It's Puck Dropping Time!

Wayne Gretzky may have lit the flame, but it is Russia's Alexander Ovechkin and Canada's Sidney Crosby who are expected to ignite these Winter Games - if all goes as hoped, in the gold medal game that will close out the Olympics.

"It's exciting," says goaltender Roberto Luongo, who will start today in Canada's first test - though 'test' is a bit of a stretch - against 11th-ranked Norway.

"We've been waiting for this for a long time - and not only me and my teammates, but the whole city."

The whole city indeed. The opening ceremonies were four days ago, but for legions of Team Canada-clad fans that have fill the streets and bars of Vancouver, the XXI Olympic Games will only begin once the puck drops and the men's hockey tournament gets under way.

These games, says Team Canada coach Mike Babcock, "could be the best hockey event of all time."

While Canada opens against Norway, the United States will take on Switzerland earlier in the day and Russia will meet Latvia in the evening.

It will mark Canada's 20th opening match in Olympic hockey, with only one loss - a 5-2 defeat by Sweden eight years ago in Salt Lake City. But it was at those Winter Games that the "Lucky Loonie" buried at centre ice is believed to have helped inspire the Canadian players to produce gold in both men's and women's hockey.

There is no loonie buried at Canada Hockey Place. Face-offs will be held where the bellybutton would be on the large Inukshuk symbol painted at centre ice.

"Nobody understands the pressures these guys are under," Gretzky said back in 2002.

Not so - everyone, at least every Canadian, understands the pressure because we are the ones who apply it. That pressure is woven into every "Crosby," "Iginla," "Niedermayer" and "Brodeur" jersey being worn about the city, in every beer that is ordered in the packed bars, in just about every office and living room across the country.

There will be little, if any, pressure felt as Canada takes to the ice to play Norway - "I don't think they think so much about that against us," Norwegian goaltender Pal Grotnes said yesterday - but it will build over the coming two weeks, particularly as Canada comes up against stronger competitors.

The buzz Monday was palpable as; first, Ovechkin's powerful Russian squad took to the ice for its first practice, followed by Team Canada's first workout.

The most telling image of the Russian hour was not of Ovechkin ripping pucks off the crossbar, or Evgeni Malkin and Ilya Kovalchuk dazzling with passes - all of which happened - but of five young male cleaners pretending to sweep the empty stands while they stared, slack-jawed, at the players flying about the ice.

As for the Canadian practice, there was so much media presence that you would think Patrice Bergeron had won an individual gold medal - which, in a way he did, as the Boston Bruins forward who wasn't even invited to last summer's selection camp was placed on Crosby's line.

Today, even if the opposition is Norway, the madness will begin. Once the puck drops on a real game, the only guaranteed loss is Canadian politeness. The average fan, legendary B.C. journalist Bruce Hutchison wrote more than half a century ago, becomes "something else entirely, his subconscious takes control, he seems to become a ravening beast, screeching for blood, when in fact he has become a Canadian."

And never will the "ravening beast" be so loud as when, and unfortunately if, Crosby's Team Canada comes up against Ovechkin's Team Russia.

"There's a lot of history there," Canada's Jarome Iginla said yesterday. "There's pressure on us, and there's pressure on them."

In the years since the famous 1972 Summit Series, the Russians have transformed from what one player once called "ice robots" to some of the more compelling characters in the game.

It is almost as if there has been "a reversal of the old templates," says Ottawa's Lawrence Martin, author of The Red Machine: The Soviet Quest to Dominate Canada's Game.

While the Canadians have become increasingly system-oriented, the Russians have become more individualistic, none more so than the colourful Ovechkin.

Yet, while their styles may differ wildly, Ovechkin and Crosby are a remarkable match on the ice - each going into the Olympic break tied with 42 goals apiece in the NHL - and their teams the match everyone wishes to see in Vancouver.

Perhaps one day they will even talk about the "Lucky Bellybutton."

 

SOURCE: http://www.ctvolympics.ca/