Foote recalls ‘unbelievable’ feeling of representing Canada for gold

VANCOUVER – It is hard to remember now, after best-on-best hockey tournaments became as rare as comet visits, but there was a glorious 10-year period spanning this century and the last one when National Hockey League players battled each other in five global summits: three Olympics and two World Cups.

Defenceman Adam Foote was one of just three Canadians who played in all of them.

But the magnitude of representing Canada — and winning our country’s first Olympic gold medals in men’s hockey in 50 years — didn’t become fully clear to Foote until he visited Vancouver with the Colorado Avalanche during an NHL road trip the season after Team Canada’s historic 2002 triumph in Salt Lake City.

“I remember being in Vancouver here, walking on the street to dinner one night,” Foote, the Vancouver Canucks coach, said after Friday’s practice at the University of B.C. “I had a couple guys come up to me. They hated me here; I was the enemy playing for Colorado, right? But I remember they said, ‘Hey, thanks, for the gold.’ I was in shock. It just made me really realize how special it was. They’re all (Canadian) hockey fans, separated when we go play in the NHL. But at that moment, in the Olympics, they’re cheering for all of us. That’s a cool feeling.”

Foote understands the emotions that will be coursing through the current Canadian Olympians ahead of Sunday morning’s gold-medal game in Milan against Team USA.

“For me, I don’t know, I played Game 7 for the Stanley Cup (in 2001),” the 54-year-old from Toronto said. “It was amazing, it was hard. But it was different for me than the stress of playing for your country. Like, it was for the country. It was for Canadian fans. You’re very lucky and fortunate — and you work hard — to go out and represent your country, and it’s an incredible feeling if you can win it.

“It’s unbelievable what those guys will be feeling going into the gold-medal game. It’s wild.”

Foote is one of the most decorated players of his generation. He won Stanley Cups with the Avalanche in 1996 and 2001, that famous gold medal with Canada at the 2002 Olympics, and another at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey. He also played at the Olympics in 2006 in Turin and the 1998 Games in Nagano, and was a member of Canada’s team that lost to the United States in the final of the inaugural World Cup in 1996.

He was 25 years old in that tournament, 34 when his international career ended with Canada’s seventh-place finish in Turin.

The only other Canadians to play in all five best-on-best tournaments were goalie Martin Brodeur and centre Joe Sakic, Foote’s teammate in Colorado.

“When I went to my first World Cup in ‘96 and I was young — I don’t know if I was surprised I was there — but I couldn’t do anything except just sleep and play,” he said. “I would go to practice, go home, sleep, eat, go back to bed. I was just so stressed out mentally. But it was also to prep (for the games). Like, I didn’t want to do anything else. I didn’t want to burn my energy, wouldn’t even go on the phone.

“What was incredible playing for those Team Canadas is how smart the guys are, the players. Like, in the NHL, teams are smart. But it’s at another level (at the Olympics). It’s another level of execution, another level of knowing where to go without the puck, backing each other up. It’s just another level of hockey IQ.

“You just didn’t want to be the guy that let your country down, you know? I just remember going through my head all the time: hard plays, getting pucks out of the middle, move my feet — just programming yourself constantly so that you’re ready.”

He never had to choose only one, but if Foote could win the Stanley Cup or an Olympic gold medal for Canada, which would it be?

“I don’t know if I can answer that, honestly,” he said. “I mean, the Cup is so bloody hard to win, but it’s a tough question. I want them both just because they’re both so special. And they’re both so different.”