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Sunday, March 7, 1999
Canada opens with easy game against Switzerland
A win is a given.
Canada blanked Switzerland 9-0 and 8-0 during a Christmas competition in Germany and 6-0 at the 1997 worlds in Kitchener, Ont.
Coach Daniele Sauvageau's team doesn't want to become the first representing Canada to allow the Swiss a goal.
"I'll remind the players about that," Sauvageau said Sunday. "They'll take pride in that and say, 'Well, it's not going to be against Team Canada 1999."'
This game will be a glorified practice for Canada, and Swiss coach Edi Grubauer knows admits that.
"One will be enough," he replied when asked how many goals his team would have to score to satisfy him.
At Christmas, "We had no chance against them," Grubauer said.
Sauvageau's side has improved in the interim. It warmed up by posting exhibition wins over Sweden of 3-0 Thursday and 7-1 Saturday.
Grubauer has much less to work with than does Sauvageau.
"We don't have 47,000 registered players like Canada," he said of his country's handicap in women's hockey. "We have 500 to 600, so our national program is not on the same level as Canada."
The game will be another building block of the triangle Sauvageau says she's building. The base of the triangle is all the work done on fundamentals, such as strong play in the defensive zone, that has been stressed in building an 11-0 record this season.
The peak of the triangle is the championship game next Sunday.
"That's when the players' creativity will come out," she explains. "They will be free because they won't have to think about defence. It will come easy" by then.
As a Montreal police officer, Sauvageau is familiar with criminal law. She's also been instructing her team on another type of law.
"I call it the winners' law," she says. "When you are a winner in life you have to show up for everything you are doing. You can not lack intensity or focus at any time.
"You have to use these games in order to get prepared and to get better for other stuff. We have objectives for each period. We ask the players after each period, 'How do you evaluate yourself on those objectives?' They want to be able to say at the end of the game, 'We did what we were supposed to do."'
Sauvageau could be a sports psychologist if she tired of the narcotics squad.
"We call the defensive zone our house," she said. "There are rules in a house.
"In order to go out, you have to do certain things. Make your bed in the morning and you'll be able to go out on Saturday night. This is how we talk to the players.
"But we are not overly serious about it because the bottom line is that hockey is a game and you have to have fun to really enjoy it. This is my approach, all kinds of funny things we build on."
Triangles, laws, houses . . . and footprints.
"Our theme this year is not about winning another championship," she explained. "It's not about getting a bigger reputation.
"It's about leaving footprints."
For this season, the first footprint was a 6-1 win over the United States in an exhibition game in Brampton, Ont., March 1.
The second footprint was the two exhibitions wins in Sweden. The third footprint will be left behind in this tournament.
"Sometimes it's better to achieve things step by step," she said. "We haven't talked yet about the gold medal game."
Canada has gone 20-0 in the four previous women's worlds and won them all.
More competitive tests loom Tuesday against Germany and Thursday against Finland.