, including team captain Chris Chelios, Richter, defenseman Brian Leetch and Hull, probably won’t get another chance at a gold medal. Brooks, too, indicated that he probably won’t coach again. Chelios said his team did itself proud and that the United States has proved over the past five years that it has caught up to Canada as a hockey nation. He also said that he and his teammates took exception to a comment he attributed to Lemieux on Friday, about hockey being Canada’s game. “It might be their only game that they’re very good at, besides curling and a couple of other things,” Chelios said. “But all kidding aside, they’re a proud group of players.” That was obvious yesterday, especially in the performance of aging warriors Lemieux and Yzerman. Those two played together 19 years ago in the World Junior Championships in Moscow. Yesterday, they were linemates. “This doesn’t prove that Canada’s the best,” Yzerman said. “We’re Olympic champions, that’s all.” That’s more than good enough back home.

---

Copyright ©2026— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---