Globeandmail columnist Gary Mason was on-line from Turin on Friday to discuss what went wrong with the Canadian men's hockey team at the Olympics.
In Thursday's Globe and Mail, Mr. Mason wrote about the effects of the loss on transcript Team Canada's executive director Wayne Gretzky.
Gary Mason began his journalism career in British Columbia in 1981, working as a summer intern for Canadian Press. One of his first assignments was covering the last days of the province's favourite son, Terry Fox.
Mr. Mason would later go on to work for the Victoria Times-Colonist before joining The Vancouver Sun, where he worked for 19 years in a variety of roles, including legislative bureau chief, city editor and deputy managing editor before he began writing a popular sports column in 1997.
Mr. Mason joined The Globe and Mail in 2005 as a national columnist writing on B.C. affairs.
Mr. Mason has twice been the recipient of the Jack Webster Award, the highest journalism honour handed out in B.C., and has also been nominated for a National Newspaper Award on three occasions, winning in 2000 and 2002 for sports writing. Mr. Mason is the author of several best-selling books, including his latest Oldtimers: On the Road with the Legends of Hockey.
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Dave Leeder, Sports Editor, globeandmail.com: Good afternoon, Gary, and thanks for joining us on-line today from Turin to answer questions from globeandmail.com readers. It's semi-final Friday in the men's hockey tournament and the finger-pointing continues after Team Canada's loss to Russia on Wednesday. Are there any indications from around Hockey Canada brass that they have regrets about the team's preparations or roster makeup?
Gary Mason writes:Thanks Dave. Happy to take part.
The closest anyone came to acknowledging that the makeup of the team might have been wrong was when Pat Quinn indicated after the loss to Russia that the team might have benefitted with some of the younger stars left off the playing roster, players such as Jason Spezza, Eric Staal (who were on the three-man reserve roster that didn't see any action) and players like Dion Phaneuf and Sidney Crosby who didn't even make the reserve squad. To be completely accurate, what Quinn said was "maybe so" when he was asked if some of these players might have helped with scoring and give the team a little more speed. Quinn and Wayne Gretzky both said people have the right to second guess their decisions and, in fact, expected it. I think feelings are still a little too raw to for anyone to state publicly that there were some bad choices made. As well, in the hockey world, and especially on teams like these, people are reluctant to point fingers at any one individual.
Surely, however, Gretzky must be angry with himself for taking Bertuzzi, who has a history of taking the kind of bone-headed penalties that ended up costing Canada the game. But Bertuzzi was not the only player who failed to live up to expectations. Chris Pronger had a terrible tournament. It was revealed later he was playing with a broken foot, an injury that occurred before the tournament began. If it was so bad it affected his performance to that degree he should have stepped aside and let someone else play. Phaneuf would have been a top four defenceman on this Olympic team.
Don MacNeil from Finland writes: Do you think how Canada won in 2002 helped their defeat now? Then, they played badly, but then fixed things and won gold. This time, they just assumed it would be the same and didn't seem to try and fix things up until it was too late. Also, playing easy games first was always said to favour them, but I think it was the opposite - they didn't realize something was wrong because against weak opponents, anything will work. Do you think they woke up to the danger too late?
