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  <title><![CDATA[Defeat is not an option for Canada]]></title>
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    <article id="10237">
      <title><![CDATA[Defeat is not an option for Canada]]></title>
      <author><![CDATA[Ice Hockey Community Staff]]></author>
      <createdate unixtime="1266943863" delta="27 weeks ago"><![CDATA[2/23/2010]]></createdate>
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      <lead><![CDATA[IMAGINE if the world played Australia's native game. Not the whole world, maybe, but a significant chunk. Imagine Australian rules football was an Olympic sport. The top players would be assembled, after fierce debate - Ablett, Judd, Brown - and a team of superstars sent off carrying the nation's expectations. Going off to the games to take on those who had adopted Australia's national pastime. And finishing seventh.]]></lead>
      <text><![CDATA[That is what happened to Canada and Canadians four years ago in Turin when the unthinkable became reality and the nation's ice hockey team ended its campaign well out of the medals. That result was a national tragedy that left scar tissue still puckering and pink. Sportswriters sometimes use words like ''shame'' and ''redemption'' too lightly when talking about goals scored and ankles sprained. But the first is what many Canadians felt and the second what they desperately wanted.Now is the opportunity for that redemption but also an equal chance for the pain to be compounded and the scar torn open. At a home Olympic Games, Canada expects and demands gold in the sport it invented and took to the world.''It means everything,'' says veteran hockey writer Steve Simmons from the Toronto Sun. ''This is how we will judge the Olympics and view the Olympics. This is who we are. Canadians will watch and enjoy all of the other sports. They will live through the hockey. That's a fact of life in this country.''Simmons has covered the sport for 30 years. He has witnessed the greatest players of all time and seen his countrymen win Olympic gold in 2002 - beating the Americans on their own turf. He was also there at the nadir, in Turin, when the might of Canada was humbled 2-0 by tiny Switzerland and then, confidence dented, lost again next-up to Finland. Those losses meant they faced powerful Russia in their quarter-final. The Russians sent them home, disgraced and humiliated.For a while on Friday, Simmons and others thought they were witnessing a repeat. Team Canada met the Swiss again - four years and a day since that terrible loss. What followed was a ripping contest in which the Swiss came back from 2-0 down to level at full-time. It was based on manic defence, exceptional teamwork and - as it had been four years earlier - a goal tender who was almost impassable. This time, though, Canada scraped through, but only in a tense penalty shootout after overtime.Hockey fans did not start fretting; they had already done that in game one when Team Canada's stars took a while to fire up against minnow Norway. Eventually the Canucks had smashed the Norsemen 8-0 but a little of the anxiety still remained. After Switzerland it got louder.''It's a little early to jump off the building but we tend to jump sooner rather than later on this issue,'' Simmons says. ''We like to panic first and then work backwards from there.''Make no mistake, the pressure on Canada's team is a big as it gets in sport. Think Andy Murray in a Wimbledon final if tennis was the biggest drawcard in England. Then add more pressure. The Canada v Switzerland game drew 11 million viewers in the host country, almost twice as many as last year's top rating program, the Super Bowl. Every night the streets of Vancouver throng with tens of thousands, almost all of them wearing the replica Team Canada jumpers that sell for around $400. Most of them bear the names of goal tender Robert Luongo or centre Sidney Crosby on the back. Luongo is the hometown hero. Crosby the pin-up and best player - the young man who captained Pittsburgh to the Stanley Cup last year.A live prime-time TV special was aired in January just to announce the Canadian team. ''The build-up was ridiculous,'' Simmons says. ''For a year the dominant conversation in this country has been who should be on the team and who will be.''Have they got it right? Simmons thinks the right players got picked but that this is not a great Canadian side. Not yet anyway. There is no Gretzky. No Mario Lemieux. ''Sydney Crosby is a very good player but he is not Wayne Gretzky,'' the veteran reporter says.There is another anxiety also. Canada has the best depth but not the best player. There just might be a Gretzky at these Olympics. But Alexander Ovechkin - the most dominant force in the NHL - wears Russian colours.Ovechkin is extraordinary. He has won the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player for the past two seasons. A No. 1 draft pick, former rookie of the year and owner of every individual award that matters. Not only does he captain his team - the Washington Capitals - they signed him in 2008 to a 13-year contract valued at $A139 million.The other teams are strong - not as deep as Canada's talented pool but still stocked with NHL players. Any of the top six nations are capable of winning the tournament, Simmons says. A sense of looming injustice prevails. Hockey is not like speed skating, it is more like soccer. Teamwork is important, goal-keeping critical. The dominant performer might often not win.Simmons cites a US official grumbling yesterday: ''In the NHL we play best-of-seven play-off series. Almost every time, the best team wins. One game to win everything? Anything can happen.''Canada's stars must gel and gel quickly. As Crosby put it after the Swiss near-miss: ''To go through that desperation and tight hockey, we are going to get better.'' Then he added: ''The gold medal game isn't tomorrow. And that's the good news.''And so, tomorrow, the biggest test yet. In its third pool game, Canada faces Team USA. The young American combination is not the equal of its northern neighbour. Not on paper. But the Americans have serious talent and, in Ryan Miller, the best goal tender in the sport. If Switzerland's Jonas Hiller could hold out Crosby and company then the Buffalo Sabre's Miller is every chance to do the same. In their first pool game, the Americans eased past the same Swiss outfit that caused Canada so much trouble and then followed up with a thrashing of Norway. Canadians aren't holding their breath, they are too tense even to inhale.Lose to the Americans and - depending on other results - the Canucks could again face Russia at the next hurdle. With Ovechkin on the opposing team it is a horrendous prospect. ''It's basically win or else,'' Simmons says.Simmons says hockey connects his large, sprawling country and it would be unthinkable to miss a medal for the second Games running but simply snaring one would never be enough.''There is only one medal people care about; it's gold,'' he said. ''Silver would not make people happy. Silver if you are a short-track skater is a great thing. If it's hockey it just means we lost.'']]></text>
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