As Herb Brooks’ words echo on, Jon Cooper cooks up message for Canada in unfamiliar territory

BOSTON — Great moments are born from great opportunity. And that’s what you have here tonight, boys. That’s what you’ve earned here tonight.

If you’re an American hockey fan – hell, even just a fan of the game – the words of Herb Brooks moments before the Miracle on Ice make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

If you’ve listened closely, Team USA players have sprinkled a few of those Herb-isms into press conferences and media interviews over these last two glorious weeks at 4Nations Face-Off. They are words known by heart by every American player. It was watched so frequently that the Miracle movie disc was literally stuck in the rear seat video player of the minivan that teenage Brock Faber drove from Minnesota to join the U.S. National Development Program in Michigan.

Matthew and Brady Tkachuk said they watched Miracle more than a few times in their hotel rooms in Montréal – and then went out and starred in their own movie script last Saturday night, conjured up on group text.

One game. If we play ‘em ten times, they might win nine. But not this game. Not tonight. Tonight, we skate with them. Tonight, we stay with them. And we shut them down because we can. Tonight, WE are the great hockey team in the world.

Brooks’ words will echo forever, and it gives you chills to think about what Mike Sullivan might have prepared for Thursday night inside TD Garden.

Down the hall, in a cramped visitor’s dressing room, Team Canada will hear a message from one of the game’s all-time great orators in Jon Cooper, whose resume arriving in the NHL read more like Ted Lasso than Scotty Bowman. But it’s a message that will have to be different than the one Cooper might have been dreaming when he scribbled some thoughts on a cocktail napkin sitting around the pool last summer. Because Team Canada has never quite been in a situation like this one.

“Well, I’ve been cooking up this message for months, so I finally get to deliver it,” Cooper said Wednesday. “Some of it comes from what’s happened. What you’re thinking from a year ago to six months ago to now has completely changed.”

Yes, indeed, Canada lost to the United States in preliminary round play on home soil. Ask Sidney Crosby how that played out one week later in the gold medal game in Vancouver.

But this is different. Canada was literally punched in the face on Saturday night as the world watched. They are on foreign soil for this rematch. It will be an equally hostile environment for the visitors in Boston. They are the betting underdog.

And they’re trying to maintain their grip on international hockey supremacy, trying to hold off a USA Hockey program that has been building for this moment after decades of falling short. Really, it’s uncharted territory for Hockey Canada. Even the proudest Canadian can admit that this game is a coin flip, which is proof of how far the United States has come to be on par with hockey’s 800-pound gorilla.

“It’s definitely the best team that I’ve seen, really, I think the best team that I’ve ever played against,” Brad Marchand said Wednesday of Team USA. “No disrespect to the previous teams but the way the game has evolved the last 10 years, some of the players on the team will be some of the best to ever play the game of hockey.

“They embody a team that competes to the highest level. They have everything. They check well, they play physical, they have incredible talent, the defenseman on their team can all skate, they have good size. Their goaltending is also so good. They don’t have any weaknesses.”

At the same time, there is zero doubt that the Americans are feeling pressure to get over the hump. USA Hockey executive director Pat Kelleher said it best: “We’ve gotta win.” Second place is no longer a success; the USA has been knocking on the door for decades now, but haven’t knocked it down.

The United States has not won a top-level men’s hockey competition since 1996. That’s why, with all due respect to 2002 in Salt Lake City, Thursday night marks the biggest hockey game played on American soil since 1980.

It’s not because of the political vortex that has enveloped the sport by virtue of President Trump’s incendiary and unnecessary taunts. Or because of the eyeballs attached to this juicy matchup. It’s because the United States wasn’t ready to take the mantle from Canada in 2002. There was way too big a talent disparity, from top to bottom. The gap has evaporated. As Mike Eruzione said last week and Marchand clearly confirmed: “This is the best collection of American ever assembled on one team.”

You can almost hear Brooks: Their time is done. It’s over. I’m sick and tired of hearing about what a great hockey team the Soviets have. Screw ‘em. This is your time. Now go out there and take it.

A vaunted Canadian attack with some of the best players of all-time will have something to say about that. How will Canada respond? Will they be the aggressor? What will Cooper say?

“Some coaches project, but he almost quiets down, and it kinda brings you in,” said Sam Reinhart, who scored the Stanley Cup-clinching goal just eight months ago.

“That’s where he gets you,” Drew Doughty said. “I don’t really know how to explain it, but he just keeps you dialed in for the whole time. Sometimes, other coaches can lose you a little bit if it drags on long. He doesn’t lose anyone in the room and he’s got some special way. I don’t know what he’s doing but he’s good at it.”

Maybe the words spoken on Thursday night in either locker room, surely caught on camera, will echo for eternity and hold the same weight as Brooks four or five decades from now. Or maybe there won’t be much of a message at all.

“At this point, I’m not sure much needs to be said by me,” Cooper said. “We’ve built for this moment. We wanted to be in this moment. Now we’re here, and they know what they have to do to finish it off.”

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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