MILAN — As the curtain closed on the best and most tightly contested day of the Olympic men’s hockey tournament, Dylan Larkin got honest.
The Team USA star revealed that Wednesday’s highwire act, a 2-1 overtime victory over a resilient Team Sweden in a do-or-die quarterfinal, was the most nervous he’s ever felt in a hockey game.
“Us too!” echoed fans invested in the fate of the Americans, Canadians, Swedes, Finns, Czechs and Swiss. For each one of those nations found themselves in a next-goal-wins, 3-on-3 scenario. And three of those countries had their Olympic dream crushed by a goal horn and a frozen clock and had to watch their opposition mob and exhale and smile.
“It got real,” Larkin said. “As intense of a game, as tight of a game, as I’ve probably ever played in. And the small ice not being great late in the game, late in the period, it got even tighter.”
The stakes just skyrocketed here at Milano Santagiulia Arena, a pop-up shop of horrors where the heavily favoured Americans and Canadians were one goal away from going home medal-less. Ditto Team Finland, which needed three unanswered goals and some 3-on-3 heroics from Artturi Lehkonen to stave off an improving Team Switzerland.
Sure, each one of the top four seeds advanced — USA gets Slovakia, and Canada draws the Finns in Friday’s semis — but not without a fight and a fright.
Pins and needles everywhere.
“You can feel it, right?” Larkin said.
Just as USA’s OT hero, Quinn Hughes, could feel all the things he missed, due to injury, at last winter’s 4 Nations Face-Off.
Given room to juke, Hughes skipped and slithered on multiple shifts in the fourth period before opening space for himself and snapping a ping-swoosh puck past Jacob Markstrom.
“At first, I didn’t know if it went post and in or post and out,” Matthew Tkachuk said. “But once I heard the roar and him start to celebrate, it was definitely the highest I’ve jumped since my surgery.”
Fellow top-pair defenceman Charlie McAvoy says Hughes’s winning sequence sums up his game in a nutshell.
“It’s a 3-on-3, and you want to put the puck in his hands, so you’re getting it to him and then look at what he can create all for himself there with his ability, all of his skill,” McAvoy marvelled. “With his skating, his stickhandling, he’s able to create something out of nothing there and win us that hockey game kind of all by himself.”
Hughes said he entered OT with an attack mindset and only felt one thing at the end: relief.
“I mean, really enjoying wearing the crest and playing with the superstars that we have on our team, and getting to know these guys and the village and all of it,” Hughes said. “You just want to extend it as long as you can.”
Jack Hughes couldn’t be happier to have his older brother upgrading the Americans’ roster.
“That’s unreal. That’s a massive goal, massive moment. One of our best players taking over there and winning that game for us,” J. Hughes said.
Tkachuk says Team USA is a better team this time around, thanks to the minute-munching, ankle-breaking Quinn.
“He’s a threat in the offensive zone. Every time, defensively, he’s able to skate pucks and be kind of like that one-man breakout. Him and Charlie have formed an unbelievable pair for us,” Tkachuk said.
“That was one of those games where it’s 40 of some of the best players in the world fighting at both ends of the ice. Not a lot of room both sides, not a lot of heavy chances on either side.
“You put two really good teams together, and you think that it’s gonna be this high-flying offensive, but it’s actually quite the opposite. And it took one guy to make a play at the end, and that was Quinn.”
One guy to also crush the hopes of a proud hockey nation like Sweden, which was slow out the gates here and suffered a tremendous loss when Victor Hedman tweaked something in warmups and could not play.
Hedman sat on the bench and watched in disappointment.
“It just sucks when you’re on the other side of it,” Sweden’s Filip Forsberg said.
William Nylander stopped to talk even though he didn’t have the words for the heartbreak.
“It’s hard to describe right now,” Nylander said. “I mean, it’s tough when the Olympics only happens every so often. So, it’s a good learning experience, that’s for sure.”
“Pretty empty right now,” managed a hushed Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who left his pregnant wiffe and young son back in Canada to chase gold.
“Sorry, I don’t have a lot of answers. It’s hard to kind of take everything in. But obviously, just being with the guys getting the chance to come here and battle and experience the Olympics with an unbelievable group of guys. And I felt like even if we didn’t get the result, we were getting better for every game. Even tonight, I thought we played pretty decent.”
Sadly, happily, Wednesday at the hockey rinks of Milan had no tolerance for decent.
“It’s one of those moments,” USA goalie Connor Hellebuyck said, “where you’ll look back at years down the road and just be so proud to be a part of it.”
