The Athletic has live coverage of United States vs Finland in the 4 Nations Face-Off
MONTREAL — After swapping one maple leaf for another and sharing a dressing room with his boyhood hero, Mitch Marner figured he’d packed more than enough pinch-me moments into these first few days with Team Canada.
Then Sidney Crosby found him on a reload in overtime and put the puck on his stick as he gathered speed through the neutral zone, and that set the stage for a moment that was literally years in the making for the 27-year-old winger.
Marner secured a massive 4 Nations opening victory for Canada on Wednesday when he stared down Erik Karlsson and neatly tucked a shot over Filip Gustavsson’s blocker. That froze the clock at 6:06 and sent the Bell Centre into a frenzy. But it also brought a seldom-seen level of emotion out of an all-world player who has perhaps endured the worst of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ repeated playoff defeats over the years.
“I mean, you tell 8- or 10-year-old Mitch that he’s scoring an overtime goal assisted by Sidney Crosby, a guy he looked up to since Day 1, yeah, it’s pretty crazy,” said Marner, his voice growing hoarse after the 4-3 victory. “And I’m sure my family’s gonna be very excited about that one, and it’s gonna be a really cool thing to have now.”
Let this serve as Exhibit A of why players across the league fought so hard for the long overdue return of top-tier international competition: It’s about these unforgettable moments. It’s about testing yourself against the absolute best of the best. It’s about setting everything else aside and playing for something much bigger than a paycheck.
While this may seem like a forced attempt to make it about the Maple Leafs, consider all that Marner has been through professionally before getting his star turn after a fantastic 4 Nations Face-Off opener.
He arrived here as the NHL’s fourth-leading scorer — tied with Canadian teammate Connor McDavid at 71 points. But he also arrived here as the guy with six playoff goals to show for his last 37 Stanley Cup playoff games, which fairly or not has created a narrative about his knack for navigating big moments.
Well, they don’t get much bigger than the one he authored after twice watching his team squander two-goal leads to Sweden.
“I think it can obviously grow his confidence,” said teammate Mark Stone. “I think he gets a bit of a bad rap sometimes. How do I word this? I would take him on my team any day. The way that he plays, unbelievable teammate from what I’ve experienced.”
That’s the other thing about Marner: Absolutely everyone he shares a dressing room with adores the guy. Both in Toronto with the Maple Leafs and here with Team Canada.
Jon Cooper, the Canadian coach, has been raving about him ever since they spent a few weeks together at the 2017 IIHF World Hockey Championship — an event in which Marner was among the Canadian players to miss a shootout attempt in a heartbreaking gold medal loss to Sweden.
“That kid oozes confidence,” said Cooper. “I thought it was a big-time player making a big-time play at a big-time moment. That’s why guys like him are on this team. He was fabulous.”
A game like this reinforces Marner’s standing in the larger hockey universe. It adds a little more context. He said the pace was so fast during the first period that he had trouble regaining his breath between shifts on the bench.
But when everything was on the line and Sweden had struck twice early in the third period to tie the score 3-3, he found himself among the select players Cooper leaned on hard while significantly shortening his bench.
Marner saw five shifts in the second half of the third period alone, including helping Canada deliver a key penalty kill, and then got three more overtime shifts before finally sealing the deal.
He was mobbed by teammates after the puck went in and cheered in a building where Maple Leafs are accustomed to being booed.
“That’s a big-time goal, that’s a big-time play,” said Stone. “Just the way he can create space for himself and then make that play. The game’s hard. Those kinds of moments can build your confidence.”
And, for Marner, it brought him back to where it all began.
He always wore No. 87 as a kid playing around the Toronto area because he was such a Crosby fan. He wasn’t even yet a teenager when Crosby scored the Golden Goal.
When the puck went in Wednesday he thought of his parents, Paul and Bonnie, cheering him on among the 21,000-plus in the stands. Asked what his dad’s reaction would be to that moment, he replied: “Yeah, he’s going to be pumped as s—. He’s going to be going nuts for sure.”
Before leaving the Bell Centre sometime after midnight on Wednesday, he had just one goal remaining: tracking down the puck he scored with as a memento to take home.
(Photo: Andre Ringuette / 4NFO / World Cup of Hockey via Getty Images)
