Team Canada downplays rivalry

TORONTO -- When Paul Henderson scored the goal that everyone in Canada remembers, Team Canada coach Mike Babcock was a 9-year-old boy living in Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, a small mining community about 600 miles north of Winnipeg.
Henderson scored the goal that won Canada the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union, and Babcock, in fact, barely remembers it.

"I don't have the history to talk about it, I just know it was a big deal for Canada," Babcock said Friday. "My teachers were pumped up, we were all pumped up when we won."
Team Canada captain Sidney Crosby was famously born on August 7, 1987, which is why he wears the No 87. A little over a month later, Mario Lemieux scored another goal that a different generation of Canadians remembers, one that defeated the Soviet Union in Game 3 of the 1987 Canada Cup.
Today, Crosby plays for Lemieux, owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and spent his first year in the NHL living with Lemieux and his family.

It is an iconic goal, so surely Crosby has asked his owner about it a few times?
"Not a whole lot," Crosby said. "It's a great highlight. I think when you look at that play I think it stands out in everyone's mind, but we haven't really discussed it."
The rivalry between Canada and Russia heading into their World Cup of Hockey 2016 semifinal at Air Canada Centre on Saturday (7 p.m. ET; ESPN2, CBC, TVA, TVA Sports) is no different than any supposed rivalry involving Canada today.
Since a 5-3 loss to the United States in the group stage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Canada has won 13 straight games in best-on-best international competition: four in Vancouver, six at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and three at this World Cup.
Crosby has played all 13 of those games, along with Jonathan Toews, Shea Weber, Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, Patrice Bergeron and Drew Doughty.
That group basically hasn't known what it is like to lose at the highest level of international play.
That is why that group understands that those past 13 games are irrelevant now.
"That's all great but that doesn't matter going into [Saturday], it's all about the next one," Crosby said. "I think the trust and belief is there, it's nice to have that, it's good to have that experience with guys and believe you can play different kind of games and overcome things, but it's only as good as what you do with it. [Saturday] is a big one and none of the other games really matter."

Team Russia forward Vladimir Tarasenko said Thursday he thinks his country's hockey rivalry with Canada is one of the greatest in sports, and historically, he is not wrong.
Team Canada forward John Tavares described his memory of defeating Russia in the semifinal of the 2009 IIHF World Junior Championships held in Ottawa as "another 6-5 type of game." The score in that game was indeed 6-5, with Jordan Eberle scoring the tying goal in the final seconds of regulation and Canada went on to win in a shootout. But what Tavares was actually referring to was all three games of that 1987 Canada Cup final finishing 6-5, and the back-and-forth nature of those games making them memorable.
Tavares was born three years and five days after Game 3 of that Canada Cup final, but he appreciates the history of it and what it means to both countries.
"There's so much history between the two teams, we come from such different parts of the world, we grew up playing the game maybe a little bit differently," he said. "We're two great hockey countries that battle hard. I know for us, we're going to try to leave it all on the line and play as hard as we can."
But the most recent meeting between Canada and Russia on this stage came in the quarterfinals of the Vancouver Olympics, a 7-3 win for Canada in a game they led 6-1 after 24 minutes. It was the second victory in Canada's streak of 13 straight wins, one that also includes three wins against the United States and one against each of Sweden, Finland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, representing all the traditional hockey powers.
They have all had a shot at Canada and came up short, leaving little room to build a true rivalry.
In the lead up to Team Canada's preliminary round game against Team USA on Tuesday, the word "rivalry" was only really being said by one side.
In order for Canada to have any kind of rivalry with anyone it will need to lose at some point, and Team Russia is the next batter at the plate Saturday.
It will be easy for Alex Ovechkin and his teammates to get up for Team Canada, because they know they will need to play their best game. Team Canada, on the other hand, just needs to keep doing what it's been doing, and what it has been doing ever since Babcock was named coach for the Vancouver Olympics.
What does Team Canada goaltender Carey Price think of the supposed rivalry with Team Russia?
Nothing.
"For me right now it's just another game," he said. "So I'll leave it at that."