Tom Wilson of Team Canada fights with Pierre Crinon of Team France during the third period of their Olympic hockey game in Milan on Sunday.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
It was supposed to be a nothing game. Canada’s tilt with France on Sunday was as close to a guaranteed win as the high-powered Canadian team will see at the Milan Cortina Olympics.
Even the French players were talking down the matchup.
Captain Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, a veteran of 700 NHL games – who is also a realist with a sense of humour, apparently – suggested his team’s best player couldn’t match Canada’s worst.
There wasn’t even much on the line; if Canada ran up the score − which it absolutely did, winning 10-2 in a romp − it would secure top spot in its group, and a more favourable matchup in the quarter-finals. But win or lose, it didn’t really matter. Canada was advancing regardless.
Then the game took a turn. Nathan MacKinnon was slammed backward by third-line defenceman Pierre Crinon, who caught the Canadian forward in the head with a high hit.
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At that moment, the Canadian bench decided there was something to play for.
On his next shift, Tom Wilson gave Crinon a shove and the two dropped their gloves. It was a risky move for Wilson, since fights at the Olympics are frowned upon and can lead to suspensions. But his Canadian teammates saw it differently.
“That’s what you call a team,” Brandon Hagel said later.
Scrambling to find cohesion and chemistry in Milan, as any team does in a short-tournament where rosters are melded together in a hurry, Canada may look back on the game as more important than anyone thought.
Team Canada captain Sidney Crosby (87) felt that the way Wilson stuck up for Nathan MacKinnon can help bring their team together, which is beneficial as play shifts to the knockout round at the Olympics.Hassan Ammar/The Associated Press
“These guys go through a wall for each other,” head coach Jon Cooper said afterward. “It’s fun to watch.”
Captain Sidney Crosby was more philosophical. Wilson and MacKinnon are adversaries in the NHL and have had their share of battles, but the Olympics changes things.
“That’s one of the special parts about when you get opportunities like this,” said Crosby, a veteran of two gold medal teams.
“You see just how close the team gets, how much guys come together and how much they understand that as soon as you put this jersey on, regardless of where you played before or what’s happened in the past, you’re in it together.”
In the end, it doesn’t appear Wilson will face any suspension, and Cooper said MacKinnon was fine after the game.
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“He’s a bull in a china shop, so it would take a lot more than that to knock him down,” Cooper said.
If it turns out to be a moment that burnishes the team, it probably came in the most unexpected game.
Forward Mark Stone said the focus now shifts to the playoff rounds, where the games are win or go home.
“We want to be playing our best hockey and gelling as a group heading into the quarter-finals,” he said.
“Everyone is sticking up for each other whether that is with a hit, blocked shot or covering for a mistake, and that is important,” Stone said.
Added Crosby: “It’s a team sport and we’re a team.”
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