MILAN — Even when he couldn’t be in the lineup because his right leg had buckled in ways legs shouldn’t, Sidney Crosby made a difference for Canada.
With the quarterfinal against Czechia tied after two periods, Crosby addressed his teammates. The gist of the message? Go get ’em.
Canada did. Mitch Marner scored 1:22 into overtime to seal a 4-3 victory, sending Canada to the semifinals on Feb. 20 at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena. Whether the lineup will include Crosby is unknown; Canada coach Jon Cooper did not have an update immediately after the game.
‘He couldn’t come out for the third,’ Cooper said. ‘But he did address the players, and I think that was a big thing coming in is, that we lose this game − we didn’t want this to be Sid’s last game at this Olympics’
The injury didn’t look good, with Crosby’s legs separated at unnatural angles. He was still being evaluated after the game.
‘You hate seeing it, right? He’s a heart and soul guy,’ Mark Stone said. ‘He leads by example. I’m glad we were able to get the win for him.’
Gudas said he was just trying to hold the red line.
‘Just trying to play hard, everybody is playing physical,’ he said. ‘That team is so fast, so quick, you worry about the next shift, the next play. Hopefully he’s ok, you never want to see a guy get hurt, especially in these tournaments.’
Macklin Celebrini, who scored the first goal and assisted on goals by Nathan MacKinnon and Marner’s, called it ‘a weight lifted off our shoulders’ to see the puck go in in overtime, especially after losing Crosby.
‘He’s the leader, captain, heart and soul of our team,’ Celebrini said. ‘He’s a guy that everyone looks to, so for him to go down, it was tough. But I think we did a good job kind of rallying and staying on the gas.’
The Czechs were playing for the second time in 24 hours while Canada, having won group play, had been off for two days. But Canada is also the No. 1 seed at the tournament, while the Czechs looked loose, like they were playing with house money.
Lukas Sedlak and David Pastrnak scored in the first period to make it 2-1 Czechia going into the second period. MacKinnon scored an equalizer. The third period thrilled, especially when Ondrej Palat finished a nice pass from Necas to put Czechia up by a goal with 7:42 to go.
‘You look down the bench and you see the players we have on our team, and you know no one’s going to quit, and we have a great chance of coming back,’ Drew Doughty said. ‘But as the time keeps ticking, you’re like, ‘Holy (expletive) – this isn’t an ideal.’ But I never stopped believing. And look what happened.’
There was only 3:27 left to play when Nick Suzuki tipped Devon Toews’ shot to tie the game.
‘I wanted to do something to help the team, so it was a big goal to tie it up and send it to overtime,’ Suzuki said.
Cooper said players on the bench are, ‘like super comfortable being uncomfortable and that’s what it is. It was calm. Everybody had complete faith in whoever was going over the boards. It just felt like it was a matter of time.’