TURIN -- Seems simple enough.
Shrink the ice. Shoot the puck. Smile.
Team Canada executive director Wayne Gretzky -- looking as if his lips haven't curled upward in more than a week -- met the Canadian media yesterday afternoon for the first time since Team Canada's arrival.
It was no "us against the world" rant, as had so inspired the 2002 Olympic hockey team in Salt Lake City. It wasn't even us against the goaltenders, though no Canadian has been able to score here for more than two hours of play.
Rather, it was us against ourselves.
"If you're not enjoying yourself and not having fun," he said, "it's hard to make a five-foot pass."
To change all this, the team went through a light practice at Palasport Olympico, the Canadian players working on five-on-none power plays, which never happen in real games, and firing pucks into open nets, which hasn't happened since some time last week.
Then, in an attempt to bring about a little bonding on a team that, so far, has been all individual play and individual mistakes, the players and families headed off to visit the fabulous log home that British Columbia has erected in a downtown square, then off to a group dinner and an early evening before today's final preliminary-round game, against the Czech Republic.
Gretzky seemed in need of a little levity, the images of him from the past two defeats -- 2-0 to little Switzerland and 2-0 to swift Finland -- usually chewing on his knuckles or burying his head in his hands.
"I always have a knot in my stomach," he said, trying to joke and smiling weakly.
So, too, do his players, though they set about trying to put a brave face on what some quarters are already -- and prematurely -- calling a disaster for the tournament favourites and the Olympic defending champions.
"Right now, we need to find ways to relax," forward Jarome Iginla said.
"It's not fun to lose," Vincent Lecavalier added. "But I think we have been pretty upbeat. We're excited."
"We've lost a couple of games and everything gets blown out of proportion," team captain Joe Sakic said.
It is, of course, blown widely out of proportion -- but this, after all, is Canada we are talking about, and the national game of hockey.
"I know these are difficult times for everyone," assistant coach Ken Hitchcock began, his voice almost presidential, as if dealing with a terrible natural disaster.
Team Canada's problems, in Hitchcock's determination, arise from a failure to comprehend the "whole new level of intensity" that applies to Olympic competition after three-quarters of a season of National Hockey League play.
"There's a difference playing against a Finnish player in the NHL," Hitchcock said, "and a Finnish player with his flag on his back."
Certain players, Hitchcock believes, change dramatically in such play. A classic example, though he did not use it, would be Jiri Slegr of the Czech Republic, who was, by far, the best defenceman at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, which his country won, but is better known in the NHL as a "healthy scratch."
"We're not playing against NHL players," Hitchcock said, "we're playing against a bunch of flags."
So, too, of course, are the other teams. And there is something about the Maple Leaf that has always been just as inspiring.
"When you put on the Canadian jersey," said forward Dany Heatley, "you're expected to win."
As players and management searched for words to explain what went wrong and what will soon start to go right, the long-time hockey observer might have been reminded of the wisdom of the late Carl Brewer.
"The game of hockey is very easy," the old Leaf once said. "It's the thinking about it that makes it hard."
Gretzky, of course, can do nothing but think about it. Not being dressed, he cannot play. Not being behind the bench, he cannot coach. "The worst part," he said, "is sitting up top." Watching and wondering.
For Gretzky, this pattern is not unfamiliar. Canadian teams traditionally start slowly and build. It happened in Salt Lake City. It happens in world championships. What is worrisome, and annoying, is that there has yet to be any indication that the learning curve is being climbed.
Head coach Pat Quinn says the team has yet to become a team, as happened in Salt Lake after the "us against the world" speech, and is, at the moment, merely a collection of individuals trying to do it alone.
Gretzky found the Swiss game, which Canada was expected to win easily, "a bit of a curve," but he found the Finnish game truly "alarming." And not so much the outcome -- the Finns, after all, are a fine team -- but the contrast between the players wearing red on the ice and those wearing the flag of Finland.
"The Finns looked like they were really enjoying the game," Gretzky said.
The Canadians, on the other hand, looked miserable.
For Gretzky, the pressures on this particular team seem somehow "greater" than the pressures that were on the team in 2002. Back then, however, they had the leadership of Mario Lemieux and Steve Yzerman and the young bloods -- Iginla being one -- stepped up to support the older cast. It hasn't happened here in Turin. It needs to happen quickly; once tomorrow's game is done, the Canadians will head into the quarter-finals, where a loss would prevent a gold-medal repeat.
"They want to do so well," Gretzky said. "You can feel it in the locker room. You can see it in their eyes.
"This should be the greatest week of their lives."
So far it has not been. But before the week is out, Iginla vowed, it will be.
"We're going to turn this around," he said. "We know we have to be better -- and we will be."
