Web MasterI never thought I’d be writing anything about hockey unless it involved NHL ’94 for the Sega Genesis, which is my current all-consuming addiction in life, and actually way too fun to resemble actual hockey so it doesn’t count.
The single best thing about Olympic hockey is its resemblance to NHL ’94. The players are as fast, the passes connect (or are cleanly intercepted) most of the time, and a game with twenty-minute periods really takes an hour to play. (You can’t check people into the boards after a whistle with impunity in the Olympics yet, though. Maybe in 2006.)
The USA-Canada gold medal game, which I am watching right now, is like a litany of NHL ’94’s best players: Roenick, Lemieux, Leetch, Fleury, MacInnis, Nieuwendyk, Sakic, Yzerman, Chelios, Housley, Hull, Modano, Lindros, Suter, Shanahan. All are at still at the top of their games in 2002, just like eight years ago, which is amazing. (The players not yet in the league in ’94 who are on TV right now-Mike York, Martin Brodeur, Chris Pronger and Jerome Iginla, to name a few-are all wonderful players, but I don’t know them like I know the veterans. Ya know?)
Right now, I am thinking several things (uncommon for me):
Gary Thorne is just the man to be calling these games. He has one of the all-time great broadcasting voices, perfect because the tension in his voice matches the tension in the game at any given moment. This is much rarer than it sounds, but it’s great because I know exactly when to stop typing and look at the TV. Plus, every hour Thorne spends calling hockey games is an hour he’s not calling baseball games, and Thorne on baseball is like Kevin Harlan on golf. Not pretty.
Second period right now, and USA just killed a two-man advantage thanks to some vintage Mike Richter acrobatics. The following sports could benefit by employing the concept of man advantage somehow: table tennis, volleyball, football and badminton. Dodge ball already uses it to great effect, but baseball would get out of hand pretty quickly.
John Leclair just tied the game. One of those goals that has always made me hate hockey, where everyone’s flailing about in the crease and no TV viewer knows what happened until arms go up in celebration. It’s bad for that reason, and it’s bad because it makes hockey feel like a crapshoot of tips, bounces and rebounds.
Canada goes up 3-2 before I can even finish typing the last comment. I am a bit of a slow typist-slow thinker, really-but this is ridiculous.
Chris Chelios and Joe Girardi should get together sometime and compare DNA. Joe Sakic could get in on this too.
– Intermission now. Talking heads in ties are dissecting Mario Lemieux’s open-net shank with some Matrix-style special effects. Props to that movie, by the way, that I can use its name to describe special effects and everybody will know what I’m talking about.
Jeremy Roenick is disappointing me deeply. In NHL ’94 he is the closest thing to a god. Everyone he checks falls down, and every one-timer he fires finds the back of the net. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him play live, and he looks depressingly human.
A word on mismatches and upsets. In basketball, the overmatched team usually wins with three-pointers and zone defense. In football, a speedy scatback and some trick plays and crafty blitzes can level the field. We’re seeing the hockey version of it here: while Canada methodically works the puck inward and is finding strong opportunities, the US is relying on dump-and-chase and shooting from a long way out, hoping Brodeur will allow an easy rebound. That and a kickass goalie, which Richter certainly is right now. But this is clearly a mismatch.
With Thorne in the booth, Bill McCreary officiating and crappy techno-pop blasting for ten seconds at a time during the dead spots, this feels a lot like an NHL game. But anyone converted to hockey by these games who follows the players back to the professional game will be sorely disappointed by the phlegmed-up, unnecessarily violent style they find. Unless they change their rules to suit the Olympic style (highly unlikely), the NHL has made a huge mistake in letting its prize commodities showcase their talents in a more attractive format.
Canadian Steve Yzerman draws a penalty with about six minutes to go. The way it’s been going, this feels like the Americans’ last chance. An offsides, a couple puck-handling mistakes and two good solid shots later, the power play passes, and the game pretty much feels over even before Yzerman comes out of the box and immediately scores the game-clinching goal. Cameras show Mr. Canada, Wayne Gretzky, in the stands, pumping his fists. Capable lip-readers catch a clear “Fuckin’ eh!” Later, Sakic scorches Richter just for kicks to make it a 5-2 final.
Hockey’s distinctly Canadian personality comes across in the accents: the players, the coaches, the commentators. It makes them sound un-athletic, but maybe that’s just the Southern boy in me talking. This was clearly their sport from the get-go; even the prism of heavily America-centric coverage (courtesy of NBC) couldn’t obscure the fact that one country would truly appreciate the gold medal more than the other-in terms of celebratory parties, not just headlines the following day. Good for them.
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