Underdog Germans ice Canada’s hopes for hockey gold; one Winnipegger couldn’t be happier

Opinion

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This article was published 22/02/2018 (2253 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GANGNEUNG — There will be Canadians playing in the gold-medal men’s hockey game here at the Winter Olympics Sunday.

There will even be a Winnipegger.

But what there won’t be is Team Canada, after a stunning 4-3 defeat to Germany here Friday night (Korea time) in the semifinal.

“Everybody’s disappointed,” said Team Canada head coach Willie Desjardins. “We knew what we wanted and worked hard to get here and we came up a little short.”

And so with that, the Germans will head to the gold-medal final to play the Olympic Athletes from Russia in the final event of these Olympics, while the Canadians will now have to try to salvage something from these Games in Saturday night’s bronze-medal game (6 a.m. CT) against a Czech Republic team that beat them in a shootout during preliminary play.

The Germans will be led against Russia by Winnipeg native Brooks Macek, a former sixth-round draft pick of the Detroit Red Wings who grew up and learned to play hockey in Winnipeg and still has deep roots, including grandparents and parents in the city.

So what was it like for a kid from southwest Winnipeg who still visits every summer to hang a defeat like this on his home and native land? “It’s incredible,” said Macek. “These guys in this dressing room here from Team Germany, they’re my brothers now. To win that game means a lot. And to play for the gold medal — it’s an amazing feeling.

“It’s a huge day for German ice hockey.”

And a sad day for the Canadian version.

Macek scored Germany’s first goal — he’s now got two goals and an assist in this tournament — 14 minutes into the first period, giving Germany a 1-0 lead and Canada its first indication that this wasn’t going to be the night they were expecting.

“It’s an amazing feeling,” said Macek. “For us to come into this tournament and march all the way to gold is pretty amazing.”

It’s a stunning outcome, both for a German team that hasn’t medalled in Olympic hockey since West Germany did it back in 1976 and for a Canadian men’s team that won gold in the last two Olympics and three of the last four when the NHL, sitting this one out, anchored the lineup.

Canadians had wondered for months if a team without our country’s greatest NHL stars could still win gold.

The answer is the Canadians will need a fair bit of luck to win bronze if they put forth anything remotely resembling the undisciplined and porous effort they showed against the Germans, falling behind 4-1 through two periods before rallying in the third to make a game of it.

Team Canada defenceman Maxim Noreau said it will be gut-check time for him and his teammates.

“Tonight’s really tough, but tomorrow we wake up with a positive attitude and as a team decide that we want it. It’s not the medal we wanted but it’s a medal and we can cherish that, at least, for the rest of our lives.

“We can’t sit around feeling sorry for ourselves.”

Macek has dual Canadian-German citizenship — his father was born in Germany — and he’s one of two Canadian-born players on the German team; B.C.’s Daryl Boyle is the other.

After growing up in Winnipeg, Macek moved to Saskatchewan at age 13 to play in the vaunted Notre Dame Hockey program. He went on to play six seasons in the WHL, splitting time between Tri-City and Calgary, before the Red Wings took him 171st overall in 2010.

While the Red Wings drafted him, they never signed him. So Macek, like lots of Canadian hockey players before him, moved to Germany, where he’s played the last five seasons in the German League, most recently in Munich.

He’s been flying under the radar ever since. How far under the radar? Well Canadian Sport Centre Manitoba, which has been tracking all the Manitoba athletes in these Games, didn’t even have Macek on its list. His addition brings to 12 the number of Manitobans or Manitoba-borns who competed here.

Macek isn’t the only one flying under the radar here — so too was the entire German team, who had to first defeat the Swiss 2-1 in a play-in round just to qualify for the quarter-finals, where they then surprised everyone but themselves by eliminating a previously undefeated Swedish team 4-3 in overtime a couple days ago.

That set up a matchup with the Canadians, who were perhaps guilty of taking the Germans lightly. Former Winnipeg Jet Eric O’Dell — who is centring Canada’s fourth line here — exclaimed “Perfect!” the other night when he learned from reporters that the Germans had just beaten the Swedes and would be facing Canada in the semifinal.

O’Dell had a right to be confident. Even without NHL stars in the lineup, Canada hadn’t been beaten in regulation in four games here and were skating into the semifinal off a gritty 1-0 win over a good Finnish team.

And yet by game’s end against Germany, it is now Canada wondering how what was looking like a dream trip to the gold-medal final had turned into such a nightmare.

“We did our homework as players, and to come out and not get the win tonight is a huge disappointment for us and I think, emotionally, it’s really tough for everybody,” said Noreau.

And the Germans? Well, Macek says anything is possible in a gold-medal final where the Germans will once again be heavy underdogs against a Russian team that has been the class of this tournament over the last week.

“We beat some pretty good teams to get here,” said Macek. “We just need another effort like tonight.”

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek