As Canada prepares to watch its athletes go for gold at the Olympics in Vancouver starting on Feb. 12, the National Post looks back at the 39 gold medals the nation has won in Winter Games history.
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When we Owned the Podium: Men's hockey, 2002
- February 20, 2010 8:37 PM |
- By Erin Valois
Story provided by
As Canada prepares to watch its athletes go for gold at the Olympics in Vancouver starting on Feb. 12, the National Post looks back at the 39 gold medals the nation has won in Winter Games history.
Name Men's hockey team
Olympics 2002 at Salt Lake City, Utah
Event Hockey
The setting After a slow start to the tournament, Canada knocked off Finland in the quarter-finals and Belarus in the semis, to set up a gold-medal showdown with a U.S. squad that had just stunned the Russians.
On the day With the infamous "lucky loonie" buried under centre ice by a patriotic ice-maker, the Canadians ended a 50-year gold-medal drought by handing their American rivals a 5-2 defeat. Tony Amonte opened the scoring for the U.S., but a pair of goals each by Joe Sakic and Jarome Iginla gave Canada the victory. Sakic was named the tournament MVP after leading the way in what was the most-watched program in Canadian history.
Afterlife Canada will be icing a very different squad in Vancouver this year, out of choice and necessity. Over half of the championship team from Salt Lake City has skated off into retirement, including: Mario Lemieux, Curtis Joseph, Steve Yzerman, Eric Lindros and Al MacInnis. Yzerman has returned, but this time he hopes to be the mastermind behind the scenes, in his role as executive director.
Dave Yasvinski, National Post
About the Author
- Bruce Arthur Bruce Arthur is the National Post's national sports columnist. A Vancouver native, he has been with the Post since 2001, and a columnist since 2005. He is covering his second Olympics, after the 2008 Games in Beijing. He expects these Games to be slightly less propagandistic, and for China to win slightly fewer medals.
- Joe O'Connor Joe O'Connor is a roving sports feature writer with an open-ended beat. He joined the National Post in 2002, and has spent the past seven years bouncing from sport to sport, offering fresh perspectives and delivering unique stories wherever he goes. Whether it has been getting Don Cherry to open up about his love life; George Chuvalo to talk about heartbreaking loss; or racing down the side of a mountain with former Crazy Canuck, Dave Irwin, the veteran Postie chases a story wherever it leads. Before joining the newspaper he was a two-time silver medalist at the National Magazine Awards. Vancouver will be his first Olympics.
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