Unlike the past, this Canadian women’s hockey team is having fun on road to Olympic gold-medal final

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This article was published 14/02/2022 (1352 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING They’re playing some of the biggest games of their lives in largely empty arenas.

So to watch Canada’s women’s hockey team perform in person at these Olympics is also to hear their voices ringing through the rink, loud and crystal clear. And the thing that stands out, most recently in Monday’s 10-3 semifinal win over Switzerland, is how much fun they seem to be having.

This Team Canada constantly hoots and whoops and woo-hoos, not just to celebrate goals or to punctuate wins. They tend to randomly express the joy they’re obviously taking in their jobs all game long. And let’s just say it stands out. If you’ve been following the long arc of history with this team, there’ve been moments when the gold-or-bust pressure of the Olympic process seemed to turn Canada’s players into something that resembled — from the outside, at least — humourless robots.

And maybe it still will come in Thursday’s gold-medal game against the United States. Big moments have a way of changing players, for good or for bad.

So far, though, from a group-stage win over the archrivals from the U.S. to Monday’s double-digit scoring clinic, Canada has been smiling through Olympic games with shinny-rink freedom and yoga-studio calm. And the players will tell you there’s a simple explanation for all the positive noise: They’re having so much fun because they’re such good friends.

“We’re all best friends, which I’ve never been able to say about a team,” said Jill Saulnier, the eight-year veteran of the national squad. “I think we just love hyping each other up because we just love seeing each other succeed.”

Said Brianne Jenner, the three-time Olympian: “(Saulnier is) right. I’ve played on a lot of excellent hockey teams. I don’t know if I’ve played on one this close-knit … We’re living out our dreams here with our best friends.”

Maybe it only makes sense that Canada’s games are all goals and giggles. No women’s hockey team in history, Canadian or otherwise, has brought a more prolific offence to an Olympics. Monday’s win saw Canada break the record for goals in an Olympic tournament. Heading into Thursday’s gold-medal game, Canada has 54 in six games. The previous record, set by a gold-medal Canadian team in 2010, was 48 goals, achieved in just five games. Still, the next-highest scoring team in these Olympics, the U.S., had just 28 goals after Monday night’s 4-1 semifinal win over Finland.

Canadian player after Canadian player has credited the X’s and O’s of head coach Troy Ryan with finally unlocking the team’s offensive potential (this while also leading the tournament in goals-against average at 1.33 a game). It’s Ryan who has encouraged his group to think of themselves as interchangeable pieces on the ice, with defenders routinely leading rushes and forwards covering in their wake. It’s Ryan who’s taught his team to treat defence as a brief precursor to offence, to be thinking attack even when they’re under it. Never mind the national tendency toward more conservative approaches. With Ryan on the bench, Canada’s players are generally taking care of 200 feet. But even when they make the occasional mistake, they don’t call off the track meet.

“We’re at a point right now where we’re going to play offensively. Hopefully it’s enough,” Ryan said. “I think we do a pretty good job defensively. And we’re not going to change our game right now.”

Maybe it won’t be enough. If not for some world-class goaltending from Ann-Renée Desbiens in the group-stage win over the U.S. — wherein the Americans outshot the Canadians 53-27 — perhaps that result would have been different. Perhaps a loss on their record — never mind a loss in the final — would flatten the corners on Canada’s collective permasmile.

But as much as Canada’s program had to do plenty of soul-searching in the wake of that 2018 loss — as general manager Gina Kingsbury tells it, there was a difficult but necessary organizational acknowledgment that Canada was a distinct world No. 2 — a lot has changed in a quadrennial. And Kingsbury is of the mind that this Canadian team is as good as any she’s ever seen, which is saying something considering Kingsbury is a 40-year-old alumnus of gold-medal-winning Canadian squads from Turin 2006 and Vancouver 2010.

“And I would say yes not even from a skill perspective or a talent perspective, just the connection piece,” Kingsbury said. “This is a group that’s completely united from top to bottom, and there’s no top to bottom. It’s like one big ball of a team. There’s just a tremendous amount of alignment. And it’s great to see … It’s just a really, really great team chemistry, probably one of the best teams I’ve been around. They have all bought into the collective and into the goal of wanting to win a gold medal here.”

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If they’ve mastered chemistry, nobody’s dumb to history. The Americans are the reigning gold medallists until they’re not. But this is a Canadian team coursing with the new blood of 10 first-time Olympians. You can blame those rookies for all the hooting and hollering, Jenner said: “They’re pretty rowdy.” And this is a team coming off a world championship win over the U.S. last summer that’s won eight of its last 10 meetings against the Americans — all, apparently, while enjoying the heck out of each other’s company.

“The fun that we have, on the ice, off the ice, obviously there’s times where there’s a little bit more trouble in our zone. But we still manage to play with a smile and have fun,” said Marie-Philip Poulin, the team captain. “That culture we’ve created where everyone’s ready to go, I think that says a lot.”

Which is not to say there might not be a moment or two to get serious between now and the final horn of the Games.

“The work is not done,” said Poulin. “The next one is very important.”

Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk