The essence of our country
When our best lace 'em up in a chilly rink, Al Strachan senses the Canadian euphoria
By AL STRACHAN, TORONTO SUN
There is always a wonderful ambience surrounding the opening of a Team Canada training camp. It's a mixture of a number of factors -- anticipation, camaraderie, optimism, exuberance and pride being among them.
Perhaps the feeling should have passed long ago, but it hasn't. Every time a couple of dozen of our best players get together in a hockey rink, there is the inescapable sense that we have found the essence of Canada.
The summer sun glares outside; the hope for the National Hockey League season seems remote, oil prices touch $50 a barrel, but here in Ottawa, in the cement bowels of a chilly university hockey rink, the true Canadian euphoria is in place.
Another tournament is about to start. Another chance to show that in the only activity that is truly Canadian and unites the country, we are still best.
The rest of the world doesn't care much. Most of the world doesn't even know the tournament is taking place. But that's not the point.
A hockey World Cup, like the Canada Cup before it, matters to Canadians.
It's one more manifestation of that impossible little conundrum that we like to force upon ourselves at regular intervals. Win and all is well. Lose and we'll beat ourselves up for years until the next opportunity rolls around.
If it appears that Canada might not emerge on top, there is no limit to the abuse and scorn that is heaped upon the players. Remember the shaky start to the 2002 Olympic tournament and the vicious, acrimonious -- often personal -- attacks to which the team was subjected?
But when those players were winning the gold medal 10 days later, all was forgiven. Now they were national heroes, the stuff of which legends are made.
At the moment, because of the tenuous labour situation, a lot of them are being criticized on call-in shows as lazy, overpaid greedy bums.
But here at the University of Ottawa, where Team Canada's training camp opened yesterday, there isn't the slightest evidence that any of those epithets is deserved.
When these players got the call, they came. No hesitation. No conditions. No convenient injuries.
In some other countries, the players dread the arrival of the call that asks them to participate. Our players sit by the phone waiting for it, and feel acute disappointment if it doesn't come.
You could pick any one of the players on the Team Canada roster as an example, but let's look at Ryan Smith. Even though he's only 28, he already has represented Canada at six world championships. He was a member of the 2002 Olympic team. And now he's back again.
"It's hockey and I have a passion for it," he explained after the opening skate yesterday. "Not that other players don't. I just love playing and I'm thrilled to be a part of it."
The team's executive director, Wayne Gretzky, said: "Not one person I talked to hesitated to come. They're all thrilled to be here."
They know what they're letting themselves in for. They know that there are only two possible outcomes -- one is to win, the other is to be vilified.
But they don't back down. They don't beg off. They come to wear the Team Canada sweater proudly, totally determined to perpetuate the hockey heritage that has been handed down to them.
As the tournament unfolds, there will no doubt be some dark moments. There will be some controversies and some concerns.
But this is opening day. This is the dawning, and radiating from it is the optimism that always surfaces whenever Canada sends its finest to play hockey.
