MILAN – With his heart aching and Mark Stone struggling to find the words to express how much he feels duty-bound to win Olympic gold, tears did the talking for an NHL star paid a salary of $8 million to play hockey.
“I just want to give everybody in Canada something to cheer about,” Stone said Thursday, crying after the country he proudly represents beat Czechia 5-0 at the Winter Olympics.
Wearing a big red maple leaf on his uniform, Stone cried without shame, feeling a deep responsibility to make his grieving nation proud.
It’s only hockey, eh?
But the game hits different, closer to the heart, at the Olympics.
Stone has hoisted the Stanley Cup as captain of the Vegas Golden Knights. Taking the ice for Canada, however, is a whole ’nuther thing.
With childlike wonder, maybe they forget what was in them, millionaires like Stone and teammate Nathan MacKinnon play the game for love and country.
You can’t fake that lump in the throat.
“It’s the Olympics. It’s a big deal,” said MacKinnon, whose day job is with the Avalanche. “It’s something we’ve all dreamed of. Very grateful to be out there on the ice.”
After nearly a 12-year absence due to everything from financial squabbles to a worldwide pandemic, NHL players are back competing in the Winter Games.
And it’s glorious.
What makes it such goose-bump hockey is more than the skill level of a team so blessed that when Sidney Crosby ends a shift on the ice, there’s Connor McDavid jumping over the boards for Canada.
What makes this special is that even an NHL star with gray in his beard can be as excited to be on the Olympic stage as any bobsledder living the dream.
“Pretty crazy. Just an unbelievable experience,” said USA center Brock Nelson, who scored twice in a 5-1 victory over Latvia that was much more difficult than the score would indicate.
Against the feisty and unafraid Latvians, where would the U.S. team have been without Nelson, known for his unselfish play for the Avalanche and country?
In big heaping trouble.
At age 34, Nelson’s inclusion on this Olympic roster was the subject of second-guessing back in the States.
But the hockey gods smiled at his selection.
If you believe in the power of horseshoes and four-leaf clovers, then Team USA would’ve been nuts to board the plane to Italy without Nelson.
No team from the United States has won gold at the Winter Games without one of Nelson’s ancestors wearing a red, white and blue sweater.
Way back in 1960, Bill Christian, his grandfather, scored in the third period to beat the Soviet Union in the game that would prove essential to the USA’s championship run.
In The Miracle on Ice in 1980, when young and scrappy amateurs shocked a Soviet team revered by the communist government as a symbol of its Cold War strength, a key contributor to the upset was Dave Christian. He is Nelson’s uncle.
Real or imagined, the Americans will take any edge they can get.
“Nothing’s easy in this tournament,” U.S. defenseman Charlie McAvoy said.
With Czech goaltender Lukas Dostal gobbling up pucks like they were those addictively tasty bread dumplings of his homeland, the Canadians looked uncommonly uptight throughout the first period, until Avs defenseman Cale Makar threw a desperation shot on the net from the point in the waning seconds before intermission.
Macklin Celebrini, not yet 20 years old, plucked the puck out of thin air, with the hand-eye coordination it would require to snare a fly with a pair of tweezers, and deflected Makar’s shot into the net for a goal that allowed the Canadians to exhale and let their talent roll.
“He’s so young. But if no one knew how old he was, and you just watched him, he’s one of the best players in the world,” said MacKinnon, who scored a goal of his own in the third period.
“Regardless of his age, (Celebrini is) a top five or seven player in the world. No questions.”
Although there’s a highly anticipated showdown for the Olympic championship between the United States and Canada on the final Sunday of these Games, it’s far from a sure thing.
After having two scores, including one by Nelson, in the first period overturned by challenges from Latvian coach Harijs Vitolins, all the breaks for the Americans were bad.
They were deadlocked in a 1-1 tie, with body language of the U.S. bench hinting at frustration, until 38 seconds past the midway point of the second period, when Nelson hammered home a goal that lit the lamp.
“We were kind of waiting for the dam to break,” McAvoy said. “So that was a really good goal for us.”
At the Olympics, even grizzled NHL veterans feel the weight of playing for their country. “I don’t care who you are … Everybody’s got the jitters,” said Jon Cooper, coach of Team Canada.
Many of his players also skated with heavy hearts and struggled mightily to keep their minds from drifting back across the Atlantic Ocean to home.
Eight people, ranging in age from 11 to 39, were killed when a teenage shooter opened fire earlier this week at a school in the tiny western Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge.
“It’s hard to talk about. Brings tears in my eyes, especially when you have kids … I’d do anything for my kids,” said Stone, shocked by how quickly he got choked up. “Sorry … Your heart goes out to the families of the victims.”
Thinking of the parents and grandparents who will never hear a beloved child’s voice again, Stone was so overcome by grief that he could no longer speak.
“It’s just too much,” Stone admitted.
With funerals awaiting the victims of mass murder, hockey means nothing.
And it means everything for a country where hockey is life.
“What we can do now is try to bring happiness and pride to our country,” Canadian winger Tom Wilson said. “Try to bring our country together.”