When Sidney Crosby’s shot sailed into the net in 2010, securing Olympic gold on home soil, a 13-year-old Mitch Marner ran around his neighbourhood with his brother, celebrating.
It’s his favourite Olympic memory, and a moment a young Marner would replay it often.
Sixteen years later, it’s Marner who’s the Olympic hero, playing on a team led by his idol.
Just as Crosby did in the Olympic final in 2010, Marner had the vision to see an opening in the most tense moments of Wednesday’s do-or-die quarterfinal game.
As he rushed down the ice with the puck — and with an entire country watching nervously — on his stick, Marner spotted a hole. He skated through two Czech players, and as a third chased him down, Marner backhanded the puck to the net. It was enough to beat Czech goaltender Lukáš Dostál, who’d been solid all game long.
“I was able to get it into a spot that I could get it off my stick and into a spot that had a chance to go in and luckily it did,” Marner told CBC Olympics reporter Kyle Bukauskas.
Marner’s goal sealed a 4-3 overtime win for Canada over Czechia, sending Canada on to the semifinals on Friday. The opponent hasn’t been determined yet.
Mitch Marner sends Canada to the semis with OT winner
It was the first taste of adversity for a dominant Canadian team that flew through the preliminary round relatively untested.
Faced with the prospect of going home earlier than anyone could have predicted, of missing the podium in a tournament these players waited so long to play in, the Canadian players dug in and clawed back from two separate deficits.
“The whole game was a battle,” Marner said. “Guys didn’t quit. We stayed and trusted our systems and ourselves, and we got rewarded for it.”
The Canadians found themselves trailing for the first time in this tournament, at the hands of a Czech team that showed up with more hunger than they displayed in a 5-0 loss to Canada in the preliminary round.
After 19-year-old Macklin Celebrini opened the scoring — his fifth goal in four games — the Czechs answered back with a goal from Lukáš Sedlák.
Six minutes later, David Pastrňák scored to put Czechia ahead, 2-1, to give Canada its first taste of being down in this tournament.
Trailing by a goal in the second period, things went from bad to worse when a hit from Radko Gudas — a player known more for his ability to flatten people like pancakes along the boards than his ability with the puck — hit Crosby.
The captain skated off the ice in pain. He received treatment on the bench before heading for the tunnel, walking gingerly.
With Crosby knocked out of the game, the players used their captain as inspiration. A few minutes after Crosby left, his fellow Nova Scotian, Nathan MacKinnon, tied the game on a power-play goal.
“That was a big thing in the locker room after the second and into the third was we’re not making this Sid’s last game,” head coach Jon Cooper said.
Canadian head coach Jon Cooper after overtime win, ‘that Mitch Marner, I can’t say enough”
Ondřej Palát put Czechia ahead in the third on a goal that, upon further review, should have been negated by a too-many-men on the ice.
But the goal counted, and the Canadians kept pushing, even as the tournament looked to be slipping away before their eyes.
They looked to a loaded superstar line of Celebrini, MacKinnon and Connor McDavid, who all logged more than 21 minutes in this game, to get them back in it. Meanwhile, Jordan Binnington did his job at the other end of the ice, even as the Canadians surrendered good looks to the Czechs.
It was Nick Suzuki, not the superstars, who forced overtime with less than four minutes left.
“You don’t like being in those situations, but you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable,” Cooper said. “That’s what the group is. Everybody had faith. It was quite calm out there, and it paid off.”
Marner’s goal felt like an exhale. Almost exactly 28 years ago, the Canadians were felled by the Czechs in extra time in a quarterfinal game, history that came dangerously close to repeating itself.
More than an hour after the game, Cooper hadn’t yet digested what he’d watched. A normally stoic Nathan MacKinnon described the game as “emotional and nerve-wracking.”
Even for a veteran like Drew Doughty, one of only two players on this team who’s won Olympic gold, the last minutes of the third period felt uneasy.
“You know how much character we have,” Doughty said. “We will never give up and never quit trying to do what is right. I never had a doubt, but it did get nerve-racking with two minutes left.”
It’s not yet clear whether Crosby’s injury will keep him out of the next game. With MacKinnon shaken up in the last game of the preliminary round, Canada’s riches down the middle are suddenly looking thinner.
Jordan Binnington’s massive stops help Canada advance to Olympic semifinals
But this team proved it has offence, and heart, beyond a stacked first line.
On Wednesday, it was Marner proving he can shine on the biggest stage, just like his boyhood hero did 16 years ago. He did it with his infant son in the stands, a memory he’s too young to register, but that he’ll re-live with his father for the rest of his life.
“I can’t say enough glowing things about that kid and what he does, and how he delivers in big moments,” Cooper said about Marner. “What a player.”
