TURIN -- It's hard to look ahead when everyone else insists on looking back.
But that was the situation yesterday at the Palasport Olympico, where the rest of the hockey world was gearing up for today's semi-final matches -- Russia against Finland and Sweden against the Czech Republic -- while the Canadian hockey world was still trying to figure out what went wrong a day earlier.
"It's like being dead without being buried," long-time minor-league coach Gene Ubriaco once said of an unacceptable string of losses.
Team Canada head coach Pat Quinn would surely agree.
The list of reasons Canada fell flat on its face in its attempt to defend the Olympic gold continues to grow by the hour:
No Scott Niedermayer to carry the puck up ice and run the power play;
No Sidney Crosby, no Eric Staal, no Dan Boyle, no Ed Jovanovski and no (fill in the blank) to do what all the others failed to do;
Not enough speed;
Not enough shooters;
No chemistry;
Not enough mobility in defence;
Not enough creativity on offence;
Not enough adjustment by the coaching staff;
Not enough time;
No luck.
Such a waste of time and energy. They lost because, as they openly admitted, they weren't good enough. Unlike Nagano in 1998, when a loss to the Czech Republic in a shootout sent Canadian hockey into a spin with demands for a complete makeover of Canadian hockey, it's pretty hard to get worked up when Canada hasn't lost so much as a game in the world junior championship in two years.
Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson also met with the media to assure Canadians there is no need for a royal commission on hockey.
"We don't have to tear our game apart," he said. "We have to continue to work hard."
Nor, he suggested, is there need of another snap election to decide the next leader of the country -- when it comes to something that matters far more than politics. Executive director Wayne Gretzky, the architect of the team that failed, is welcome to stay for as long as he wishes.
"Hockey Canada needs Wayne Gretzky," Nicholson said.
At the same time, Nicholson conceded that the results in Turin had been disastrous for the Canadians. Shut out in three games. Seventeen power plays without a goal. A team that never came together in any sense.
"It just wasn't their tournament," he said.
And yet, even with Canada out of it, it was still in some ways Canada's tournament -- simply because of losing. As the Finns and Swedes and Czechs and Russians came to practise for their semi-final matches, the players were besieged with questions that often had far more to do with what went wrong for Canada than what must go right tonight to put them into Sunday's gold-medal game.
Sometimes the players even volunteered to look back rather than look ahead.
Tournament sensation Alexander Ovechkin, the 20-year-old Russian who scored the goal that put Canada out, joked that his agent, Don Meehan, wouldn't be coming to watch the final games because "He's at home, probably wondering what happened to his Canada."
When that caught the media's attention and the Canada questions began, Ovechkin tried to move on. "Right now" he said, "we have to forget about this game with Canada."
It would not, however, be that simple.
Was the problem the big ice, players were asked, Europeans having grown up on it and North Americans having to adapt to it.
"I don't see it as an advantage," Swedish forward Daniel Alfredsson answered. He prefers the smaller North American ice.
Maybe, suggested Czech star Jaromir Jagr. "It's a different game. You skate more on the big ice and you have to be smart. If you have a chance, you go for it. If not, sit back and preserve energy."
Canadian coaches Quinn and Ken Hitchcock both repeatedly said their team had to forget they were on the big ice and play "the Canadian game." It didn't work. When Nicholson and his staff get together to "reassess," as promised, one question they will have to ask is whether this is intelligent strategy. The Canadian game, it seems, simply does not translate to the larger ice surface.
Is it, then, that the Europeans care so much more about the Olympics than they do about the Stanley Cup?
Again, Alfredsson, the captain of the Ottawa Senators, shook his head. "The No. 1 trophy for me to win would be the Stanley Cup. No question. It's so much harder to win."
Eventually the questions and answers were forced to the real story at hand: the four remaining teams and their chances of winning the gold medal.
"I think the Russians have the best team," Jagr said.
So, too, does everyone else. And yet, as the Canadians found -- apologies for returning to the past -- hockey is also a game of lucky bounces, bad bounces and unexpected whistles. The phrase "anything can happen" was used so many times in the mixed zone it hardly requires attribution.
"You've got to have some luck and some great goaltending," Swedish coach Bengt-Ake Gustafsson, "especially at the right time."
While goaltending is always pivotal, it's intriguing that goaltending has been a question for all four of the remaining teams -- whereas goaltending was the only non-issue for Canada. The Finns did not have Mikka Kiprusoff, but Antero Niittymaki has been sensational. The Czechs were counting on Dominik Hasek, but injury has put third goalie Milan Hnilicka in the spotlight. Russia's top goaltender is supposed to be Nikolai Khabibulin, but he didn't come and Evgeni Nabokov has been superb. The Swedes traditionally lack good goaltending, but Henrik Lundqvist has been fine.
Sweden will play the Czech Republic in today's first game, and the Czechs are slight favourites. Though they lost 3-2 to Canada in a meaningless earlier game, the Czechs completely dominated play when it struck their fancy.
The Swedish players, several of whom play in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver, are hoping that Canadian fans will now switch loyalties.
"I hope they're cheering for us," said Mats Sundin, who is also captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
"We'll take any support we can -- we're going to need it."
In the later game, Finland against Russia, the Russians have to be the heavy favourites, given the way such youngsters as Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuk and Evgeni Malkin are playing.
"That team is scary one-on-one," said Finnish forward Ville Nieminen.
"We must take away their time and space -- and excitement."
"Obviously, they have more talent and more skills than we do," Finnish star Teemu Selanne said, "but there is only one puck."
One puck and one game.
And the secret to winning that one game is so simple, young Ovechkin said, that it says as much about the Canadian disaster as anything: "Score more goals."
Does age matter?
Three older, more experienced teams than Canada's advanced to the men's Olympic hockey
semi-finals. Only the ancient Americans bucked the trend:
27.97
Average age of Russian team
29.42
Average age of Canadian team
29.52
Average age of Finnish team
29.61
Average age of Swedish team
30.74
Average age of Czech team
31.24
Average age of U.S. team
