My dad probably remembers August 31, 1996, as the day he gave his daughter’s hand away in marriage—and angrily shook his fist at his son.
As soon as my sister Eleni said “I do” and kissed her new husband Donald, I bolted out the Chicago church door to catch a flight to Philadelphia for the opening game of the World Cup.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell my dad that I was leaving the wedding early, so he was furious when he realized that I was putting hockey ahead of family.
My father believed a family member doesn’t bail on a Greek wedding, but I believed I couldn’t bail on a group of guys who were also like family to me.
That was the day of the opening game against Canada, and my American buddies had been calling me for two weeks telling me they needed me to help slay the dragon. Sometimes they would call 2:00 in the morning.
I had been trying to beat Canada for a long time, and with the arrival of players such as Bill Guerin, Keith Tkachuk, and Derian Hatcher, among others, it looked as if we finally had the physical presence necessary to get that job done.
It wasn’t as if we were going to surprise anyone. A month before the tournament, the media was talking about the possibility that the Americans might finally have their day.
My buddy Jeremy Roenick fanned the flames and fired up our competition by saying publicly that we were going to win the tournament.
As it turned out, Roenick ended up in a contract battle and didn’t play because he couldn’t risk getting hurt.
My timing on leaving the wedding had to be perfect in order to make the game in Philadelphia. My limousine had a police escort from the airport to the arena. Although I missed the pregame skate, I was dressed and ready for the opening faceoff.
Pool play or not, this game was important, because we needed to show the Canadians that this World Cup was going to be different than the 1991 Canada Cup, where we advanced to the final only to be beaten in two straight games by the Canadians. In that tournament, we lost three times to them, counting the loss in the preliminary round.
Before the 1996 game was a minute old, Tkachuk broke Claude Lemieux’s nose in a fight. Not long after, Hatcher decked Canada’s Eric Lindros behind the net.
We won 5–3, and I believe the Canadians understood right then that the American team now had some teeth. The 1996 U.S. team was more skilled and much tougher than previous U.S. squads.
During the postgame revelry in the dressing room, I told the media the story of walking out of my sister’s wedding before the reception. I explained to reporters how my mother had to hold back my father as I left the church. I figured my sister and her husband would understand, but I knew it was going to take a while for my father to get over it.
Reporters listened intently to the tale and one of them, thinking about the good story it would make, said, “This is great.”
“Great for you, maybe,” I said. “But you don’t have to face my dad.”
Beating Canada was always important to me because I both hated and admired their arrogance when it comes to hockey.
Canadians say hockey is their game, but the truth is that hockey is the Canadians’ only game. The vast majority of their best athletes play hockey, while America’s top athletes play a variety of sports.
The Canadians’ arrogance, however, is also what keeps them strong in international hockey. They come into every tournament expecting to win.
In the preliminary round of the 1996 World Cup, we defeated Russia, Canada, and Slovakia to win our pool and earn a bye into the semifinals.
We faced Russia in a game that was played in Ottawa. We were stunned that the Canadian fans rooted loudly for the Russians throughout the game.
Our coach Ron Wilson said after the game that it felt like the game was being played in Moscow.
Canadian fans were also hard on my buddy Brett Hull, a Canadian-born player who had been part of the U.S. program since the 1980s (his mother was American). Canadian fans didn’t much care that Hull had been on Team USA before; now that he had established himself as an NHL goal-scoring star, they chanted “Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.”
Hull scored a couple of goals to help us defeat the Russians 5–2 much to the dismay of the Canadians in attendance.
The fact that those fans were rooting for the Russians was yet another indication that Canadians understood how talented our group was. It seemed as if we had our hosts worried.
The Canadians’ anti-American stance in Ottawa probably helped my relationship with my father. Watching the tournament on television, he was incensed about how the fans had rooted for Russia against us. Suddenly I was the sympathetic figure. He was madder at the Canadians than he was at me.
Canada needed a double-overtime win against Sweden to earn the right to play us in the best-of-three World Cup final.
Unlike the fans in Ottawa, we were rooting for Canada to win that game; if we won the World Cup without beating Canada, we would have never heard the end of it. Not only did we want to win, we wanted to humble the reigning champions.
Canadians became smug again after my future Red Wings teammate Steve Yzerman scored in overtime to beat us in Game 1 in Philadelphia.
We were all sure that the linesman had missed an offside call before the goal was scored.
No one on the Canadian team offered any bulletin board material after the victory, but you know they were thinking that nothing had changed for the American program.
However, our confidence level was still high. We expected to play better in Game 2, and we certainly did, winning 5–2. Hullie scored another goal.
One of Adam Foote’s shots hit me, and the puck deflected directly to Hull, who scored on a breakaway.
I went hard after Lindros and we ended up slashing and hacking each other the entire game. The next day, the Montreal newspapers suggested Game 3 would be Canada’s most important game since the 1972 Summit Series, when the Canadians had defeated the Soviets.
Mark Messier had missed Game 2 with the “flu”, but he said he would be ready for the deciding game, as if there was any doubt.
Coach Ron Wilson talked about beating the lion in the lion’s den. We were expecting the game to be a war and it was. After Tkachuk received a game misconduct for slashing Foote, Foote scored to give Canada a 2–1 lead with 7:10 left.
Less than four minutes later, Hull redirected Hatcher’s shot into the net to tie the game.
Then my Chicago Blackhawks teammate Tony Amonte scored perhaps the biggest goal of his career to give us a 3–2 lead. Hatcher then scored on a 180-foot empty-netter and Adam Deadmarsh added another as Team USA had its best international win since the Miracle on Ice 16 years earlier.
Hull had never won anything in his life and he didn’t even know how to celebrate. He asked me what to do.
“Just throw your shit up in the air,” I said.
Two things I want to point out about that triumph in Montreal. First, I stayed on the ice for a long time after the game because I wanted the Canadians to see me celebrating.
Second, I bring up that World Cup championship every chance I get when talking to Canadians because it irritates them to this day.
The Canadians didn’t get their revenge until six years later at the 2002 Olympics. Although we lost to them in the gold medal game, I have always maintained that the games in that tournament were without a doubt the best hockey games I ever played in my life.
I also loved playing for coach Herb Brooks.
What’s forgotten now is that I was far from a lock to make that U.S. team in 2002. I was 40 years old, and the 1998 squad had not performed well in Japan. Herb was contemplating changes to the U.S. roster, and I had only played 24 games the previous season in Detroit after a major knee injury.
So he had plenty of reasons not to include me, but he said he wanted to sit down with me before he decided. He flew out to Los Angeles and we talked about what had happened in Nagano. I could see him soaking in everything I was telling him. He told people that my analysis of 1998 is what convinced him of my value to the team.
It probably wasn’t what I said to Brooks as much as how I said it. I’m sure he knew from talking to me that I care deeply about Team USA winning in international hockey.
I don’t recall all of the topics we talked about, but I remember telling him that I felt our group played best when we had specific instructions on what we were trying to accomplish. Ron Wilson may have respected us too much as players. Because all of us were NHL stars, he asked us for our opinions on how we should break out and attack. I think we were better when we were just told what to do. In 1998, we had too many opinions and ended up with a system that was too simple. It diluted the value of our team’s overall skill level.
Brooks told me that I was on the team, and by the time he flew home to Minnesota I was named captain.
It was clear immediately that Brooks coached the way I like to be coached. He was tough and smart, and he knew how and when to make adjustments to help his team be successful. He knew when to rein in players and when to just let them play.
Now, that wasn’t exactly my initial impression of him. I loved Badger Bob Johnson, my coach at Wisconsin, and he and Brooks did not get along. Being a team guy, I was on Johnson’s side in their feud, so I disliked Brooks on general principle.
But over the years I talked to many of his former players and always heard the same thing: yes, Brooks was tough on the 1980 team, but when it was all over none of the players had a bad word to say about him.
That was good enough for me; anyone associated with that Miracle on Ice team is gold to me. Those guys are the untouchables. They can do no wrong.
The 2002 Olympic tournament could not have started better: we downed Finland 6–0, thumped Belarus 8–1, and in between played a hard-fought 2–2 tie with Russia. With Igor Larionov, Pavel Bure, Sergei Fedorov, Ilya Kovalchuk, and others on that squad, the Russians probably had the best offensive talent in the tournament.
The television ratings of that game were the highest for any hockey game since Brooks and the Americans beat the Soviets in 1980 at Lake Placid.
We beat Germany 5–0 in the quarterfinals, meaning at that point we had outscored our opponents 21–3.
Meanwhile, the Russians had beaten the Czechs 1–0 to set up a rematch with us in the semifinals.
Mike Modano played brilliantly in that tournament and Tkachuk was a beast. Goalie Mike Richter was on top of his game. We were a confident group, but we knew the Russians would test us. The game was played on February 22—the 22nd anniversary of the Miracle on Ice.
At a practice before that game, Herb Brooks passed out USA Hockey pens to everyone and told us, “Write your own story.”
Those pens were Brooks’ way of saying this tournament wasn’t about him or the 1980 team. This tournament was about us, the current group, and the history we wanted to make ourselves.
All the reporters covering the tournament wanted to write about Brooks’ triumphant return, but he kept telling everyone that it was my team, not his. He said the Chelios “stamp” was on it. But Brooks was still pulling all of the levers, and he had a handle on how everyone was feeling and playing.
Most of the Americans who played in our 3–2 semifinal win against Russia will say it was the best game they have ever played. It was up-and-down, thrill-per-minute hockey.
We built a 3–0 lead after two periods on goals by Bill Guerin, Scott Young, and Phil Housley, and then hung on for dear life. Richter played out of this world. The Russians could have easily won both games we played. Both games were pressure-filled battles. It felt as if we had emptied our tanks to beat the Russians in that second meeting.
After that game, Brooks’ record in the Olympics was 10–0–2.
We could certainly feel the pressure heading into that gold medal game against Canada. This was the most important meeting between the two countries since the 1996 World Cup.
I remember sitting next to my buddy Gary Suter before the game and hearing him mumble, “Wow, this is a really big game.”
Suter’s nervousness was painfully obvious.
“It’s no problem, Sutes,” I told him. “We’ve either won a gold medal or a silver, so just go out there and relax.”
Even as the words came out of my mouth I knew they would have no impact on Suter. He was always a worrier.
Of course, I didn’t make the situation any better by saying things like, “I don’t want to be too close to you when we walk off the bus.” Suter was still concerned about some crazed Canadian fan looking for retribution for his hit on Gretzky years ago.
When the game started, Suter was still trying to calm himself down. We won the faceoff, the puck went to Suter, and he fired it into our bench.
A moment later, another faceoff, Suter had the puck, and again drove it out of play.
Back when Darryl Sutter was the head coach in Chicago, he’d sometimes yell at Suter while Gary was on the ice. Sutter thought he was helping, but it would throw Suter off his game and ended up doing more harm than good.
Seeing Suter pressing, Brett Hull, sitting on the bench, stood up and yelled, “He’s been Darryl-ized!”
That made everyone laugh and probably calmed everyone down, including Suter.
Even though we lost to Canada 5–2, I felt we could have won that game. We had a 1–0 lead after a goal by Tony Amonte, and Roenick tried a toe-drag move on a 3-on-1 break but we didn’t get a shot on goal.
What really hurt was an injury suffered by Tkachuk in the semifinals against Russia. He was on fire in that tournament, and we could have used his physical presence against Canada.
Give the Canadians credit; they just kept coming at us and refused to back down. Their defensemen kept pressing. Joe Sakic played well in that game.
After Paul Kariya and Jarome Iginla scored to give Canada a 2–1 lead, Brian Rafalski scored to tie the game. Then Sakic scored to give Canada the lead again. We were still scrapping to tie until Iginla redirected Yzerman’s shot with four minutes remaining to give Canada a two-goal lead.
In hindsight, we started to wear out in the gold medal game. The semifinal win against Russia had been emotionally draining. While we were fighting for our tournament lives, Canada had a much easier game against Belarus, who had shocked Sweden to advance but were out of miracles.
Brooks had decided not to name Derian Hatcher to the team because he didn’t think he skated well enough for the wider Salt Lake City ice surface.
Maybe we could have used him against Canada, but we’ll never know. In short international tournaments, it’s difficult to know why teams win or lose. Sometimes teams get on a roll, and sometimes they don’t.
If you look at the 2004 World Cup, we lost to Finland 2–1 in the semifinal game. When you compare the two rosters, you would think we would have won that game nine times out of 10. But we didn’t get it done that day.
In 2002, on the day of the gold medal game, Canada was the better team. It’s that simple.
Despite the loss, the game against Canada was a great game to play. We won an Olympic silver medal. I try to remember that. And playing for Brooks was an unreal experience. I could see why guys would go through a wall for him.
International competition never got old to me. I played in four Olympics and wore the USA jersey 10 times in my career. I hated losing to Canada. In fact, I hated losing, period, when I wore a Team USA jersey. When I played for the Americans at the 1984 Olympics, I was so disappointed with our performance that I traded my Team USA jacket to sportswriter Ed Swift for a Sports Illustrated jacket.
When it was announced that I had been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, members of the media asked me several times which jersey I would be wearing in my photo.
Fortunately, the Hockey Hall of Fame doesn’t follow the same protocol embraced by the Baseball Hall of Fame, which apparently does require that inductees pick a team.
That would have been difficult for me because I am the only player to play 400 or more games with three different teams.
In a Hall of Fame program, I’m featured in a Blackhawks jersey because I played the most games for that team.
But if I was forced to pick a jersey, I might go with a Team USA sweater…just to piss off the Canadians.