Canada players celebrate victory against United States in the women’s hockey final at the Wukesong Sports Centre, Beijing, China, Feb. 17, 2022.DAVID W CERNY/Reuters
After she’d been buzzed, jostled and full-on trucked at least twice, someone tried to coax Team Canada goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens into talking about friendship.
Team USA had been out there running her over for two-plus hours in the Olympic final of women’s hockey, but weren’t they all really just great pals? What about this one on the U.S. team and that one and that other you played wherever with?
Desbiens stood there, still sweating, rubbing her gold medal in that covetous way people who’ve just won one all have – my Olympic precious.
Desbiens wanted to be helpful and go along with this line of questioning, but only vaguely. Prompted to get specific, she decided instead on the truth.
“Not hard at all. You just have to put this jersey on,” Desbiens said. “There’s no friendship here.”
That’s how it looked there. Not ugly, but not friendly. Canada dominated for the first half and, having taken a lead, absorbed pressure for the second. It was a perfect game plan. Because it worked. If it hadn’t worked, we’d now be saying that it was a colossal failure of ambition. But that’s how these things go.
Canada won, 3-2.
Canada’s players leap from the bench after their victory over the United States.DAVID W CERNY/Reuters
Afterward, they celebrated like maniacs. Every glove and helmet thrown celebratory in the air was immediately scooped up by a small army of Chinese volunteers on skates. Canada whooped it up, Chinese volunteers circled, and the Americans stood at a non-respectful distance staring at them both.
There is a tableau that must be created after this quadrennial game, and everyone instinctively understands where and how to stand.
Next the medals. The winner beams and cries. The loser is piteous and cries. The third-place team looks startled to be there and cries.
Then they all trek through the mixed zone and do it again. Often, someone is angry. But not at this Olympics. The Americans were outclassed and they knew it. They came armed with their excuses – COVID-19, Brianna Decker’s injury in the first game here, general malaise. They’re good excuses, but they’re still excuses. If they’d won, they’d just be adversity.
Canada got the privilege of being magnanimous. Those women over there, yeah, they’re a tough team, it means something.
While Canadian defender Renata Fast was talking about what it’s like to get a gold hung around you’re neck – “Wow. This is heavy.” – U.S. captain Kendall Coyne Schofield was standing two metres from her shouting between sobs, “Women’s hockey cannot be silent!”
When Canada beats the U.S. in this tournament, the show that follows is almost as compelling as the one on the ice. There’s nothing quite like it in sport, in part because it’s so predictable. It’s as if the same two players made the final of Wimbledon every year, and they made them spend the hour afterward handcuffed together.
Mostly what exudes from these women is the sense that they don’t like each other very much, not in this context, but that they are bound together. For however long you last as a player in the American or Canadian national set-up, this game is your highest calling. It’s your professional rationale. Lose it, and nothing else you do really matters.
Canada lost the last time in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games – making it 1,460 days between meaningful wins.
This time around, women’s hockey didn’t feel like the most important event in this Olympics. It felt like the only event. If Canada could win this one, all the other near misses would be bearable.
So, mission accomplished. They beat the Americans twice. They beat everyone else up.
But this victory over the U.S. felt a little like piling on. Not at the level of players. But in terms of where they are as a country and we are in relation to them.
We might ask ourselves – is right to beat the U.S. any more?
Of course it’s right. That’s the point of coming here. But does it give us the same satisfaction?
This old rivalry – which has reached its perfected version in this smouldering enmity – is born out of the very 1970s idea that the U.S. is a little bit better than we are.
They are loud and confident. We are quiet and mousey. They have Hollywood. We have Murdoch Mysteries. They swagger around the world picking fights. We trail after them calming everyone down.
It was a great Mutt and Jeff routine for a long while. We were happy with losing most of the time because we secretly wanted to be more like them. It gave us something to aspire to. Every now and again, usually on a hockey rink, we got to win one.
The tables haven’t exactly turned, but they are radically reoriented. America’s a basket case. Who’d want to be more like that? What satisfaction is there to be taken from getting on top of someone after they’ve already wrestled themselves down on the ground?
Our proximity and interconnectedness makes it inevitable that all their worst instincts bleed over the border and infect our tendency to sober judgment. All the big fights in Canada today are America’s cultural proxy wars.
If Canada’s voting routines are any indication, most of us don’t want to be like America any more. We want to be a lot less like them.
Don’t call it a breakup. Call it a break. We can still be friends. Give us a shout in a couple of years when you’ve stopped with the attempted coups.
Early in this tournament, Canada’s Fast was asked if she ever feels pity for the other team as they’re getting their head metaphorically and repeatedly hammered into the boards.
“Not really,” Fast said. “By us playing them hard, it makes them better. They’re going to learn things.”
What do you think the U.S. learned on Thursday?
There is the obvious – that life is pain. Some of these American players can count on one hand how many times they’ve lost in the red-white-and-blue.
“I won’t forget this probably forever,” Team USA’s Amanda Kessel said afterward, but doubtfully. Like she wasn’t totally sure it had actually happened. Beyond that, there’s nothing to learn from losing at sports. The learning lesson here is the game itself. The thing considered outside its result.
One of the few nice things Canada and America still share is a love of playing together. Their sports leagues are full of Canadians, and our league is full of Americans. We remain happily intertwined through sport.
As our world views splinter, it can sometimes feel like it’s the last thing left that we have in common.
That’s what’s actually precious now. It’s a tether back to each other at some future, less zany point in history.
So we beat them and they beat us and in the end, both sides win.
At least, that’s the hope.
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GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
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