Canadian coach Troy Ryan’s database played a key role in the construction of the women’s roster for these Olympic Games. That gets put to the test in Thursday’s gold medal game against the U.S.AMBER SEARLS/Reuters
Troy Ryan keeps a massive database on his laptop computer that the head coach of Canada’s women’s hockey team uses to keep track of which players excel in different game situations.
Everything is tracked, colour-coded and codified: Five-on-five, short-handed, up a goal, down a goal, net front, shootouts, the last two minutes of a game, situations that call for physicality, moments that demand leadership. The list goes on and on.
“I think a lot of coaches think that way, but maybe don’t document it,” Ryan said in an interview before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
“When you’re in tough decisions, you go back to it and you go, ‘We need someone that can play this role – has anything changed here?’”
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The database approach helped Ryan and Team Canada general manager Gina Kingsbury select the women’s roster for Milan.
As Kingsbury describes it, Canada’s brain trust would go player-by-player and ask themselves bluntly: would we play this person in this situation – yes, no, maybe?
“You’re trying to make sure that we talk about it even before we get to games, about what we see the athletes capable of,” Kingsbury said.
“So that when the pressure is on at games, you can revert back to that chart and go, ‘Okay, remember we had confidence in these six players,’ and then you mix that with what you’re seeing in the moment.”
This week, that database is about to have its moment of truth.
Marie-Philip Poulin has provided her standard heroics already in this tournament, coming back from injury to score both of Canada’s goals in a 2-1 win over Switzerland in the semi-final.David W Cerny/Reuters
On Thursday, Team Canada will face the United States in the gold medal game, and Canada’s roster construction will be put to the test.
It has been an unusually turbulent Olympics for Canada’s women’s team so far.
Even though the Canadians enter the final game with five wins and a loss, they have been forced to play much of the tournament with their captain and best player, Marie-Philip Poulin, nursing a knee injury.
Their only loss, in the preliminary round to the U.S., was alarming.
With Poulin out of the lineup, the younger, faster American team dominated the veteran Canadian roster, and ran up the score 5-0. There wasn’t a moment when their U.S. rivals didn’t have control of the game.
But it wasn’t Team Canada’s only stumble. When Poulin returned for the playoff round, still labouring on the leg, Canada faced the Swiss in the semi-final and badly outshot them 46-8, but only narrowly escaped with a 2-1 win. Poulin scored both goals.
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After the game, Swiss forward Lara Stalder wasn’t awed by the five gold medals Canada had won in the past. She called this version of the team “shaky” and “beatable.”
Perhaps the Swiss game could be shrugged off as a bad night. Team Canada’s primary focus was never countries like Switzerland or Czechia. The team was built to play the Americans.
After all, women’s hockey is a game that has been ruled by those two countries since it debuted at the 1998 Olympics. The two rivals account for all seven gold medals handed out in the sport; Canada five, and the U.S. two.
Team Canada defender Renata Fast says Thursday’s gold medal game against the U.S. will ‘be a bloodbath.’Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
So when Canada’s coaches and general manager sat down to build the roster for Milan, creating the lineup really meant picking a team that can play the U.S. in a single, winner-take-all game.
When Canada announced its roster in January there were surprises and snubs. Several younger, up-and-coming, offensive players were left off the team in favour of older veterans who had gone to battle with the U.S. before.
Which is where the database and the scenarios come in. The gamble is that experience can meet the moment – that in one game, anything can happen.
The risk is that Canada, having already been shut out by the U.S., won’t be able to score and won’t be able to keep up, especially with Poulin playing on only one good leg.
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The Canadian roster that won gold in Beijing four years ago was one of the most offensively minded women’s teams the country has assembled. When it came down to the gold medal, Canada won that game by a slim margin, 3-2.
This team, lacking such firepower, will have to find other ways.
“We’re not going to be that high flying offensive team that we were,” Ryan said prior to the Olympics, when asked what the identity of this women’s team would be.
“We’re probably going to have to be a little bit more defensively minded, a little bit more physical,” he said.
It’s no longer a tournament they need to play, it is down to a single game. And a single game is a series of situations.
“I think it’s a team that’s built on heart and connection,” said forward Blayre Turnbull, who is playing in her third gold medal game.
“There’s a lot of players who have a ton of experience. And experience, I think, brings knowledge and wisdom, and being able to weather storms that you’re going to face, and adversities that come.”
Defender Renata Fast, also a three-time Olympian, said it hasn’t been the easiest tournament for the team.
“But this group has a ton of fight in them,” Fast said this week.
“It’s going to be a bloodbath.”
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