Athletistic / Hockey. In 2002, the first Winter Olympic Games of the new millennium took place in Salt Lake City (Utah, United States). These Olympics are remembered for numerous scandals in which, as if on purpose, Russian athletes were direct participants. Here you can recall the history of the redistribution of prize places in the competitions of sports duets in figure skating, the exclusion of the Russian women’s cross-country skiing team from the start of the relay due to far-fetched hemoglobin problems and refereeing in the semi-final match of the hockey tournament between the Russian national team and the United States. We will now dwell in more detail on hockey.

For the 2002 Olympics, the Russian national hockey team was assembled by Vyacheslav Fetisov. At that time, he had already met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who persuaded Fetisov to return to his homeland after leaving the United States. Before becoming Russian sports director, he was responsible for preparing the Russian national hockey team for the 2002 Olympics. Initially, Fetisov was appointed general manager of this team, but later became its head coach and got to work. As a result, Vyacheslav Alexandrovich managed to unite the main Russian NHL stars and call them all to help the national team at the Olympics.

Among the Russians were the legendary Igor Larionov, Pavel and Valery Bure, Sergei Fedorov, Alexey Kovalev, Alexey Zhamnov, Alexey Yashin, Vladimir Malakhov, Darius Kasparaitis, Nikolai Khabibulin, as well as the young Pavel Datsyuk, Sergey Samsonov and Ilya Kovalchuk. Fetisov appointed his friend and partner of the legendary “Russian Five” Igor Larionov as team captain, and Pavel Bure (who led the 1998 Olympics) in Nagano and Darius Kasparaitis became his assistants.

Photo source: Alexandre Fedorov / “Sport-Express”

At the group stage, the Russian team, by the will of fate, found itself in a quartet with the teams of the United States, Finland and Belarus. It was during the match against their neighbors, the Belarusians, that Viatcheslav Fetisov’s men discovered the Olympic program. The first match at the Games ended in a victory for the Russians with a score of 6:4. The next day, the Russian team drew with the Americans (2:2) and finished the group with a defeat in the meeting against Finland (1:3). As a result, the Russians took third place in the group, behind the United States and Finland. In the parallel group, the Swedish team won, the Czech Republic finished in second place, Canada came third, and the German team closed the quartet.

According to the rules of the Olympic tournament, the eight teams qualified directly for the quarter-finals. Russia was destined to open the playoffs with a match against the current Olympic champion, the Czech team. These are the teams that met in the final of the Nagano Olympic Games four years ago. Then the Czechs forced the victory by scoring the only goal at the start of the third period and relying on the magic of Dominik Hasek.

  • Hasek shattered Bure and Gretzky’s dreams. Russia ran into the Czech wall at the Olympics

Russia had a great opportunity for revenge. However, this was very difficult to achieve, because the Czech Republic had a renewed and much more interesting team in Salt Lake City, and Dominik Hasek continued to create goals for the Czechs. It is very ironic that this meeting ended with the victory of the Russian team with a score of 1:0, and the main hero of the match was the Russian goalkeeper Nikolai Khabibulin. The only goal was scored by striker Maxim Affinogenov. In the semifinals, the Russians faced the tournament’s host team, Team USA, for the second time in a week.

Photo source: Reuters

The meeting with the Americans started extremely badly for the Russians. The first half ended with a score of 1:0 in favor of the Americans, and after 40 minutes of the match, the numbers 3:0 were displayed on the scoreboard. The problem was not only the score, but also the performance of the Russian team. There was no emotion in the team’s actions, the players were confused and didn’t like each other. It should be noted that in two periods, the Russians shot 11 times on the opponent’s goal, while the United States committed 38 fouls on Nikolai Khabibulin.

According to Fetisov, the hockey players of the Russian national team were greatly undermined by the press conference of Russian sports leaders, which was held on the eve of the semi-finals of the hockey tournament. Leonid Tyagachev, Vitaly Smirnov and Pavel Rozhkov threatened that the entire delegation would leave the Olympic village if our skiers were not allowed through the relay. Players of the Russian national team also witnessed this blackmail against sports officials firsthand. The enraged leaders of the national team went to the room of Fetisov, who did not suspect anything at that time. Vyacheslav Alexandrovich managed to calm the players down, but in elite sports, any little thing can cost a victory. It is likely that this time it was so. Only Khabibulin’s fantastic performance on the ribbon could save Russia from shame. The Americans scored all of their goals on the power play and generally failed to find the key to Nikolai’s goal with even strength.

Photo source: FHR

The Russians have found themselves in a bind. But during the second break, the coaches and team leaders managed to “wake up” all the hockey players and from the first seconds of the third period a completely different Russian team entered the ice. 11 seconds into the third 20-minute period, Alexey Kovalev scored our team’s first goal. Three minutes later, Vladimir Malakhov reduced the gap to a minimum. Russia had 16.5 minutes left to tie the score. The fate of the match was in the hands of Vyacheslav Fetisov’s team, which simply pushed the Americans into their zone.

The Russians continued to pressure the Olympic hosts and forced the Americans to leave. In the middle of the third period, on a numerical advantage, the Russian team, thanks to the efforts of Sergei Samsonov, equalizes the score! But the main referee of the match (the match was then presided over by a main referee and two line referees) did not count the American goal. Even now, opinions on whether or not the puck crossed the U.S. goal line will be roughly split in half. The Russians, aware of the reality of salvation, began to storm the American gates.

Coincidentally, the match between the American and Russian national teams was officiated by Bill McCreary, one of the best referees in NHL history. If we do not take into account the fact that during the entire match he gave only 8 penalty minutes (for the Russians – 12), although throughout the third period the Americans did not simply could not follow the game of the Russian team and constantly grabbed, pushed and hit their opponents. The only surprise was the fact that McCreery didn’t even go to study the moment with Samsonov’s throw on the video replay. Neither the superstars of the Russian national team, nor even Fetisov, who was standing outside, could convince him to watch the replay.

As a result, the Americans managed to defend their advantage in the score and reached the final of the Olympic Games at home, where they lost to Canada (2:5) and were content with silver. And the Russian team beat Belarus (7:2) in the “consolation final” and left Salt Lake City with bronze medals.

Bronze was not the ceiling for this Russian team. This team, with all its advantages and disadvantages, was truly “ours”. The hockey team had to wait 16 years to get the next Olympic medals, when in Pyeongchang, without NHL players, Russia managed to win the gold medals. It is interesting that Pavel Datsyuk and Ilya Kovalchuk played in his composition at that time, who realized their Olympic dream almost two decades later.

Nikita Serbakov, Athletistic


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