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Contempt for Keenan brought ’87 Canada Cup team together

January 26, 2010 12:39 PM | Posted by   Scott Morrison  

The theme of Hockey Day in Canada this year is team, and as such we have been conducting a poll to determine which teams were considered the best of all time.

One of the poll questions was which was the best Team Canada? The options were the 1976 and 1987 Canada Cup teams, the 2002 men's Olympic team, and the 2005 world junior team.

Obviously, all were tremendous teams and all were successful. My choice? It may not have been the best in terms of pure talent, but it was the best in terms of what it accomplished and the quality of play. No doubt in my mind, it is the 1987 Canada Cup team.

As part of our Hockey Day in Canada telecast on Saturday, I assembled a feature on that team, with the focus on how they struggled to come together out of training camp and through the round robin, and how coach Mike Keenan realized it and galvanized that group just in time to play a memorable three-game final against the Soviet Union. It was to one generation what the 1972 Summit Series was to an earlier generation.

Magic of Gretzky and Lemieux

Talk about the greatest international series played involving Canada and those are the two granddaddies of them all – ’72 with the heroics of Paul Henderson to win that historic eight-game series; and ’87 with three 6-5 games (the identical score to the final game in ’72) and Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux combining to produce the winning goal in the dying minutes of the third and final game.

The hockey in 1987 was absolutely brilliant. Remember, too, this was a time when the Soviets were still the enemy. The Iron Curtain was still up. So there was a different emotion than any of the series or Olympics that have followed. This was us versus them, our system versus their system, our best versus their best.

At the end of that final, Canadian hockey fans were ecstatic and entertained, as the Canadians found a way to dig deep and get the job done. The first game in Montreal ended with the Soviets winning in overtime, 6-5. Two nights later, in Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, was a game for the ages, Lemieux set by Gretzky to score the winner 10:06 into the second overtime period.

And then the deciding game, again in Hamilton, two days later. Another classic. Canada fell behind 3-0 in that game and it looked bleak.

“I remember Wayne turned to me on the bench and he said he was exhausted,” said Keenan. “He had played so much hockey in that tournament and in that final, he was just spent. So he had to take some time to regroup. The Soviets couldn’t figure out what was going on. Everyone thought I had benched Gretzky, but that wasn’t the case. The Soviet coaches were looking down the bench at me and I’m sure they were thinking that crazy bastard has benched Gretzky.”

While Gretzky regrouped, other heroes emerged and the Canadians battled back. And eventually it was Gretzky to Lemieux with 1:26 remaining for the winning goal.

Before the glory, a common bond

While everything turned out well, it was a challenge for Keenan and the players to come together as a team. After a marathon training camp, Canada opened the tournament with an ordinary effort and 4-4 tie with Czechoslovakia. Keenan sent a message after that game, imposing a curfew on the team. The players, who were looking to meet up with family for the first time in weeks, were not amused.

Keenan kept pushing and pushing, getting them madder and madder as the tournament evolved, to the point that there was almost a revolt. Gretzky, Lemieux and Raymond Bourque, representing their teammates, finally had a meeting with the coach, who knew at that point 23 players had finally become a team and just in time for the playoff round in the tournament.

Those sorts of tournaments, like the Olympics, are a different beast for a coach. You don’t have a full season to develop as a team. The window is very small and when you bring players together from a variety of teams, with some lingering raw emotions from NHL play, it is a huge challenge for the players and the coaches.

Keenan kept stressing to the players that while it seemed there was lots of time to come together and improve, time was precious and moving fast. He realized he needed a common element for the players to rally around, to bring them to together, to get them focused – and that common element was their contempt for the coach and how hard he was working them.

Tune in to Hockey Day in Canada on Saturday, Jan. 30 (CBC, CBCSports.ca, 12 p.m. ET) to hear Keenan, Mark Messier, Mike Gartner, Larry Murphy tell the story of the making of the 1987 Canada Cup team.

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