Canada is always the underdog, right?

Someone else can better judge what this means for women's hockey, with the Winter Olympics coming up in 13 months.

Outside the Olympics, there are four major international events in the women's game -- the worlds, the Four Nations tournament, the MLP Cup U22 tournament and the world U18 championship. Canada is not the title-holder in any of the four. The U18 team ended with silver on Saturday after a 3-2 overtime loss to the U.S. on Saturday in Fussen, Germany. It was a one-shot game, obviously, but Team USA never trailed.

The U22 team ended up second after losing to Sweden in the MLP Cup final on Tuesday, a reversal of the outcome from the world junior gold medal game in Ottawa the previous evening -- and giving a certain someone a reason to rock the Tre Kronor that day. Sara Grahn, who was also in net when Sweden's senior national team beat Canada for the first time ever at the Four Nations in Lake Placid, N.Y., in November, was the goalie of record in that game too.

One does have to wonder if the sports-admin types in this country are starting to take the success of the women's national team for granted. The mainstays who have served Canada so well for a decade-plus such as Hayley Wickenheiser, Jennifer Botterill and Jayna Hefford are not going to play forever.

USA Hockey already has their veterans, the players who are out of college, playing together in a residency program (New York Times, Dec. 21). Granted, there is an argument over the efficacy of residency programs for national teams (it hasn't always helped Canadian in international soccer), but you could also say the Americans are ramping up their efforts for Vancouver.

"...postgraduate players faced a stone wall in their development.

"... Some, like Molly Engstrom, a University of Wisconsin graduate, joined a Canadian women's team, but she said she found the competition and intensity lacking.

"... On the days between games, players spend four hours working out in the morning at the complex’s Herb Brooks Training Center, a mix of on-ice drills, power skating, yoga and weight lifting ... USA Hockey refurbished the team’s dressing room last month, so players no longer have to lug their equipment from home.

" 'We’re playing 70, 80 games a year, some of us,' (national team veteran Angela) Ruggiero said. 'The amount of games we’re going to get is making us all better hockey players. We’re getting more games than the college kids. That’s something that will help all postgrad players.' " (emphasis mine)

Canada's national team will live and train together for several months before the Olympics, where they will also have the emotional lift from playing on home ice. However, one wonders if expecting the vets to train on their own and play with their club teams, while counting on major NCAA schools to train the younger players is really wise.

Speaking of which, the best team in women's college hockey, Minnesota-Duluth, is actually draws its leadership Scandinavians, with Turin heroine Kim Martin in goal, compatriots Pernilla Winberg and Elin Holmlov as its top scorers and Finnish Olympian Saara Tuominen as its captain. Evidently, it's a natural fit, considering that UMD has players named Fridfinnson, Mattila and Olson who are not among their four Swedes and two Finns.

It seems worth wondering about, and one hopes the media in Canada would take a similiar look like The Times did -- and not two weeks before the Olympics, soon.

The bottom line is it's a welcome sign that women's hockey is more competitive. However, that rational side has to give way to wanting reassurance Canada is going to win. A U.S.-Sweden final come February 2010 would be no fun at all, even as an intellectual exercise.

Top 5: Other Miracles on Ice

The Slovak junior hockey team had its "Lake Placid moment," quoth TSN's Pierre McGuire, whose take on hockey must always be taken as ex cathedra, upsetting Team USA in the quarter-finals of the World Junior Hockey Championship. The Slovaks were lucky and good, although this was just as much about Team USA living up to its rep as the leading linen-soilers at the tournament — complete with some appallingly poor sportsmanship by Team USA defenceman James Shattenkirk, who reached out from the bench to hit a Slovak player with his stick. In Slovakia's honour, here is a Top 5 of international hockey upsets — and as penance for Team USA, whose get-up-and-go got up and went after their loss to Canada, it will be Miracle on Ice-free.

A key condition for this list is that it has to have the quality of being out of nowhere, where years later, you could look back and say, "Kazakhstan actually beat Canada in hockey?" or "Canada once beat the U.S. in basketball?" (They did, way back when.) Even Switzerland beating Canada at the 2006 Olympics can be ruled out. The Swiss had a handful of pros and Martin Gerber as its goaltender, before he became Public Enemy No. 29 in Ottawa.

Belarus' quarter-final upset of Sweden at the 2002 Olympic semi-final should not even count. Belarus had beaten Russia at the world two years earlier.

Here's a list, by no means definitive.


1995 World Juniors: Ukraine 3, USA 2
1996 World Juniors: Ukraine 4, USA 3

Don't call today a miracle — the U.S. has been doing this for years. Ukraine played in the main world juniors only twice and hasn't been heard from again, but it beat the United States in back-to-back years. The second time, it was even in America at the 1996 tournament in Boston, which remain infamous for sparse attendance.

The win in '95 ranks first. It should have been a 2-2 tie, but Oleksa Lazarenko stole the puck inside his own blueline in the final seconds and went in to beat U.S. goalie John Grahame on a breakaway. Losses like that were probably what caused USA Hockey to take the event a little more seriously.

2006 Olympic women's semi-final: Sweden 3, USA 2

All the chattering class talk during the Turin Olympics was about how women's hockey didn't belong in the Olympics (and one game might not have changed too many minds). The Americans were 102-0-2 against countries other than its northern neighbour, but the Swedes turned to a time-honoured upset formula — ride a hot goalie (Kim Martin, whom CBC.ca called "the Miracle Worker") bury the chances you go get, and get into a shootout. It worked and 16-year-old Pernilla Winberg got the winner in the shootout.

1998 World Juniors: Kazakhstan 6, Canada 3

As Greatest Hockey Legends related, the Kazakhstani team was rag-tag as all get out — outdated equipment, only seven spare sticks, and their best player on their maiden voyage into the World Juniors was Nik Antropov.

It was the seventh-place game and Canada was disillusioned and disspirited after being bounced from contention for a sixth straight gold medal. It still happened. Kazakhstan ruled throughout, and it was actually a 6-2 game since Canada scored a window-dressing goal with two seconds left.

1947 Worlds: Austria 2, Sweden 1

For decades, the world championship was a true round-robin. There were no playoffs, no single-elimination games. Whoever finished first got the gold. The Swedes appeared to have it locked up — they only had to beat Austria in their final game. King Gustav had already sent a telegram of congratulations. Somehow, Austria rose up and knocked off the Swedes, and the Czechs fell heir to the gold medal as Sweden slipped to the silver.

1976 Worlds: Poland 6, USSR 4

Since whoever has the TV footage writes the history, this one will never get mentioned. The Big Red Machine was at the peak of its powers. Poland — which these days is nowhere near a playing in a top-shelf hockey tournament — was living under the Soviet boot, but they had home ice for an opening game against the best team outside North America, which had beat it 20-0, 13-2, 15-2 and, at the Olympics where the Russians won won their fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal, 16-1. Already in 1975-76, the nucleus of the Soviet Big Red Machine had tied the Montréal Canadiens on New Year's Eve before going on to Olympic gold. However, the Poles had a hometown crowd in Katowice behind them, and the Russians took them lightly.

Vladislav Tretiak, in his memoir, figured that the puck was in the Soviets' zone for no more than eight minutes that night. Somehow, Poland cashed in whenever it got the chance, and considering the political history between the countries, it deserves to be No. 1.

The U.S. of A-Rod; or, not this again, Alex

The time is past for slinging mud at Alex Rodriguez for not being unsure what country he wants to play for in the World Baseball Classic.

Granted, as pointed out by It Is About The Money, Stupid, A-Rod did the "WBC Hokey-Pokey" before the 2006 event. He's predictable as John Gibbons was for leaving a starting pitcher in too long. One larger point, as noted about two-thirds of the way down the the Gordon Edes column linked to in the lead, is that the WBC is very much a promotional tool worldwide for Major League Baseball. Bud Selig and the boys might be crossing their fingers and toes hoping that A-Rod will play for the Dominican Republic, since it's an obvious storyline.

The U.S. team between, Evan Longoria and David Wright, also has two young, telegenic, handsome in a non-threatening way third basemen whom it can use in its would make and it might be hoping A-Rod plays for the Dominican Republic, since that would open up the third base spot for a bright, marketable young star in Evan Longoria.

The other reason not to hate on A-Rod for this is that everyone is a dual citizen nowadays. This is hardly profound. The beauty of living in this day and age (emphasized because at this writing, some jagov on The History Channel is going on about how he'd love to visit 19th-century France and hang out with with Voltaire -- that's great, hope the irony of wanting to live in the past when you're appearing on a cable TV program ain't lost on ya) is that it's particularly easy, especially if the sports is the vessel for that connection with the old country.

It's also a part a defence against that worst disease in life, nationalism. For instance, when Canada is playing in the World Junior Hockey Championship and the shinny jingoism has been put up to 11, it's an easy to cop-out to joke about being "one-quarter happy" if Sweden ends up winning.

As well, for a lot of us, that desire to connect with your roots crops up very strongly in your early 30s. There's that desire to feel a sense of the past -- especially in a world that's been redrawn more in in the past 10 years than it did in the previous 20, often seems strongest for people in their early 30s. You're no longer identifying yourself as someone's daughter and son, and are

It should be no surprise that the one pro athlete who always seems trying to please someone other than himself -- Madonna, New York sportswriters, Yankees fans, Derek Jeter, Scott Boras, not necessarily in that order -- would have the same duality of man thing happening.

That's not see A-Rod is altruistic; just think of the storyline if he ended up facing the U.S. team. It is just two-faced to judge his WBC waffling.

Who knows, maybe he just wants to avoid playing for Team USA, whose three first-round games are in Toronto. Bad things tend to happen to him -- getting caught with a mystery blonde, getting plunked in the leg by Josh Towers in '07 -- when he visits the city.

Plus he doesn't want to lose to Canada again.

(Now, it's off to Sport Chek to a buy a Swedish hockey sweater with No. 13 on the back -- for Mats Sundin, not A-Rod.)

Related:
A-Rod to play for the Dominican in WBC (Gorden Edes, Yahoo! Sports; via It Is About The Money, Stupid)

Shooting down the walls of heartache, Wendel is the Warrior

Wendel Clark is the Leafs. He gave it all and got nothing. He is the same as all of us in Leafs Nation.

There is full awareness among the blue-and-white brethren that it is mortifying to read an article about Wendel Clark that references Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky in the first three paragraphs, because he is not in their strata. True, it is ironic that the Leafs scheduled this for the same night that the Montreal Canadiens are honouring a hockey demigod, Patrick Roy, but you know what? Leafs Nation doesn't care

To quote Cox Bloc, we are the "straw that stirs this country's hockey drink" and will, "no matter how much we lose, we will never suffer an even worse fate -- not mattering," you don't have to care. Caring what other people think of you as fans, well, that's for Canucks and Sennies fans.

One stab at putting this in perspective is to imagine a six-year-old falling in thrall with Luke Schenn, the most dynamic rookie the Leafs have had since 1985. That little boy or girl is out there, with the audacity of hope — yep, went there — and knows nothing of the horrible baggage that comes with making the choice to inject blue-and-white into your bloodstream, an incurable affliction. 

A truth is, though, for a couple years in the mid-1980s, Wendel Clark brought hope to the most drab, futile, godforsaken franchise in North American sports. A fellow conscientious objector puts it is this way: Imagine if Jarome Iginla — and Wendel wasn't that class of player, mind you — had come up to the NHL with the worst team in the league. Imagine that he had to drop the gloves every night, since no one else in that dressing room had any pride left after all the losing the Leafs had done and after what Harold Ballard, Punch Imlach Part II and Gerry McNamara had done to throw Toronto's hockey tradition into utter disrepute.

He hit people, he fought, he had that heavy wrist shot and in those days when hockey players didn't seem so faceless and interchangeable, he seemed as close to a natural phenomenon as you can get. If Ballard had never come along and ruined the Leafs, Wendel Clark would not have mattered as much as he did for a generation of Ontarians. He would not have mattered as much if MLSE had never come together and the Leafs had ended up with an ownership group which was set up to win Stanley Cups, not build condominiums.

When you follow hockey through the lens of the Leafs, you do so knowing all of this. We know full well that there is no joy in Leafland. It is like being part of a dysfunctional family's drama. You know all the jokes, know the whole tortured history. When the P.A. announcer at Air Canada Centre intones, "your Toronto Maple Leafs," you fire back at the TV, "he means the high school teachers in the crowd."

Once in a while, those who have to pretend not to care in order to allay the anger need something like this. The plight of the Leafs is akin to the nod People Under The Stairs, on their new album, gives to former hip-hop fans: "A lot of you left, but I don't even blame you."

That might be. Wendel never left us, though and it's our wont to celebrate No. 17 and if it comes off like an eff-you to the rest of Canada who cannot or will not understand, well ...

Other business

• Down Goes Brown has the top 17 Wendel Clark moments.
• Cox Bloc's taunting of Vancouver fans must be passed along, strictly as a public service:

  "The Leafs wear iconic uniforms with a crest that is recognized worldwide —the Canucks change their uniforms as often as Van Halen change lead singers. They celebrate second-tier Swedes like Naslund and the Sedins, while the Leafs have iced two of the very greatest ever to wear the Tre Kronor — Sundin and Salming. They venerate Stan Smyl and Trevor Linden. We honour Doug Gilmour and Wendel Clark. We are on coast-to-coast-to-coast just about every Saturday night from 1931 to Armageddon. They are seen on the late game once a month or so. Classic songs are written about our team and its players. You ever hear 'The Ballad of Tony Tanti'?

• We couldn't get away without The Rheostatics.

Related:
Roy and Clark: Two routes to rafters (Stephen Brunt, globesports.com)

Snark break

While you were dreaming of visiting a palace that has your name on it -- spelled correctly, too!

Team USA won its Olympic men's basketball opener in walkover despite missing 11 of its first 12 threes. Is that a harbinger of disaster, or impressive?

Good news: You get to keep your voting privileges if there's more than five clips on SI.com's Twenty-Five Must-See YouTubes that you haven't actually seen.

Don't act so surprised that Canada is already out of the Olympic boxing. Do you know anyone who knows anyone who belongs to a boxing club? Do you know anyone who went to a bar or someone's house to watch UFC 87 on Saturday?

Did you read about how Adam Trupish's experience was the quintessential small-town cheap COC-up?

"With only one boxer qualified, the Canadian Olympic Committee opted to cut corners, not credentialing a second person for Trupish's corner. Without a corner man for support, Trupish and (coach Charlie) Stewart turned to Ireland coach Billy Walsh, who volunteered his services as Trupish's second.

"It appeared briefly Canada's decision to go for style over practicality would keep Trupish from the ring.

"His Canadian jersey was a collared T-shirt, not the tank top style preferred by the International Amateur Boxing Association.

"Two minutes before we get in the ring, we're arguing just to get them to let me in the ring, because my outfit doesn't meet the normal criteria," Trupish said.

" 'Canada has started a new style and they (IABA) really didn't like the change. They like the more customary tank top.

" 'I guess we're more about fashion sense.' "

The New York Islanders have their priorities in order -- they introduced their Ice Girls before introducing a head coach. (Link via Puck Daddy.)

The Syracuse University mascot, Otto, is up for election to the Mascot Hall of Fame. And here you thought the Orange had no shot of appearing in any poll during the college football season.

PGA Championship: It's so nice that someone named Harrington can win something in Detroit. Sergio Garcia takes that Best Player To Never Win a Major distinction very seriously.

Instead of Yoric's skull, he's got an iPhone

Google search of the day: "Mats Sundin Hamlet" turns up 4,290 matches.

Good gosh a'mighty -- only a bunch of journalists would think they're being clever or literary by referencing a play that everyone in the goddamm Western Hemisphere reads in high school.

It's far, far better to work something on the scale of a Jim Croce reference -- "You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask of the ol' Lone Ranger and you don't push Mats Sundin to make up his mind."

Seriously, though, hopefully someone with head for business (Krister?) can figure out if Sweden's tax rates have anything to do with Sundin's feet-dragging. What's his tax situation if he ends up signing with a U.S.-based team and thus establishes residency in two countries outside Sweden? Plus there's the whole issue of Quebec taxes.

(This is coming from someone who can barely figure out how to do his own income taxes in Canada.)

Where was Grapes?

Hokey Night in Canada -- that's not a misspelling -- was squeezed for time last night.

Nicklas Lidström, as you know, became the first European captain to be presented with the Stanley Cup. It was an event that many a Don Cherry acolyte from Buena Vista to Vancouver Island had sworn up and down would never happen, although they only say it after their favourite team is eliminated.

Why didn't HNIC try to create some compelling television during its post-game wrap-up of the Detroit Red Wings' Stanley Cup win? The game ended around 10:40 Eastern time and the show signed off shortly after midnight. There was plenty of time to do a quick throw to the studio in between virtually everyone above the backup stickboy on the Red Wings' depth chart to introducing his extended family and say hi to everyone watching back in Harbour Grace or Rocky Mountain House.

Ron MacLean should have put the obvious question to Don Cherry: How do you feel, after all the things you've said about European players all these years, about Lidström?

That's called responsible journalism -- asking tough questions, following up. One gut feeling is that is that Cherry would have risen to the moment and mustered up the grace to say nice things about the Wings and their seven Swedes, admit maybe he was wrong. (One report out of Detroit suggests he was sticking to the songbook on ESPN in between periods, but once the Wings had the Cup in their hands, perhaps he would have changed the tune).

People who have followed Cherry's act know there's a complexity to the man that gets drowned out by the bombast and the breast-beating. Based on the way he came across in the book the late George Plimpton wrote after spending time at a Boston Bruins training camp in the late '70s, he valued the concept of nobility and that Hemingwayan grace under pressure.

He knows, or at least knew once, how to be gracious in defeat better than Hillary Clinton ever would. The gut feeling is that Cherry would have nutted up and admitted that, yes, Swedes and Russian and Czech players are just as virtuous as Canadian players. There's a chance he would also been stubborn and refused to budge.

Either way, considering the CBC is government-funded Crown corporation, inquiring minds had a right to know. Cherry, after a quarter-century of entertaining us and bashing more than a few European players, should have been in the spotlight.

In fairness, MacLean was needed to perform on-ice interviews. Perhaps Ron and Don's personal preference was to "let the players tell the story," since goodness knows, they do get prolix about the great Canadian grinder.

However, that's an instance of the talent's egos becoming bigger than the production. It's also a cop-out, since your and my tax dollars go to CBC Sports to produce good sports TV, not to produce a high school video yearbook disguised as a post-game wrapup, which is the nicest thing you can say about last night's coast-to-coast cornfest.

One is left to assume that Cherry was a sore loser about the Swedes. That's not fair to him. CBC Sports did poorly by a national treasure. Shame on them.

(Disclaimer: One might feel a bit differently if CBC had spent more time with the women in Kirk Maltby's life — Wife? Sister? Girlfriend? ... also, it's on the wire that HNIC might ditch its iconic theme music. This is akin to changing the drapes because your house is falling down.)

Related:
Wings' champs deal death blow to 'weak' Euro myths (Drew Sharp, Detroit Free Press)
McGuire gets the assist as NBC beats CBC (William Houston, globesports.com)
Despicable Don (Red Wings Snapshots, MLive.com)

Hey, Jenny Potter: Canada will have a challenge

Canada's whole Own The Podium rhetoric for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics is probably taking a gold medal in women's hockey for granted.

The U.S. beat Canada for the gold at the worlds last month in Harbin, China, but chances are, the average fan back home waved that off as one of those anything-can-happens. It should be on everyone's radar screen that USA Hockey is setting up a residency program for the national women's team in Blaine, Minn., starting in the fall. Much of that group will play with the Minnesota Whitecaps.

Canada might be heading toward the same state that the U.S. is for women's hoops. There's an expectation that only an Olympic gold medal will do, but the rest of the world is catching up and the athletes' economic reality works against having a national team which is together all the time. (This is being written without a full awareness of what the Canadian women go through, but it's not exactly unknown they make huge sacrifices to play.)

It's great for the sport, of course. The bottom line is there's no analog to Whitecaps president Jack Brodt, or to use the soccer example, Greg Kerfoot in Vancouver, among the old boys club that runs hockey in Canada. (If there's a patron on par with the businesswomen who run a couple of WNBA teams, they're remarkably shy.) Please keep that in mind in February 2010 if you're wondering why we didn't win in women's hockey while you were second knuckle deep in a big bowl of popcorn. That's not an excuse and it's doubtful Canada would use it as one, but it bears acknowledging.

Meantime, it's Sweden vs. Canada in the World Hockey Championship semi-final this afternoon in Quebec City. Any True North strong and full of self-loathing Canadian is probably tempted to root for the Swedes, who the equivalent of an entire NHL roster -- 21 players -- pass on playing. Henrik Lundqvist could be this tournament's answer to what Martin Gerber was in 2006 and won't the garment-rending be fun to observe.