Turin – The nasty gash was stitched in a crusty, purple line of dried blood across the cheek of Joe Sakic. The raw ache in his heart was worse. Far worse.
He stammered, searching for the words to describe how Canada, demanding gold, will return to a shocked country empty-handed, with no Olympic medal, covered in shame, after being bounced by the Russian Federation 2-0 at the Winter Games.
“Anytime you lose, it hurts,” Sakic told me Wednesday, recalling all the times he has suffered through defeat in his 36 years, from pee-wee games to the NHL playoffs. “But how does this loss rank? To lose out in the quarterfinals of the Olympics with this team? For me personally, it could be the worst. Ever.”
Hockey is life in Canada. This morning, the sun need not shine anywhere from Montreal to Vancouver.
“Losing is devastating,” said Wayne Gretzky, executive director of the Canadian team.
In Colorado, Sakic is known as Captain Joe. He takes wearing a “C” on his Avalanche sweater seriously. He humbly accepted the same job for his country at these Games. In defeat, his shoulders slumped with the weight of all Canada.
“We know how much this is going to hurt people,” said Sakic, whose gold medal from the 2002 Winter Games, if anything, only sharpens the sting of this failure.
In a dank, creaky rink the Italians call Esposizioni, hockey feels like a grainy, black-and-white newsreel in living color. There were 4,130 spectators crammed into every cranny of the old barn, which rattled with a thick Slavic voice, drowning out the cheers for Canada with a chant of “Rush-ee-ya! Rush-ee-ya!”
The talent on the ice was the stuff of dreams. Sakic centered passes to Jarome Iginla, and when they skated to the bench, Vincent Lecavalier or Martin St. Louis would jump over the boards.
Which made it all the more stunning to realize in 11 of the last 12 periods Canada played at these Winter Games, none of those NHL stars scored a single goal.
“Nobody expected to see that,” Russian defenseman Darius Kasparaitis said with a wry grin. “I think the offense maybe Canada left back at home.”
Sorting through the rubble of Team Canada you can also find the downfall of the Avalanche, and two big reasons things must change before the Stanley Cup returns to Colorado.
On the big ice of the Olympics, there’s more room to expose flaws.
Age has not robbed Sakic of his brilliance, but more than time is gaining in the rearview mirror. The hot wheels of 20-year-old wunderkind Alexander Ovechkin, who gave the Russians the only goal they would need early in the third period, now blow by Captain Joe.
Just as the heavy slap shot of Avs defensemen Rob Blake failed to do damage for the inept Canadian power play, his heavy, 36-year-old feet do not fit the fast-break game long favored at the Winter Games and now celebrated by the NHL.
Did anybody in Colorado notice who was sitting in the penalty box when Russia earned the game-winning score? It was Todd Bertuzzi, whom Avalanche fans cannot forgive for breaking Steve Moore’s neck. Here’s betting the sin of a dumb interference infraction will be more widely condemned in Canada.
As Russia scored an insurance goal in the final seconds, Gretzky appeared as if he desired to crawl under a blanket until the ice melted.
Even if bad things happen in threes, the Great One never imagined his life could get worse. This winter alone, he has watched his mother die, heard a gambling investigation come knocking on his wife’s front door and watched Canada fall flat on its canucks at the Olympics.
“Quite frankly,” Gretzky said, “it’s been a horrible three months for me.”
Standing in the atrium of an auditorium where TV cameras waited for him to explain a national disaster, Gretzky picked lint from his suit and admitted to being unprepared for this postmortem.
“We didn’t plan on being done this early,” Gretzky muttered.
The wait for Olympic redemption is four long years. The next Winter Games are scheduled for Vancouver. Canada’s pond. Sakic’s home town. Captain Joe will be 40.
“Hopefully,” Sakic said, “you get a chance to represent your country again. There’s no honor like it. But I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The maple leaf on the flag of Canada has never been a more embarrassing shade of red. Ever seen an entire country blush?
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
