Todd Hlushko’s wheels were turning. With a shootout to decide the 1994 men’s hockey Olympic final breaking Canada’s way, Hlushko stood with a few of his fellow relative unknowns on the bench and began scheming on the best way to get a little slice of the glory once Canada claimed its first hockey gold in nearly half a century. “We started discussing, if we win, what’s the best way to get air time?” Hlushko says. “So we said we’re gong to climb the glass and go find our families in our skates and hug them. We were just having some fun cause we knew we weren’t shooting.”
Hlushko and his teammates could be forgiven for not anticipating what was going to happen next, because what they saw didn’t really exist in hockey until that day. The Lillehammer Games will always be remembered for Peter Forsberg’s pioneering one-handed goal, a move never seen before and imitated so many times since.
Forsberg’s spectacular shootout tally 20 years ago accomplished a number of things in addition to delivering Sweden its first-ever Olympic gold in hockey. It also blew the doors open on what was previously thought possible on a one-on-one confrontation with a goalie, putting a watershed bow on the end of the pre-NHL Olympic era. And while the goal has preserved an enduring spot for Canadian goalie Corey Hirsch in hockey conversations, it also denied Hlushko and what was largely a pack of pluggers the chance to carve out an enormous swath for themselves in Canada’s hockey lore.
With NHLers about to conclude participating in their fifth Games, it’s worth reminding ourselves about the landscape of the hockey tournament before the millionaires’ arrival. The ’94 Canadian national team was home to legit prospects like Hirsch and Paul Kariya, hopeful NHLers like Hlushko, Brian Savage and Adrian Aucoin, as well as veteran players like Chris Kontos, who was on the back nine of his career. It was also a place where Canadian passport-holder Petr Nedved, who’d defected from Czechoslovakia as a teenager during a midget hockey tournament in Calgary, could play while being locked in a contract dispute with the Vancouver Canucks.
The arrival of Kariya—who joined the team after a semester of NCAA hockey with Maine—and Nedved meant little-known guys who’d been with the national program all season suddenly found themselves on the outside looking in. Hlushko recalled a tear-filled day a couple weeks before the Games when a number of guys were let go to make room for better players who were suddenly available. In fact, one player—defenceman Brian Tutt—was with the team in Europe on the eve of the Games when he got the devastating news that Brad Werenka was going to take his spot on the blueline.
Once the team arrived in Norway, all the grinders tried to avoid eye contact with the coaching staff, lest they get some terrible news. “As soon as you got your accreditation, you felt like you were safe and no one could take it from you,” Hlushko says. “That was the only time we felt safe, when you actually got your room in the village.”
Even with Kariya, Nedved and Hirsch, the Canadians were given virtually no chance of winning a medal. But after downing the Czech Republic in a thrilling overtime game in the quarterfinals, Canada dug out of a 2-0 hole against heavily favoured Finland in the semifinal to punch its ticket in the showcase contest. “When we beat the Finns, I remember Hockey Canada brought in cell phones for everybody in the dressing room, and everyone was calling all their buddies and families back home,” Hlushko says.
Suddenly, the entire country was talking about a scrappy, underdog team that was now a single victory from delivering Canada’s first Olympic hockey gold since 1952. Standing in the way was a strong Swedish team with Stanley Cup winners Mats Naslund and Hakan Loob in the same lineup as Forsberg, widely viewed as the top player outside the NHL at that time.
In advance of the game, Canadian coach Tom Renney and his staff made the decision that, should it come down to the shootout, they were going to lift Hirsch. “Even though Corey Hirsch was going to start the game as our No. 1 goaltender, we felt Manny Legace—because of his ability to get in the butterfly and take the bottom of the net away and still stay big—would be the guy we would put in,” Renney says. A move that could have—in some way, at least—altered the complexion of hockey history was avoided when Legace took a puck on the knee in warm-up and was forced to sit out the game entirely.
After Canada notched two third-period goals to take a 2-1 lead, Sweden tied the game on a power-play marker with less than two minutes remaining. When overtime failed to produce a winner, the shootout was required. Nedved and Kariya scored on Canada’s first two chances, before Magnus Svensson narrowed the gap. Forsberg’s first attempt knotted things 2-2 and sudden-death shots were required. After Hirsch turned away Svensson, Nedved had a chance to beat Tommy Salo for the win. It seemed for all the world that Nedved had done just that with a quick move to his backhand, but suddenly the puck was rolling toward the boards, not into the gaping net. “He didn’t know it at the time, but the tip of his stick blade was broken,” Renney says, “and when he went forehand-backhand on the deke, the toe flopped open and the puck just bobbled into the corner.”
During the post-game press conference, Renney learned from Swedish coach Curt Lundmark that Naslund and Loob—both of whom failed to score on Hirsch in the first round of shots—each elected to pass on another shooting opportunity because the pressure was so great. With two Swedish legends on the bench, another was officially born when Forsberg snaked his way toward the right side of Hirsch and pivoted toward the end boards. The young Swede appeared to be gliding harmlessly into the corner, but his fully extended right hand remained on his stick and he was able to slip the puck just under Hirsch’s glove. “When he came down, I remember thinking I had him, like I had cut him off and he had nothing,” Hirsch said. “And then he did what he did.”
What he did was use a circus-type move on a massive stage at a point in hockey history when every breakaway attempt since the forward pass had been either a quick shot or a very basic deke. It was like busting out a 360-slam dunk when the world knew only layups. “When you see replays afterward, you’re like, ‘That is a man who was ahead of his time,'” Hlushko says.
The ’94 Olympics officially became Sweden’s time when Kariya couldn’t extend the shootout. In the two decades that have passed since that tough day, Hirsch has come to believe it’s not all bad being on the wrong half of one of the most memorable plays in hockey. “It keeps me relevant in history, which is awesome,” he says. “And I still have a medal. It’s a very select group of people in the world who even have a medal.”
Hlushko, of course, is another who does. And while he cherishes the whole silver experience, he still sometimes crosses paths with guys from that team and talks about how life might have been different had they—and not a group of NHL stars eight years later in Salt Lake City—delivered Canada’s long-lost gold. “Maybe they would have made a movie because we were just a bunch of ham and eggers,” he says. “And guys are like, ‘Joe Pesci would have played you, Hlushko.'”
Just a gang of good fellas dreaming about what could have been.