Chapter Text
For the first time since losing the Olympic gold medal match, the Canadian Men's hockey team is on their own.
Left to themselves in their locker room, the staff having left after listening to Jon Cooper's speech, coaches dispersing, equipment managers leaving with baskets of sweaty gear, ready to get it cleaned and packed up into the player's kit bags to be flown home the day after the games officially ended.
They had gone through the entire medal ceremony, then press and then Cooper's speech, where they had sat surrounded by their Canadian staff, and it was only now, over an hour after losing to the Americans, that they were finally alone with one another. Away from any cameras. From the press. From their families and fans. Without the tens of thousands of eyes in the stadium, the millions through the cameras, the weight of the expectation of a nation on their shoulders, the team finally break. Free from being perceived, the team can finally let everything out.
Tears and sniffles broke out almost immediately, once the door to the locker room closed behind the last of the staff. Sniffs and small cries echo throughout the silent room, tears streaming, but no one was loud. Everyone's breakdown was quiet, as if afraid to be seen and judged as weak. Hockey prays on purported weakness and raises its boys on resisting feelings. Crying with the team is not a common occurrence. And yet today it was seemingly all most in the room could do.
The tears Cale had been desperately holding back as he walked through the press, which had definitely been caught on camera and gifs were likely already circulating, breached his eyes and started to run down his face.
Mack slowly slid off the bench, ending up curled up on the floor in front of his cubby, his legs folded up in front of him as he rocked back and forth in some sort of self soothing manner, his forehead resting against them and his hands in his hair, grabbing strands and pulling them, in a way that someone would soon need to step in and stop if they wanted to stop him from hurting himself.
Nate gripped onto the plush stoat that he had been handed, the second slap in the face of that medal presentation ceremony, his grip tightening the longer he stared down at it, the seams beginning to bulge with how strongly he had it fisted in his hands. If Tina was to survive this face off, she would soon need to be removed from Nathan MacKinnon's hands and eyeline.
Binnington and Johnson were orbiting each other, sat beside one another to one side, clutching the other's arm, Johnson almost seeming to hold Jordan up as the weight of being the goalie of the losing team in the Olympic gold medal game dropped more and more onto his shoulders.
Marner stared down at his wrist, at the smiley face tattoo he put there to remind himself that hockey was supposed to be fun. That he played this game because he enjoyed it. Because he loved it. But in this moment, all he could think was that maybe it didn't love him back.
McDavid had fully shut down, sat in his cubby and completely frozen, staring off into the middle distance with no mental attachment or awareness of where he was. Tears dripped slowly from his eyes as stared off, seemingly not even noticing them. To lose two back to back Stanley cups and then a gold medal, it was not an easy thing to do, and for someone labelled one of the best modern hockey players, it broke something inside him. A hopelessness was gnawing at him, its large maw opening up and ready to swallow him if only he let it.
All around the room, men broke down and felt everything they had pushed down throughout the ceremony and media circus.
For the young members of the team, this was their first Olympics. The first of hopefully many, if the NHL kept allowing them to go, though if they would allow it when their very worries were fulfilled, an injury of a major player taking them out of in-season playing for possibly a month or more, that was to be seen. While a silver as a first Olympic medal was a disappointment, and one they would feel for a while, they would be able to come back and get redemption. Win gold and redeem themselves for Canada, for the fans and most importantly, for themselves.
The old guard knew, barring a miracle, this would be the first and last Olympics for most of them. Having played in the NHL for so long but never having the chance to play on this level. And now, it was likely they never would again. There first and last visit to the Olympics finished with a silver.
The one thing that they all shared, at the heart of their disappointment and heart broken feelings, was the knowledge that they couldn't win it for their captain. That Sidney Crosby, Captain Canada, a man every single one of them had watched growing up, had idolised and seen as a Canadian hero, the man with the golden goal, had trusted them to get the gold and they hadn’t been able to do it, they couldn’t cinch victory and win for him. Sidney Crosby had gone to possibly his last Olympics and hadn’t even been able to play in its final. Taken out by an injury that benched him for the rest of the tournament, forced to watch from the sidelines as his team lost the gold medal. It made many of the men in the room sick to think about, many of them unable to even look in Sid's direction, never mind make eye contact, which Sid kept trying to do as he looked around from where he was perched in his cubby, free from the skates he had put on to receive his medal and then quickly took off once he was in the tunnel, as his limp became more apparent.
It was in that sombre atmosphere that Sid made his move, pushing himself up from his seat. He climbed to his feet, placing his weight on one leg, and balancing using the side of his cubby and the shoulder Marchy offered once it became clear Sid would not sit down before making a speech. Sid had never been a loud captain, even when he was a young fresh faced 19 year old. He was never one for dramatics or yelling, leading with a steadiness that had only grown stronger and more comforting to his teammates as he got older and became one of the most respected and esteemed players to be playing or ever play in the NHL. He cleared his throat, immediately catching most of his countrymates attentions.
When he saw that a few of them were still deep in their own worlds he looked across the room and made eye contact with the only man in the room who hadn’t shied away from his gaze, Drew Doughty. His fellow previous Olympian saw him looking at him and knew what he needed. Sid couldn’t move around the room and pluck them from where they were into the present, but Drew could. The only person not ensnared in deep distress, instead bathed in a light sadness, but nowhere near everyone else. Doughty had done this before, he had been to the Olympics, he’d won gold, he’d won multiple Stanley Cups, there was very little he hadn’t done in the world of hockey. And so he was, not content, but closer to coming to peace with this loss than anyone else.
With the prompting of his captain, he quickly moved around the room, pulling teammates out of their spirals. Tapping Marner and McDavid on the shoulder to draw them out, then stepping towards Macklin, detangling his fingers from his hair and holding them together between his palms until Mack looked up at him, looking like a lost puppy, his eyes wide and unsure, a look so completely different from the confident player Drew had seen all competition that it shocked him for a moment. Clasping Mack on the shoulder, he caught his eyes, gave him a comforting pat before nodding towards Sid and moving on. Once he’d finished his circuit of the room, he returned to his bench and looked back to Sid who gave him a small appreciative smile back.
With the attention of an entire national team on him, Sid looked out at them all, at his teammates, and saw that while they were all looking towards him, not a single one of them could make eye contact with him.
Sid hadn’t planned to have to make this speech, expecting this game, this whole Olympics to go differently. Going to the Olympics and not even be able to play in the gold medal game stung, but Sid was perhaps one of the player who knew the most about how injuries didn’t care how much you wanted to play or who you were, they took their pound of flesh from everyone. Playing for so long and captaining for the majority of those years, Sid had made speeches at both the happiest and worst times of his athletic life, and while the Pens were playing well this season and he hoped they would continue the trend while he was off on injury, it had been a rough few years and he had gotten very used to making losing speeches, a familiarity that was very beneficial when he hadn’t planned to ever have to make one here in Milan.
“I know this isn’t the result we wanted,” Sid starts, “I don’t think any of us expected to be sat here, like this, today.”
“But I want you all to know how proud I am of you all, you gave it your all. You left everything, everything, out on that ice. But today just wasn’t meant to be.”
"We play this game because we love it. Before we played because we were good, we played because it was fun and we enjoyed playing it. And when things like this happen, that enjoyment, it can get snuffed out. Like covering a candle to extinguish it, hard losses attempt to smother your fire, they try to stamp it out. But this, loving this sport? It's in our blood. We are never quite ready to let hockey beat us, and she is certainly never ready to let us go."
"Never let that spark die." Sid continued. "Keep it alive, burning inside of you. Always. And on those days where keeping it burning inside of you is a struggle, where your flame might not be enough to keep the fire going, find some logs to burn. Find something that keeps you coming back to hockey, beyond yourself."
"I play this game, yes, because I love it, but also, as I have gotten older, because I love to see that spark in other people. I founded the Little Penguins because getting to see people fall in love with hockey as I did is a feeling I will never be able to beat. Knowing that people got into hockey and play hockey, because of me, is a feeling that never quite goes away. And knowing that you all went out there on that ice, that you gave it your all, and you gave it your all for me? That is one of the highest honours I can say I have ever received."
He let his words drape over the room, hoping the comfort would land on his teammates shoulders and relieve them of some of the guilt he was sure was building.
"Silver is one of the hardest medals to win, mentally and emotionally, and while I can give the losing a game speech, a lot, this is something none of us have felt before, and a feeling so few in our world will be able to sympathise with. I'm just sorry I can't give you more words of advice." Sid finished.
Sid stops talking and lets those thoughts and feelings hang. Right as he’s about to start speaking again, though what would have come out of his mouth he doesn’t know, a small sniffle and cough breaks the silence and when his eyes flick up from where they had been staring down at the ground and his twiddling fingers as he spoke, he sees the sound has come from Macklin, who has perked up slightly from where he was slumped on the floor and seems to flush when he realises his cough was so much louder than he expected in the silent room. Once he registers that he seemingly has the room's total attention, he stammers before starting to speak.
“What if, what if there was some people who knew how this felt. Who knew how we were feeling?" He stops, rubbing at his eyes as tears continue to drip down his face before continuing, "I’m feeling so much and all I want is to not think at all. I don’t know how to stop feeling so much.”
His voice cracks and breaks as he gets worked up and tears start dripping again, his hands raising towards his hair once again before being grabbed by Marner who is sat in the cubby next to him, who then sandwiches them between his own hands.
“But maybe they do. Maybe they know how to deal with all of this, cause they’ve done it before. And they’re in the same boat as us this year."
Mack seems to realise he has gotten very emotionally vulnerable and does as male hockey players are oft to do, cover with humour.
"Hey, and maybe they’re better at this cause they’ve got a few less concussions than us.”
A smattering of laughter breaks across the room, Mack giving a little huff laugh after he spoke, which Sid is glad to hear as it’s the first sound out of Macklin since they lost that doesn’t make him want to wrap the kid up and smuggle him back to Pittsburgh with him. Sid thinks he can see what the kid is putting down, even with his fair share of those previously mentioned concussions, a couple of the others across the room picking it up, but there’s still a good few blank faces around the room who have no idea what Macklin is talking about. Sid probably needs to jump in.
“If we want some advice, I believe Mack is saying we need to look to our fellow Canadians. The NHL may not be able to offer us many answers, but the PWHL very well may.”