Canada rolls over Czechia as the NHL returns to the Olympics in a big way

MILAN — Five minutes before Canada and Czechia were scheduled to take the ice in their Milano Cortina Olympic Games opening round game Thursday afternoon, the public address announcer, in his best “let’s get ready to rumble” voice, asked a simple question.

“Who’s ready for hockey?”

How about the whole freaking universe.

The lights at the Milano Ice Hockey Arena dimmed and a light show transformed the Olympic ice into the frozen ponds of their youth as if it were the Lipno Reservoir in South Bohemia or Parry Sound.

And then Canada and Czechia took the ice, skating into a moment the sport had waited 12 frustrating years for and suddenly these Olympic Games had a totally different energy.

The NHL was back at the Olympics.

Canada, the gold medal champions at the 2010 and 2014 Games, picked up right where it left the last time the Olympics included NHL players, rolling over Czechia 5-0 with a performance that only bolstered their status as pre-tournament favorites.

“They’re a great team,” Czechia and Anaheim Ducks defensman Radko Gudas said. “Obviously, they’ve been the best put-together team for a while. We’ve all been looking forward to this tournament – best of the best. They brought their great team. They played a hell of a game.”

Five Canadians scored, including 19-year-old Macklin Celebrini, the San Jose rising star who opened the scoring, and 11 players appeared on the score sheet. Jordan Binnington stopped 26 shots in the shutout. Edmonton superstar Connor McDavid dished out three assists and a hellacious hit on Czechia forward Lukas Sedlec on his first shift early in the first period that set the tone for a fast paced, hard hitting and unselfish display of often breathtaking hockey.

“I thought the team overall was great,” McDavid said. “We had contributions all over the lineup.”

“You just want to leave it all out there,” Canada forward Tom Wilson said. “You have a ton of pride putting on this sweater and we just want to make everyone back home proud and the guy next to you. You want to play for the guy next to you and give it all you’ve got. I think we’ve got a solid identity through one game and we’ll stay dialed in here and continue to build.”

Team Canada was also playing for a nation in mourning. Canada suffered its deadliest school shooting in decades when an 18-year-old woman killed eight people, including six children at a high school in Tumbler Ridge, a small town in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies in northeastern British Columbia. The shooter, who had previously dropped out of the school, was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“We got the news when we were all together,” Wilson said. “We’re here playing for our country and when something like that happens in your country, it’s a sad day and with everything going into this Olympics, we want to make Canada proud. Thoughts obviously go out to all the families and people affected, and you just never want to see that. What we can do right now is try and bring happiness and pride to our country and play hard and try and win as many games as we can and just come together as a community and a country and keep moving forward.”

“It’s hard to talk about,” said Mark Stone, one of Team Canada’s goalscorers Thursday, as he started to choke up. “It brings tears to my eyes, especially when you have a kid. Your heart’s with the families of the victims. Being a dad is the best thing that ever happened to me, so you just feel for the victim’s families.

“I just wanted to give them something to cheer about, especially in a sport that everyone loves.”

Thursday was a celebration of that game and the return of the NHL players to the sport’s biggest stage.

Although the Olympic men’s tournament opened Wednesday, Thursday was the first game between teams with rosters made up of predominantly NHL players.

There were Finnish fans wearing Selanne jerseys posing for photos with Canadian fans in Crosby 87 and McDavid 97 sweaters on the steps of the arena. There was a fan wearing a No. 68 Jagr Penguins jersey crossing paths with a kid in a Bruins sweater sporting the No. 4 as in Bobby Orr.

Inside the arena with the Czech fans waving their blue, white and red national flags with their favorite player’s name or their hometown written on them, and Team Canada’s equally raucous fans, there was a charged atmosphere that was somewhere a cross between a late round UEFA Champions League playoff match and Saturday night on Yonge Street.

“We all wanted to be here,” Stone said. “We’ve all been so outspoken about competing at the Olympics and competing together on the world stage. It means a lot to everyone.

“It’s like a World Cup for an Englishman, right,” Stone continued, explaining the tournament’s importance to a reporter for the Sunday Times. “Yeah, it means the world to us. We’ve been dreaming of these types of events as little boys. It’s no different for little football players in England. They want to play for a World Cup. And for us the Olympics is the biggest stage that we can represent our country and we’ve been dreaming from a young age to play for your country, whether it’s as an 18-year-old up into the junior ranks and then into pro level and the men’s national program. You know it’s all about the crest on the front and the maple leaf.”

The NHL held its players out of the 2018 Games over disputes with the International Olympic Committee and the International Ice Hockey Federation over financial, marketing, insurance issues and injury concerns. Pandemic-related complications kept NHL players out of the Beijing Olympics four years later.

But the NHL reached a deal with the IOC and IIHF in 2024 that laid the groundwork for the league’s players to turn for the Milano Cortina Games.

In the end, the IOC, after underwhelming Games in South Korea in 2018 and the Olympics played under quarantine in 2022 in Beijing, realized it needed the NHL more than the league needed the Olympics.

“I do believe that both the IOC and IIHF have been a tad more flexible in terms of the things that we can do, particularly with respect to intellectual property and how the games are covered so that we don’t completely disappear for a couple of weeks,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said.

“I think there’s an increasing recognition that we’re a little unique compared to all the other sports in the Olympics — Summer or Winter — because to do this, we’re stopping our season in the middle and that is an imposition on the season. And I think, over time, that’s something that the IOC has begun to respect more and more.”

The NHL players’ megastar status wasn’t just evident at the rink.

In between organizing team trips to the Duomo and speed skating, Team Canada captain Sidney Crosby found himself obliging selfie requests in the Olympic Village buffet line.

“I wasn’t expecting when we walked in (to the cafeteria) to see all of Canada, someone like Sidney Crosby, who you’ve been watching your entire life,” Italy defenseman Thomas Larkin said. “Seeing him joining the same line as you is surreal.”

Or consider the case of the Netherlands short track speed skating star Jens Van’T Wout, who caused something of a national scandal when in an interview with the Dutch broadcast network NOS was asked about former Dutch national soccer team and AC Milan superstar forward Marco Van Basten and the skater clearly had no idea who Van Basten was.

“All those people then sent me messages like, ‘What on earth are you thinking? You’re out of touch with reality,’” Van’T Wout said. “People said things like, ‘When an elite athlete doesn’t know football players.’ Well, it just shows the passion of those people. I don’t care about what they say.

“I saw Sidney Crosby in the (Olympic) Village the other day and posted about it. To me, he’s a hero, he’s a Van Basten to me.”