SIMMONS: The overtime torch is passed from Sidney Crosby to Connor McDavid
It was a win for Canada and also for the game that differentiates us more from than anything else from our American neighbours
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When Sidney Crosby scored the Golden Goal in Vancouver, a goal we still talk about, still watch on highlight films, he didn’t have a particularly great gold medal game. Just a life-changing ending to be celebrated forever.
The same was true for Connor McDavid on Thursday night, playing the first meaningful hockey as an adult for Team Canada, frustrated through three periods against Team USA in the championship game, searching for his hands and his legs, fighting to locate his game, and then everything changed. The way it always seems to change for the players known as the best of the best.
The best player in the world, who didn’t look much like that on Thursday night, ended the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament by scoring at 8:18 of overtime to give Canada a hold-your-breath championship victory and a 3-2 win over an equally deserving Team USA.
The goal came 38 seconds later into the game than Crosby’s winning goal came in the Vancouver Olympics of 2010, the goal that sent a nation into hockey celebration that, frankly, has lasted for years. Amazing how two moments, so far apart, circumstantially so different, end up being so much the same.
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SIMMONS: The overtime torch is passed from Sidney Crosby to Connor McDavid Back to video
This wasn’t an Olympic win for Team Canada. In the momentum of what the 4 Nations tournament had become, it only felt like one.
And this wasn’t just the best-on-best tournament, the way the National Hockey League advertised it. In the end, this was best versus best in the final. A tournament of tremendous highs, fabulous speed, ebbs and flows and, eventually, a mistake and, without notice, a conclusion. That’s how it ends most nights in hockey.
And a torch of sorts has now been passed — if there is such a thing — from the generational Crosby to the player of this generation, McDavid: One overtime goal of significance passed on to another one 15 years later.
The assist on the winning goal came from the Maple Leafs winger Mitch Marner, his second of the night, his second game-winning play in the three tournament wins by Canada. This was a great night of sorts for the two Maple Leafs playing head-to-head, Canadian versus American, in the tournament.
Just seconds before McDavid took a Marner pass and brilliantly shot the puck past the great Connor Hellebuyck, Leafs captain Auston Matthews had the series winning goal apparently on his stick. It was that close.
The best shooter in hockey, Matthews, took his shot. But the beleaguered Jordan Binnington, picked the right night and right moment to be great and made a superb save on Matthews.
Matthews had set up the two American goals. Almost scored one or two in the third period. Almost. He couldn’t finish when it mattered most but played some of his best three-zone hockey when it mattered most. Had he scored the winner, he not Nathan MacKinnon, would have been named tournament MVP. But it didn’t end that way for Matthews, or for Team USA.
Of all his Game 7s, this was a Game 7 he didn’t deserve to lose.
Nobody deserved to lose this one. The winner of the tournament was Team Canada but the real winner was hockey. The return of international hockey. The kind of hockey that’s going to make watching the NHL difficult in the first days post tournament. The real winner: Hockey fans.
This hockey had everything — speed, passion, intelligence, excellence, defensive brilliance, physical play, the Tkachuk brothers playing together until Matthew couldn’t finish the tournament. This was a video game come to life on my 65-inch screen.
It wasn’t about politics. It wasn’t your game vs. our game. This wasn’t about booing anthems or potential tariffs. It wasn’t about which country had the better team or the better players. It was two equals standing in the middle of the ring, tossing hockey haymakers at each other, throwing punches in the first seconds of Montreal on Saturday night, throwing passes in the final second in Boston late Thursday night.
The Americans are now playing hockey the way Canadians used to. They play physical. They forecheck. They used their size. They go to the net. The Canadians may be more top heavy in talent — with MacKinnon, McDavid, Cale Makar — but not necessarily an equal match 23 on 23. That meant for a fabulous ending to a fabulous tournament that didn’t arrive with expectations of any real kind — and it sets the tone for what should be a spectacular Winter Olympics one year from now in Italy.
But first there had to be a 4 Nations celebration. You have to do that. McDavid was thrilled to score and, hard as he is on himself, he knew he wasn’t contributing early on.
He’s forever honest about his game that way.
“I was not very good all night,” said McDavid afterward. “I struggled all night.”
And then he scored the overtime winner.
Just like Crosby did 15 years ago.
The Crosby goal meant Olympic gold for Canada. The McDavid goal meant an in-season tournament win for Canada. It’s the same but it’s not the same.
It’s a win for Canada. A huge moment for McDavid. A giant victory for the game that differentiates us more from than anything else from our American neighbours.
It was about hockey. It was about who we are and what we care about most.
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