The sports photographers at Getty Images snap action shots around the world. We illuminate 22 of our favorite images they captured this year.

San Francisco 49ers kicker Robbie Gould celebrates the last-second field goal he booted to bounce the Green Bay Packers from the playoffs.

France rugby union winger Gabin Villiere dives for a try while an Italian opponent despairs.

Chinese para alpine skier Liang Jingyi rams through a gate in the men's Super-G (standing) race at the Winter Paralympics in Beijing.

Detroit Pistons forward Jerami Grant absorbs a foul from Duncan Robinson of the Miami Heat.

UConn forward Aaliyah Edwards sets to shoot against NC State in the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies won the Elite Eight matchup but lost to South Carolina in the final.

PGA TOUR golfer Abraham Ancer tosses his glove on the 10th tee at the Mexico Open.

Sloane Stephens plays a forehand return at the French Open.

Colorado Rockies infielder Ryan McMahon throws on the move to first base against the Atlanta Braves.

Finals MVP trophy in hand, Stephen Curry celebrates the Golden State Warriors clinching the NBA title in Boston.

UFC fighter Gloria de Paula strikes Maria Oliveira during their strawweight bout in Austin, Texas. Oliveira bounced back to win in a split decision.

Fresh off defeating the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games, Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog hoists the Stanley Cup.

Toronto Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk warms up for a home game on Canada Day.

American sprinter Noah Lyles rejoices at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon. Lyles won the men's 200m final in 19.31 seconds, the fourth-fastest time ever recorded.

Fans surround Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard amid the Tour de France's 18th stage. Vingegaard won the stage and went on to clinch his first yellow jacket as champion.

Triumphant England players storm the postgame press conference to revel in their victory in the Euro 2022 final. England beat Germany 2-1 in extra time.

English long jumper Abigail Irozuru takes flight at the Commonwealth Games.

Manchester City striker Erling Haaland scores a golazo to beat Borussia Dortmund - his former club - in the Champions League group stage.

Clemson defensive tackle Jabriel Robinson fires up the crowd before a home win over Louisiana Tech.

Las Vegas Aces forward A'ja Wilson celebrates the franchise's first WNBA championship. The Aces topped the Connecticut Sun in four games.

Houston Astros players douse manager Dusty Baker with beer following the club's victory in the ALDS. Houston wound up winning the World Series.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers defenders lunge in vain as Los Angeles Rams receiver Allen Robinson makes a highlight-reel catch.

Uplifted by Argentina teammates and supporters, Lionel Messi raises the World Cup trophy in Qatar.

Click to see more of Getty's top photos from 2022.

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Scoot Henderson idolized the late Kobe Bryant because he admired his ruthlessness and iron will. But on the biggest night to date of his NBA draft season, Henderson channeled Michael Jordan's audacity.

The G League Ignite point guard drove the lane in suburban Las Vegas on Oct. 4 against the top-tier French pro club Metropolitans 92. Henderson, who turns 19 this winter, hit the brakes at the restricted area as two defenders soared past him in the third quarter. He swished a short jumper to cap the stylish fake, then shrugged as he jogged back on defense.

"That play signifies how confident he is. How much of a competitor he is. I know he really wanted to win the game," Ignite head coach Jason Hart told theScore recently. "Emotion and his confidence met at the same time."

Henderson wasn't the starriest prospect involved in the play. The help defender was Victor Wembanyama, the 7-foot-3 unicorn from the outskirts of Paris who does anything he wants on the court. A genuine two-way force, Wembanyama is the top scorer and shot-blocker in France's LNB Pro A league at 18 years old. His general dominance against the Ignite affirmed to American viewers that he's special.

Transcendent teenagers are set to enter and reshape two leagues next year. The NBA's never welcomed a talent like Wembanyama, meaning Henderson shouldn't kick himself in the likely event he's drafted second overall. On the ice, virtuosic Western Hockey League center Connor Bedard is the object of every tanking NHL team's affection. The rest of Bedard's draft cohort is also showing historic promise.

Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud, the best quarterbacks in the class of 2023, aren't in Wembanyama and Bedard's rarefied tier. But NFL teams that slump into the top five of the draft are expected to snap them up. Both players have been Heisman Trophy finalists - Young won it last year - and both could round into franchise cornerstones. That upside will be valued after the 2022 draft class was bereft of such passers.

Young's Alabama Crimson Tide and Stroud's Ohio State Buckeyes are gearing up to play in major bowl games on New Year's Eve. Bedard headlines the star-studded roster Canada sent to the World Junior Championship, which begins Monday. Fans nationwide will marvel at his gifts.

"For him, it's all about speed off the rush. He's the closest thing I've seen to Connor McDavid in regards to how he attacks our practices," said Nick Quinn, Bedard's longtime offseason skills coach with the Power Edge Pro consultancy.

"(We put) extreme stress on the player's mind to think and have his feet and his hands respond at the same time," Quinn added. "When you watch Bedard, that's what you see. You see an elite multi-tasker - a player who can create deception at top speed. He's reacting to defenders quicker than they can respond."

The Hockey News dubbed Bedard the future of the sport when he was 13 years old. Now he's 17 and skates circles around peers who aren't remotely on his level. Held scoreless in the Regina Pats' season opener, Bedard's recorded a point or five in every game he's played since. He's on pace to smash the WHL high for points per contest this century (2.14).

Unimposing at 5-foot-10 and 185 pounds, Bedard's slick stickwork enables him to toy with players. His dangles and feints embarrass international opponents and powerhouse WHL teams. Entire lineups sometimes fixate on his forays up ice, freeing teammates to pot easy goals. Quick and creative, intelligent and dexterous, Bedard can corral a deflected pass and snipe to the top corner without breaking stride.

Bedard's shot is accurate and forceful. He beats goalies from awkward angles and when he's knocked off balance. He might have 50-goal potential in the pros. Without reaching the show yet, Bedard shoots the puck better than 95% of NHLers, Quinn estimates.

"He can make the stick torque. (He generates power) behind his shot. He's got great technique," Quinn said. "But it's the way he can give deception to get the defender to bite and get his stick in a different lane, or his body in a different lane, so he can shoot the puck. Very few players can do that at top speed."

Wembanyama is Bedard's basketball analog. LeBron James and Steph Curry have called him an alien and a 2K create-a-player, respectively. He combines the strengths of Kevin Durant and Rudy Gobert, the countryman Wembanyama blocked and splashed jumpers over in a viral two-on-two showdown when he was 16 years old.

He embodies how basketball is evolving. Young 7-footers who shield the rim now dribble the ball and stroke threes like guards, bending the action at both ends to their will. Good luck stopping them.

Uniquely graceful for his frame - his standing reach is 9-foot-7 - Wembanyama is the closest thing to unguardable. He crosses up defenders and scores at every level. In the Oct. 4 Ignite exhibition, Wembanyama swatted Henderson's jumper and dunk attempt while resembling Curry on offense, nailing three treys in a four-minute span via pick-and-pops and a handoff in transition. He dropped 37 points that game and 36 in an Oct. 6 rematch.

Meanwhile, Henderson's explosiveness and spunk at 6-foot-2 have stoked Ja Morant comparisons. He's averaging 21 points and six assists while shooting 47.1% from distance in his second year with the Ignite, the prospect incubator that springboarded Jalen Green and Dyson Daniels to the NBA.

Henderson's game is flashy yet controlled. He can dissect a defense with his smart passing reads or tight handle. He poured in 28 points and added nine assists in the first Ignite-Metropolitans matchup, draining a step-back three over Wembanyama's elastic arm and beating him to the rim to finish multiple layups.

"He's fearless. A mistake doesn't define who he is," Hart said. "He'll try anything at any point in the game, and he's confident that he can make something happen."

In football, the marquee quarterbacks have one more shot to burnish their draft resumes. Seeded fourth in the College Football Playoff, Stroud's Ohio State squad plays top-ranked Georgia in the Peach Bowl on Dec. 31, with the winner advancing to the national championship game. Young and No. 5 Alabama will face Kansas State in the Sugar Bowl after barely missing the playoff.

Stroud and Young are somewhat similar. Neither player makes many mistakes. Their pinpoint passes blend power and touch. Comparably superb in 2021, both passers slipped statistically this season after losing star wideouts to the NFL (Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave at Ohio State, Jameson Williams and John Metchie from Alabama).

Regardless, they're in contention to be drafted No. 1. Young is 6-foot and lacks bulk at 194 pounds, but he reminds NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah of Drew Brees. Mobile and improvisational, he showcased the scope of his talent in last year's SEC title game. He fashioned a pitch on the fly and scrambled up the gut for a touchdown before he stuck to the script and burned Georgia's secondary with a deep ball to Williams.

Stroud's most recent game - the blowout loss to Michigan that almost cost Ohio State its playoff berth - was a rare lapse, the second time in 24 college starts that he threw two interceptions. Usually, his ball placement is pristine. Staring down an early deficit to Utah in last year's Rose Bowl game, Stroud passed for 573 yards and six touchdowns - three of them on consecutive downfield slings - to orchestrate a memorable comeback win.

"He knows when to throw it hard and when to throw it soft. He doesn't just bullet everything. It's not like he has to show his arm strength every time that he can," said Mark Verti, Stroud's head coach in high school in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

"He's always been able to put the ball in good places," Verti added. "Some guys (are innately accurate) no matter how much you work on it. He's able to hit the spot outside the shoulder to go away from the defender."

Every sport's prospect pool is deep at the top. Kentucky passer Will Levis might join Young and Stroud in the top 10 of the draft. Chet Holmgren, the injured Oklahoma City Thunder 7-footer, should challenge Wembanyama for Rookie of the Year honors when he debuts next season. Forwards from three hockey nations - Canada's Adam Fantilli, Russia's Matvei Michkov, and Sweden's Leo Carlsson - will be drafted right after Bedard and heralded as potential franchise saviors.

Cellar dwellers in all leagues - from the Anaheim Ducks to the Charlotte Hornets to the Houston Rockets and Texans - will count on these players for revitalization. That dependence comes with immense pressure, though Quinn senses Bedard has too much fun when he plays to feel burdened.

"I don't think I've ever trained a guy who loves scoring goals the way he does, whether it's 9-0 or it's 2-1," Quinn said. "He just wants to bury shots."

"I noticed (that about) McDavid when he was coming through," he added. "I always thought, 'Does he not feel the pressure? How does he do it?' I think it's that Tiger Woods mentality: 'I just want to be the best.' He's able to drown out that outside noise."

Hopefully, injuries won't mar their careers. Back, shoulder, and finger issues sidelined Wembanyama for more than half of the 2021-22 season, stoking concerns about his durability. NBA international scout Jason Filippi voiced a counterpoint to The Guardian: Wembanyama is growing into his frame, will add mass, and "hasn't even scratched the surface" of his powers yet.

Henderson bumped knees with Wembanyama back on Oct. 6 and bowed out early in the Ignite-Metropolitans rematch. More recently, he missed several G League games with a concussion and nasal fracture. That won't stop him from being drafted high or disturb his acclimation to the NBA grind, though.

Greatness will be within reach starting next year. Henderson's coach recommends he remain dogged and humble.

"His work ethic will never change. That's who he is," Hart said. "As long as he keeps his work ethic, all of his dreams will come true."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Eric Zweig, the hockey author and historian, was 10 years old the Christmas that his parents gave him a miniature replica of the Stanley Cup. The words inscribed on the trophy are tiny, but he was able to read them as a kid.

"That was the first time I'd ever heard of the Kenora Thistles," Zweig said.

The gift stoked a lifelong fascination with the subject of Zweig's latest book. "Engraved in History: The Story of the Stanley Cup Champion Kenora Thistles" introduces readers to an obscure champ - the speedy band of childhood friends from northern Ontario who claimed the title in 1907.

The Thistles represented a mining and lumber town of a few thousand people that was an outlier even in its era. With almost no exceptions, every Stanley Cup winner going back to 1893 hails from a current NHL city. Powerhouse lineups from Ottawa and Montreal traded Cup victories, except for when Kenora won it in enthralling matchups that redefined what hockey could look like.

"So much about hockey today, even the up-tempo style of play, can be traced to that (1907) Stanley Cup over a century ago," Ron MacLean wrote in the foreword to "Engraved in History," which was released nationally this week via Rat Portage Press.

MacLean added, "No story is smaller, which of course is what makes it so big."

The Thistles leveraged the sport's bygone quirks to their advantage. They were an amateur team whose top player, Tommy Phillips, lost the ends of three fingers in a lumbering mishap, yet he remained brilliant at stickhandling and shooting. Forward passes were banned, but rather than dump the puck and punt possession under pressure, Kenora's defensemen preferred to hold onto it to orchestrate a rush.

The Thistles faced Manitoba competition because of Kenora's proximity to Winnipeg, a shipping hub that sent Prairie grain eastward at the turn of the century and moved farm equipment in the other direction. Winters were frigid, so the region's many good athletes were always on the ice. Phillips and his teammates rowed in the offseason, enhancing their endurance at a time when substitutions were rare.

"Art Ross would talk about it a lot: Tommy Phillips was the kind of guy who could be just as fresh at the end of 60 minutes as he was when the game started," Zweig said. "Their fitness levels were better, and it was hard for people to keep up. And even if they tired out - by then, you're tired, we're tired, but we've already scored four goals."

The Stanley Cup was awarded in challenge series back then: The holder was compelled to face league champions from elsewhere in Canada both during and at the end of the season. The Thistles got to vie for it in 1903 and 1905, falling to the dynastic Ottawa Silver Seven on both occasions.

Ottawa was a skilled, violent squad led by Frank McGee, the Alex Ovechkin of his era to Phillips' Sidney Crosby. McGee was blind in his left eye and famed for scoring 14 goals in an earlier Cup game. He jabbed and broke Si Griffis' nose in the second Thistles series, then tallied a hat trick and the late winner in the deciding contest.

Knowing they were fast enough to trouble top teams, the Thistles added ringers from a Manitoba rival - Ross and fellow future NHLer "Bad" Joe Hall - to try to dethrone the Montreal Wanderers in January 1907. They missed a connecting train en route to the series that wound up being rear-ended and wrecked.

Spared disaster, Phillips guaranteed victory in the series to a Winnipeg sportswriter, then netted Kenora's four goals in a Game 1 win. One was sensational. Per a newspaper report that Zweig found, Phillips sidestepped most of the Wanderers while crossing the ice with the puck and wired a pinpoint shot from the right wing.

Game 2 was electric. Montreal erased a 6-2 deficit before Griffis, carrying the puck from end to end, forced two saves and passed to Roxy Beaudro for the tap-in that clinched the title for the Thistles.

"I'm sure they just thought: 'Oh, we are the champions.' Maybe they got cocky and sat on (the lead) a little bit," Zweig said. "But it must have been tremendously exciting. I would love to have been at that game."

Kenora's reign as Cup victor lasted nine weeks. Ross and Hall returned to the Brandon Wheat City club, but the Thistles swept Brandon in the Manitoba playoffs in mid-March. Montreal visited the next week and outscored Kenora in a two-game rematch, prevailing on aggregate to head home with the chalice.

"(The Thistles) played four games against the Wanderers and won three of them. But that's only enough to win a series and lose a series," Zweig said. "If that's a best-of-seven series, they're up 3-1 at that point. Which never gets talked about, because it just wasn't a possibility at that time."

The dissolution of the Thistles was imminent. Most guys on the roster quit hockey or left town in the offseason, hoping to make career headway in a bigger city. A scarcely recognizable Kenora lineup lost by double digits in the 1907-08 season opener. The team folded without playing another league game.

More than a century later, Zweig compares the Thistles to the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s. An unstoppable offense powered that franchise to several championships before it traded Wayne Gretzky for cash.

"Edmonton's not small like Kenora's small, but by NHL standards, it's tiny," Zweig said. "It's a small, sort of underdog town playing a style of hockey that people haven't seen before. And winning. And then going: Well, we can't really afford to keep this team together."

The arc of Kenora's rise and fall raises what-ifs. Had the Thistles matured quickly enough to beat Ottawa in 1905, Zweig said, they might have held onto the Cup for three seasons. Instead, they inspired the concept of a trade deadline: Cup trustees in 1908 banned the last-minute additions of ringers like Ross and Hall.

The Thistles didn't endure, but the prize they won did.

"The Super Bowl trophy is a cool-looking trophy, but it has no real history and they make a new one every year. The World Series trophy is a kind of dopey-looking trophy and they make a new one every year," Zweig said. "But the Stanley Cup, even though it's been remodeled and redone and there are different versions of it, in a sense, it's the very same trophy that goes back to 1893 and 1907."

"The history of this game is something we in Canada still attach ourselves to," he added. "It's all part of the link. And I think the fact that one small town did win is a neat part in that link."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

In the back half of 2020, as leagues adapted to the pandemic, they shortened their regular seasons and took radical steps to slash travel. NHL teams started meeting consecutive times in the same city. Baseball's AL East squads only faced divisional opponents and the NL East. The NFL canceled its international games, including four in London.

The point was to minimize player exposure to COVID-19, but Seth Wynes detected a different benefit; sports' cutback on chartered flights was good for the environment.

Wynes, a geographer at Concordia University in Montreal, researches climate change mitigation. In a recent study, he found MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL teams combined to fly 7.5 million kilometers in 2018, emitting close to 122,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over the course of a normal sports year.

The 2020 experience was abnormal and revealing. If the Big Four leagues restored the scheduling changes that they introduced on health and safety grounds, Wynes estimates they'd reduce their carbon footprint by 22% - no trivial amount as the world warms and climate disasters threaten to get more extreme.

"Most fans probably wouldn't want to see the MLB 2020 season repeated, where you only got to play teams that are close by," Wynes said. "But if you think about a league during a normal season, they make a lot of trips to (distant) regions that maybe you could do without."

Wynes spoke to theScore about the climate crisis, the opportunity leagues have to help combat it, the upside of an NBA midseason tournament, and the reasons why less flying would benefit players, too. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

theScore: What effect do carbon dioxide emissions from flights have on the environment?

Wynes: Aviation is really important for climate change because each flight makes a lot of emissions. That pollution is released high in the atmosphere. It causes more warming than pollution that is released at ground level. It's also really hard to find alternatives. We have great ideas for electric vehicles and things like that to cut pollution, but not so much for air travel. When we're talking about climate, it's a hard area to tackle.

You researched air travel in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and Major League Baseball. How much carbon dioxide does each league emit in a normal season by flying to games?

The NBA releases the most. The NHL is close behind. Hockey and basketball, they play a lot of games. Baseball also plays a lot of games, but (scheduling series) makes for a lot less traveling. The NFL has fewer emissions because the season is so short.

When did you realize that 2020 scheduling changes might affect the environment?

This was something that I'd been thinking of before the pandemic: What could leagues do to reduce their climate impact? Scheduling is one idea. Climate people think about this sort of thing, so ideas come up. What would happen if the NBA got rid of conferences for the playoffs? There are some good competitive reasons to do that, but if you're a climate person, you start thinking: Oh, that would mean a lot more travel, wouldn't it?

But that's a really minor thing. Then the pandemic comes up and all of these leagues take some strong steps to reduce travel because they're trying to keep their players (and team personnel) from getting infected. As a climate person, that makes you think: I wonder what effect that would have on their carbon footprint every year.

Baseball and hockey regionalized their schedules. In 2020, MLB teams only faced opponents in their division and the corresponding interleague division: the AL East and NL East, for example. The NHL split into four regions for division-only play. What was the climate effect?

MLB went pretty hard on that regionalization. Their emissions went down by about 20% because of that. Other leagues did a little bit less, so that number wouldn't be quite as high. It's an interesting step because it's maybe not quite as sustainable in a normal season. But if you at least do a small amount of it, it's kind of a no-brainer.

MLB is broken down into the National League and the American League, and they're not grouped by region. You could have teams play more games against teams that are close by. You could keep the National League and the American League but improve that efficiency a little bit and cut down on emissions without anyone noticing all that much.

The NHL also took after baseball by staging consecutive matchups in one city a lot more often. One reason not to do this might be to maintain variety in the schedule so that fans get to watch a new opponent each night. That said, do you think the NHL and NBA should schedule more of these miniseries?

I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made for that policy especially. You're saving a lot of travel. When you look at regionalization, that's just making trips shorter. Here, you're cutting trips altogether.

That's more carbon that you're saving, but it also means more rest for your players - fewer trips, fewer red-eye flights, fewer time-zone changes. That would have a bigger impact in terms of player health and performance. When players lose sleep, they don't play as well. They're more likely to get injured. If you do those miniseries, you're cutting back on that. I think that's something that should be investigated a lot more fully.

A lot of players might not have enjoyed (the 2020) experience because they were also stuck in hotel rooms. They're quarantining when they're doing those miniseries, and so that's kind of miserable.

But imagine doing it in 2023. You're not as worried about COVID, hopefully, at that point. Suddenly these players are like: Oh, I have an extended stay in Los Angeles. I can rest up. We can practice between games. I can go out. Maybe enjoy myself rather than: OK, I'm going to be in L.A. and then, the next day, I'm hopping on a flight to Utah, and the night after that I'm over to New York. That's exhausting.

There are financial and marketing arguments to be made for leagues playing international games. The NFL visits London every year, except for 2020, to grow its fan base there. What's the climate argument for abandoning overseas games?

I estimated that the NFL could cut emissions in their season by 8% if it eliminated international games. It's pretty big for a change that fans at home wouldn't really care about. You're trying to make those fans happy, and I don't think those fans would be too harmed by eliminating a game overseas.

There are financial reasons not to do it, and so maybe the leagues won't do it. But I think there's a good argument to be made that the climate emergency is really important. Professional sports leagues act as role models in society. Taking a stand like that would be a visible signal that they actually care.

On that note: You acknowledged in your study that Big Four sports travel accounts for less than 1% of private flight emissions and that private flight emissions account for a fraction of the global total. If these leagues cut back on flights, what's the value of that? What could that change in the grand scheme?

The importance there is largely in leading by example; setting an example in the business community; setting an example for your millions of fans. I also think that what elite members of society choose to do really matters. When we're thinking about the climate crisis and trying to solve it, it requires this rapid, large-scale societal change.

If we're going to make that big change, it's hard to imagine us doing that successfully while the wealthiest people, while the most popular and well-known people in our society, continue to act as if there's no problem. Attending international games, flying on these large, luxurious planes, that's acting as if nothing is abnormal. Whereas saying, "OK, we're going to make these big changes," that's something useful.

There's one other, smaller point I would make. There are these alternative, sustainable aviation fuels, and they're pretty expensive. A lot of businesses couldn't afford to upgrade to these fuels or pay for these credits. But we need the sector of aviation to switch over to that. A strong hope for the future is that we develop these fuels, but they're so expensive to try out.

Leagues have a lot of money. If they were really concerned about money, they would already have implemented some of these (travel cutback) policies. It's clear that they have a little bit of extra cash that they could put toward a good cause.

And so when you're saying: League emissions are only a tiny fraction of global emissions, or even aviation emissions, why do they matter? They could be part of catalyzing a bigger change by purchasing credits for these cutting-edge technologies and helping to jump-start that field. That would be another area where the leagues could have an outsize impact.

You brought up how players could benefit from playing more baseball-style series. If you're advocating for climate solutions and trying to get organizations to act with urgency, what's the importance of presenting win-win solutions - ideas that can benefit everyone involved?

Generally, it's a pretty big deal. Outside of the NBA, maybe you're talking to policy-makers about coal power plants. It's important to present the information that shutting down coal power plants would be really good for the health of people in your state or province. We're talking about less cancer, less asthma, less hospital visits.

Sometimes talking about those co-benefits can be more persuasive than talking about climate. It depends on your audience. If I was bringing this to a players' union and trying to get them on board, I'd be focusing on the data for: Look, these are the injuries that are hampering your players. You should think about backing (these scheduling changes) when you get into negotiations with the league; maybe negotiations about how long the season will be.

Going off that, the NBA has considered shortening its regular season by four games, from 82 to 78, and introducing a centralized midseason tournament. From a climate perspective, what do you think of that idea?

It's a great idea. The one thing you do have to be careful about: If you only cut a few games from the entire season, and then introduce a midseason tournament and decide to put it in Seattle, that's on the coast. It's way out of the way. You might have a backfire effect where you increase the amount of emissions. It's a little bit safer if you cut 10 games from the season, rather than, let's say, four. These policies can be tricky, and you have to think them through.

Last month, a United Nations expert panel warned that the climate crisis is intensifying. The New York Times summed up its report like this: Time's running out to avoid "a harrowing future in which floods, fires and famine displace millions, species disappear, and the planet is irreversibly damaged." The panel called on countries to act soon to reduce emissions. Are there actions we haven't covered yet that the sports world could take?

If you look outside of the four major leagues, if you want to look at climate change as being an all-hands-on-deck situation, absolutely.

Every time a tournament is scheduled, you can think about: Where are we placing this tournament so that people have to fly as little as possible to get there? Beyond aviation, you can say: We have fans coming from all over the place (to attend home games). Can we talk to people at the city and find a way to incentivize our fans taking public transit? Or maybe the best (spots) in our parking lot are all EV chargers, and you need to drive an electric vehicle to use them.

There are also ways you can communicate about climate change. You can be more vocal about it. Players, owners, and so on can take a stand, use their social media influence, and promote climate action. You see that a little bit more in Europe. There are some (soccer) teams that are intentional about taking trains instead of flights to games. Winter sports have been strong advocates because they're going to be the first affected. Downhill skiing: It's much harder to imagine a future for that sport in a warming climate.

But I would also say for the leagues we're talking about, climate change has already started to impact them. You have games that officials are considering whether to cancel because of wildfire smoke. LeBron James had to evacuate his home (in 2019) because of a wildfire.

We know these wildfires are supercharged by climate change. We're going to see more and more of that as the planet warms. It's going to become an unavoidable issue for sports.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Finland beat the Russian Olympic Committee 2-1 on Sunday to win gold and cap Olympic men's hockey in Beijing. These five takeaways from the tournament have implications for the NHL.

Fedotov couldn't foil the Finns

Finland's win was historic, but Ivan Fedotov's future is the top NHL story for either finalist. The Russian goalie stopped 29 pucks to keep the gold-medal game close, only for Ville Pokka's prayer from distance and Hannes Bjorninen's netfront tip to beat him and prove the difference.

That two shots eluded Fedotov made Sunday his second-worst game in Beijing. The Czech Republic shelled him for six goals after he'd shut out Switzerland and Denmark back-to-back. Fedotov rebounded in knockout play and held the Danes and Sweden to a goal apiece, stoning Sweden's last five attempts in the shootout that sent the Russians to the final.

Goalies ruled this tournament. Patrik Rybar's heroic .966 save percentage led Slovakia to the bronze medal. Harri Sateri (.962, 16 saves in the final) backstopped the Finns to their first gold medal in 18 Olympic appearances. Fedotov's save percentage wound up at .943.

The Philadelphia Flyers drafted Fedotov in the seventh round in 2015, and they retain his rights as he reportedly eyes a move out of the KHL. The Flyers and Fedotov's agent have initiated contract talks, a source told Philly Hockey Now's Sam Carchidi. If he were to back up Carter Hart next season, he'd become the NHL's tallest goalie ever at 6-foot-8, one inch clear of Mikko Koskinen and Ben Bishop.

Finland staged a masterclass Sunday on how to hold a third-period lead. The Finns generated more solid chances in the frame than the Russians had shots (three). They spoiled Fedotov's marvelous week, and they're the champs because of it.

Slafkovsky boosted his draft stock

Early in the tournament, Slovakia looked doomed to bow out long before the medal games. The Slovaks let in a combined nine goals against Finland and Sweden in the first four periods of the preliminary round. The only player who showed up was younger than everyone: 17-year-old Juraj Slafkovsky scored Slovakia's three goals against those Nordic powers.

Rybar, the third goalie on the Slovak depth chart, drew into action and was close to unbeatable in wins over Latvia, Germany, the United States, and the Swedes. Slafkovsky found the net four times in those games as Slovakia won bronze, the country's first Olympic hockey medal. The kid was the tournament's MVP and its breakout star.

Slafkovsky is fast and deft with the puck at 6-foot-3, and his offensive outburst was no fluke. He scored all seven of his goals at even strength, four of them on pinpoint wristers. One was a snapshot that he roofed. On another, he was the first to pounce on a rebound by the crease.

There's no recent precedent for what he achieved in Beijing. Before the Chicago Blackhawks drafted Ed Olczyk third overall in 1984, he put up eight Olympic points for the U.S. in Yugoslavia. Rasmus Dahlin, the No. 1 pick in 2018, played fewer than eight minutes for Sweden at the PyeongChang Games. The Canadian equivalent of Slafkovsky's star turn would have been Shane Wright, 2022's top draft prospect, lighting up the event as Claude Julien's most reliable forward.

Slafkovsky generally ranks between fourth and eighth in prominent 2022 prospect rankings. Scouts that TSN's Bob McKenzie polled in January slotted him fifth behind Wright, Logan Cooley, Joakim Kemell, and Matthew Savoie. For someone who's barely scored in Finland's top-tier Liiga this season (Slafkovsky has four points in 21 games), producing in Beijing is exactly what he needed to do to maximize his stock.

North American youngsters delivered

None of them took over like Slafkovsky, but Canada and the United States' young guns showed what makes them esteemed prospects: Owen Power's puck poise, Mason McTavish's shot, Matty Beniers' dependability in all zones and situations. Jake Sanderson set up dangerous rush chances in his lone Olympic game before getting hurt. No Canadian forward was as creative and slippery off the cycle as Kent Johnson.

Regrettably, Julien benched Johnson for much of the third period when Canada lost to Sweden. David Quinn never turned to Beniers as Rybar blanked the U.S. in the quarterfinal shootout.

Jack McBain's turnover cost Canada against Sweden, but the prospects generally deserved trust. U.S. forwards Sean Farrell and Brendan Brisson combined to score five goals in Beijing. Brisson and Matt Knies both recorded 13 shots. Defenseman Brock Faber played 24:45 a night. U.S. goalie Drew Commesso, who's eligible to play this summer at the rescheduled world juniors, stopped 53 of the 55 shots he faced against China and Germany.

What's next for this cohort? McTavish has already impressed in a nine-game NHL audition. Power and Sanderson are locks to leave college in the next month or two; Beniers and Johnson might be ready to join them in the NHL next season. One dark horse who could make a pro impact soon is Nick Abruzzese, the 22-year-old Harvard captain and 2019 fourth-round draft pick who distributed three primary assists in Beijing.

Ho-Sang teased his skill

Josh Ho-Sang's career flagged from 2019-21 when he played a mere 31 games between the minors and Sweden. But he found stability with the Toronto Marlies this season, played well enough on an AHL deal to make Canada's Olympic team, and entered the event on the top line.

Did Julien give him a fair shake? Two games in, Ho-Sang's only point was an assist on Mat Robinson's fluke goal, and McBain replaced him on Eric Staal's right wing. Ho-Sang didn't play more than 9:24 the rest of the tournament, even though he recorded a sweet helper against China - his speed on the rush opened a passing lane to Eric O'Dell - and seemed to be the one Canadian in the quarterfinals who could carry the puck into Sweden's zone.

After PyeongChang 2018, Cody Goloubef was the only Canadian Olympian who returned for a time to the NHL. It'd be a stretch to say Ho-Sang was a game away from earning his own contract, but the what-if is tantalizing. In place of breaking out in the medal round, his play for the Marlies is what will prompt any NHL interest he receives.

NHLers were sorely missed

PyeongChang's Olympic tournament had three attributes that this one lacked: memorable knockout matchups, an underdog finalist, and a twist that distinguished it from past Games.

Germany came within an overtime goal of winning gold in 2018. In Beijing, the semis and final were defensive slogs that featured seven goals total. Plus, NHL players staying home wasn't novel anymore.

The Europe-based veterans who headlined most rosters put in respectable efforts, but it's the matchup of elite talent that confers magnitude and produces magic. When CNN likened the U.S. beating Canada to the Miracle on Ice, the comparison was silly because the American college kids hadn't toppled any great opponent. Eddie Pasquale has strong KHL stats, but he's not Vladislav Tretiak.

NHLers emphasize that the Olympics matter to them. Come 2026, the NHL shouldn't need to reschedule scores of games to February, which would free these players to compete for the first time: Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews, Leon Draisaitl, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point, Jonathan Huberdeau, Artemi Panarin, Mikko Rantanen, Sebastian Aho, Juuse Saros, David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, Cale Makar, Adam Fox, Mitch Marner, Mark Stone, Jack Eichel.

The list goes on. Watch out for Power, Beniers, and Slafkovsky, too: They'll have a shot to become Olympic vets.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

When Eric Staal and Josh Ho-Sang left the AHL to play for Canada at these Olympics, people wondered if NHL contracts would await them on their return. Most Olympic teams entered the tournament with a guy or three in this position - the veteran minor leaguer or overseas pro who has the remote chance to impress a GM.

Other Olympians know where their careers are trending. This year, the U.S. and Canada combined to send 18 NHL prospects to Beijing. Eight of them are teenagers.

Both countries lost in the quarterfinals, but these players mostly shone en route. Prospects led the U.S. in scoring (Sean Farrell), shots on net (Brendan Brisson and Matthew Knies), and ice time (Brock Faber among defensemen, Matty Beniers up front). Owen Power logged major minutes for Canada. Kent Johnson racked up five points.

This used to be a hockey tradition: standout college and junior players, plus Europeans of the same age, foreshadowing at the Olympics that they'd produce in the NHL. That stopped when established NHLers overran the tournament, but PyeongChang 2018 revived the trend.

Canada's youngest 2018 Olympian was 25 years old, but college recruits Ryan Donato and Troy Terry brightened the U.S. team's seventh-place performance. Donato scored five goals in as many contests, while Terry dished four assists in two knockout games alone. Donato debuted in the NHL the next month, while Terry's torrid offensive start to this season earned him an All-Star nod.

The European Olympians who leaped to the NHL range from Miro Heiskanen and Rasmus Dahlin (All-Star defensemen) to Eeli Tolvanen and Dominik Kubalik (complementary forwards) to the young core of the 2018 gold-medal Russian team. Vladislav Gavrikov played 23:17 in the final; Artem Zub assisted on the last-minute, game-tying marker; Kirill Kaprizov's fifth goal in PyeongChang clinched gold in overtime, and now he's top 10 in NHL scoring.

Their rise to prominence mirrored what happened in 1994, back when the NHL had never gone to the Games.

Slovakian prospect Zigmund Palffy led all scorers at those Olympics with 10 points, while his 19-year-old teammate, Miroslav Satan, bagged nine goals. Finland's great young trio - Jere Lehtinen, Saku Koivu, and Sami Kapanen - left for the NHL in 1995. Peter Forsberg was 20 when he popularized his namesake shootout move in the Olympic final. Soon-to-be NHL goalie Tommy Salo stoned Paul Kariya's next attempt to win Sweden the gold.

Kariya, a college superstar and Canada's top Olympic scorer at 19 years old, shook off the loss and, like Forsberg, eclipsed 100 points as an NHL sophomore in 1995-96. Some of his '94 teammates and American opponents, including Adrian Aucoin, Todd Marchant, and Brian Rolston, stuck in the NHL for almost 20 seasons.

1992's precocious Olympians hailed from all over. Finland's Teemu Selanne sniped 76 goals as a rookie in '93. Canada's Eric Lindros won the Hart Trophy in '95. The U.S.' Keith Tkachuk became a 500-goal scorer. Czech forward Robert Lang and Poland's Mariusz Czerkawski became NHL All-Stars. The Unified Team won gold, then sent to the NHL a slew of under-22 standouts: Alexei Kovalev, Alexei Zhamnov, Alexei Zhitnik, Sergei Zubov, Dmitri Yushkevich, and Darius Kasparaitis.

The 1988 Olympics teed up the NHL debuts of Brian Leetch, Kevin Stevens, Mike Richter, Dominik Hasek, Alex Mogilny, Teppo Numminen, and Jyrki Lumme. Budding stars in 1984 included Pat Lafontaine (the U.S.' top scorer as an 18-year-old), Chris Chelios, Russ Courtnall, Kevin Dineen, and Tomas Sandstrom. Three Canadian or U.S. Olympians - Kirk Muller, Ed Olczyk, and Al Iafrate - were drafted at Nos. 2-4 in '84 behind Mario Lemieux.

1980 is remembered for the Miracle on Ice, but Lake Placid's Olympics doubled as a stepping stone to the NHL for:

• Canada's Glenn Anderson and Finland's Jari Kurri, who potted two Olympic goals apiece as 19-year-olds and joined Wayne Gretzky on the Edmonton Oilers the following season.

• Brothers Peter and Anton Stastny, who combined for 22 points in six games, then defected that summer from Czechoslovakia to the Quebec Nordiques.

• Paul MacLean, the future 40-goal scorer and NHL coach.

• Pelle Lindbergh, Europe's first great NHL goalie. The Swede with the white mask who won the Vezina Trophy in 1985 died in a car crash that fall at 26.

As for the Miracle team: U.S. captain Mike Eruzione quit hockey after 1980, but Neal Broten, Dave Christian, and Mike Ramsey embarked on 1,000-game NHL careers. Ken Morrow joined the New York Islanders as soon as the Olympics ended and won the next four Stanley Cups. Decent run for him.

Last week, when the U.S. beat Canada in the Beijing preliminary round, CNN's recap story likened the triumph to the Miracle on Ice. The framing raised eyebrows: Why was anyone surprised the U.S. won? This Canadian roster was no Soviet Red Machine, and to doubt players such as Beniers and Faber because they're teens is to underrate their maturity and nerve.

Losing to Slovakia was the real stunner, but bright pro futures await, as they did for Kaprizov and Forsberg once upon a time.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Women's hockey will be in great shape when the Olympic final, for the first time ever, excludes both Canada and the United States. Until then, they'll keep playing instant classics.

Canada withstood the U.S.'s furious third-period charge to win the gold medal in Beijing on Thursday, the country's fifth in seven tries. Marie-Philip Poulin scored twice in the 3-2 victory to prolong an immaculate streak: The Canadian captain has sniped the golden goal in every Olympic title game she's won. Ann-Renee Desbiens stopped 38 American shots, and Canada mobbed her when the buzzer sounded at 1:23 a.m. ET.

Amanda Kessel's power-play goal with 12.5 seconds left almost sparked an epic American comeback, but the U.S. couldn't surmount the three-goal lead that Poulin's line built early. Sarah Nurse opened the scoring and, on a second-period rush, assisted Poulin's dexterous finish from a sharp angle. That was Nurse's 18th point of the tournament, eclipsing Hayley Wickenheiser's Olympic record (17) that Poulin matched on the same play.

This Canadian team scored at will in China. It might be the best that's ever graced Olympic ice, avenging the U.S.'s golden shootout win from 2018 at the end of a chaotic quadrennial.

During the four-year cycle that led into Beijing, Canada's women's pro league folded, and members of both national teams left the top U.S. league in response. They formed the traveling Professional Women's Hockey Players Association, which holds weekend showcase tournaments when COVID-19 permits. They want to see a new league created that, most crucially, would pay players a living wage.

As the national teams geared up for Beijing, they kept playing barn burners. Canada beat the U.S. 3-2 in overtime in the 2021 world championship final, and at the end of six Olympic tuneup games this past fall, Canada led by a combined score of 13-11. Desbiens made 51 saves in their first Olympic encounter last week, a 4-2 Canadian win.

That was either squad's only close game until Thursday. Between Group A play and the knockout stage, Canada outshot opponents that weren't the U.S. 284-80 and outscored them 50-6. The Americans outscored non-Canadian teams 26-4. Programs that used to challenge them couldn't keep up.

One culprit was Finland, which suffered worse defeats than expected en route to winning the bronze medal. Canada thumped the Finns 11-1 after star goalie Noora Raty was omitted from the roster, reportedly because Finland's coaches thought she shouldn't start and wouldn't be a suitable backup. That decision wrongfooted Finland, while Sweden, the Olympic silver medallist in 2006, slumped to an all-time worst eighth-place finish.

That neck of the standings produced some happier stories. China entered the Olympics ranked 20th in the world but stunned Denmark and Japan on home ice. In Czechia's Olympic debut, it beat China and Sweden and held the U.S. to four quarterfinal goals, riding Klara Peslarova and her sublime .945 save percentage. Almost every game in Group B, the tournament's second tier, was decided by one or two goals.

Dismayed by Group A's imbalance, Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno wrote that the Olympics should drop women's hockey. People around the sport mounted a counterargument: To make the sport more competitive, invest in it, don't kneecap it. Responding to DiManno in the Star, PWHPA consultant Jayna Hefford and women's hockey builder Allyson Fox called for more national federations to fund their teams adequately, like Canada and the U.S. do.

The conversation calls for historical context. The 2022 Olympics were the seventh Games to feature women's hockey. Back in 1952, the seventh Olympic men's tournament featured these lopsided scores:

Canada 15-1 Germany
Canada 13-3 Finland
Canada 11-2 Switzerland
Canada 11-2 Norway
Canada 11-0 Poland
U.S. 8-2 Germany
U.S. 8-2 Finland
U.S. 8-2 Switzerland
Sweden 17-1 Poland
Sweden 9-2 Finland
Switzerland 12-0 Finland
Czechoslovakia 11-2 Finland

Today, Finland is second in the IIHF men's rankings, Germany is fifth, Switzerland is eighth, and Norway is eleventh. They regularly beat or threaten to upset the U.S. and Canada. The Olympics didn't scrap men's hockey at a precarious point, and following decades of investment and development, the world got deeper.

Men's pro hockey is a century older than the women's pro game - plenty of time to iron out kinks. After the NHL launched in 1917, franchise instability and contraction afflicted the league for 25 years, at which point the Original Six teams remained.

Abandoned by the PWHPA players, the Premier Hockey Federation is in its seventh season, and it maintains that it's the sustainable women's league that the PWHPA desires. PHF teams play in Toronto, Minnesota, and throughout the American Northeast. The league announced plans in January to expand to Montreal and increase its salary cap to $750,000. Next month's PHF championship game will air live on ESPN2.

Questions about the future abound. Does women's hockey need the NHL to fund a pro league, or can the PHF keep growing incrementally? How much longer can the sport's stars sit out of league play? What opportunities are lost when they don't play many games throughout the season? Could the league that sticks around long term attract top talent from Europe and elsewhere, maximizing the level of competition?

Maybe the next quadrennial will bring clarity. This moment belongs to Canada, quite the bounce back for the program that lost to Raty's Finns in the semifinals of the 2019 worlds. Head coach Troy Ryan changed the team approach, empowering the Canadians to play loose and chase offense. The U.S. on Thursday couldn't match Canada's breakout speed, depth, or star power, especially with top center Brianna Decker out injured since the tournament opener.

If healthy, Decker would have buzzed around the Canadian zone in that frantic third period. Instead, she watched from ice level as the U.S. hit posts and flipped breakaway attempts into Desbiens' gear. Hilary Knight fired six shots at the Canadian netminder and scored shorthanded, yet fell to 1-3 in Olympic finals compared to Poulin's 3-1 record.

This one was tense until the last horn. The result will be celebrated and rued for four years.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Winter Olympics are halfway done in Beijing. Keep an eye on these eight athletes over the last week of competition.

Owen Power, hockey 🇨🇦

When Power debuted at the world championships last spring, he appeared destined to ride pine. Coach Gerard Gallant played him for less than eight minutes in a dismal shutout loss to host Latvia. But by the medal games, Power was on the top defensive pair, checking top American and Finnish pros as Canada surged to gold.

Canada's Olympic staff didn't wait to trust Power in Beijing. The Buffalo Sabres star prospect and University of Michigan sophomore played 19:33, a team-high, as Canada routed Germany 5-1 to open the tournament on Thursday. Claude Julien - his broken rib and punctured lung sufficiently healed - ran the Canadian bench on Friday and sent out Power for 22:13 in the 4-2 loss to the United States.

Power's composure at 19 years old is preternatural. His fluid skating at 6-foot-6 has inspired comparisons to Victor Hedman. Defensemen Alex Grant and Maxim Noreau scored on point blasts in the win over Germany, but Power looked like the blue line's top creator, joining the rush and wheeling in the offensive zone to generate chances.

Canada plays China at 8:10 a.m. ET on Sunday to end the preliminary round. The real tests resume afterward. Depending on who makes the knockout round, Power might have to match up with David Krejci, shadow Russian star playmaker Vadim Shipachyov, or try to shut down Finland or Sweden's top line. No assignment has fazed him yet, which should delight the Sabres.

Hilary Knight, hockey 🇺🇸

The U.S. and Canada are close to meeting for gold at a fourth straight Olympics. Canada peppered Sweden with 56 shots to Sweden's 11 and sauntered to an 11-0 win in the quarters on Friday. The U.S. outshot the Czech Republic 59-6 and won 4-1.

The Americans have had problems finishing in Beijing. They outshot Canada 53-27 to end the preliminary round but lost 4-2. On 292 shots, they've potted 24 goals in five games - an 8.2% shooting percentage that pales to Canada's 17.6%. The event's top seven scorers are Canadian, led by Natalie Spooner's 13 points and eight goals apiece from Sarah Fillier and Brianne Jenner.

Knight has paced the U.S. with four goals and three assists, stepping up after Brianna Decker was injured against Finland. The United States' lone four-time Olympian, Knight's been a recurrent hero in international play. She scored the golden goal in overtime at the 2011 and 2017 world championships, but Canada held her pointless in 20:58 of ice time when they met this week.

Between goalies Ann-Marie Desbiens and Emerance Maschmeyer, Canada's save percentage for the tournament is .957. Eight Canadian forwards and three defenders have put up at least a point per game. The U.S. is capable of troubling them if the likes of Knight and Kendall Coyne Schofield capitalize on chances in the final. (And assuming both teams cruise through the semis.)

Jennifer Jones, curling 🇨🇦

When Jones plays against the world's best, she sometimes tears through tournaments undefeated. She didn't lose in 11 matches at the 2014 Olympics - the only time that's happened in the women's event - and reeled off 14 straight wins at the 2018 world championships, Canada's most recent gold-medal showing there. No wonder an expert panel TSN assembled in 2019 deemed her the country's greatest-ever female skip.

Jones won't run the table in Beijing. She started the round robin 1-2 against Sweden, South Korea, and Japan - the teams that medalled at PyeongChang 2018 - and next faces several more podium threats.

Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni has won back-to-back world titles. Alina Kovaleva's Russian rink took silver at worlds in 2021. Of Beijing's 10 Olympic teams, Eve Muirhead's British quartet ranks third-highest in the world right now, trailing Jones and Sweden's Anna Hasselborg. Tabitha Peterson, the U.S. skip out of Minnesota, beat Hasselborg for the bronze medal at worlds last year.

The field is prolific and no game is a gimme, though the last opponents on Canada's schedule, China and Denmark, aren't as decorated. Round-robin play wraps up next Thursday ahead of Friday's semifinals. Make it that far and Jones will outdo Rachel Homan's team's performance in PyeongChang.

Kaillie Humphries, bobsleigh 🇺🇸

Humphries was sworn in as an American citizen in December, ensuring she'd be able to race for the U.S. in Beijing. Interviewed by the Washington Post right after the ceremony ended, Humphries said she felt as if she'd won Olympic gold.

She knows the sensation. Born and raised in Calgary, Humphries piloted Canadian sleds to victory at Vancouver's and Sochi's Winter Games and won a bronze medal for Canada in PyeongChang. But she sued to be released from Bobsleigh Canada in 2019, alleging verbal and mental harassment from her coach, and has competed for the U.S. on the World Cup circuit ever since. (Humphries' husband is American and they live in California.)

Humphries is a podium favorite in monobob, the solo event that debuts at the Olympics on Saturday night ET. She's No. 2 in the world in that event and ranks fifth internationally in two-woman, which she'll contest in Beijing next weekend alongside brakewoman Sylvia Hoffman. U.S. pilot Elana Meyers Taylor ranks first in monobob and two-woman and exited COVID-19 protocol in time to compete in both.

In Humphries' stead, Canada turns to Cynthia Appiah and Christine de Bruin, the world's No. 3 and No. 4 monobob racers, respectively. Appiah used to push for De Bruin and Humphries and started piloting her own sled during the Beijing Olympic cycle.

Mark McMorris, snowboarding 🇨🇦

McMorris has nothing left to prove on the world stage. The 28-year-old from Saskatchewan is the Winter X Games' winningest athlete - his 21 medals eclipse Shaun White's 18 - and his consistency at the Olympics is laudable. McMorris has won bronze in slopestyle at three straight Games, including last weekend in China.

No Canadian snowboarder has ascended as many Olympic podiums, but teammates have overshadowed McMorris at different points of his career.

At PyeongChang, Sebastien Toutant overcame a back injury to win the big air event; Canada's first gold medal at these Games went to Max Parrot, who scored 90.96 in the slopestyle final. Su Yiming of China scored 88.70 to edge McMorris by 0.17 points. However, McMorris disputed that Parrot deserved the gold, telling CBC "I kind of had the run of the day" and noting his teammate missed a grab the judges overlooked.

Big air goes down in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday and presents McMorris with another chance to command the spotlight. He placed fourth in the event at January's X Games in Aspen but won the world title there in 2021, stomping a switch backside trick that elevated him above Parrot and Norwegian star Marcus Kleveland.

Like Parrot, who survived cancer in 2019, McMorris has authored his own compelling comeback story. Airlifted to hospital five years ago after he crashed in the British Columbia backcountry, McMorris recovered from fractures and internal injuries to dominate his sport again. Nabbing gold would be a storybook moment.

Eileen Gu, freestyle skiing 🇨🇳

Big air is supposed to be Gu's weakest event, but that's relative. Seeded fifth in the discipline ahead of the action in Beijing, Gu outshone the French favorite Tess Ledeux to win gold this week.

No freestyle skier has won three career gold medals before, much less three at one Games. Gu achieving this ought to be expected entering Sunday's slopestyle final and the halfpipe competition next Thursday. The prodigious 18-year-old won both of those events at the 2021 worlds - and settled for third in big air.

Gu's skiing for the home team after deciding a few years ago to represent China - not the U.S. - internationally. She's from San Francisco but her mother is Chinese, and Gu has declined to answer repeated questions about whether she's still an American citizen. When she nailed her first career 1620 to win big air, the outpouring of domestic fan adulation crashed Weibo, the Chinese social media platform.

Could any skier spoil Gu's dream Games? She's unbeaten in halfpipe on the 2021-22 World Cup circuit, but Estonia's Kelly Sildaru beat her in slopestyle and finished second to Gu in halfpipe at a recent stop in California. Canadian halfpipe specialist Rachael Karker has appeared next to Gu on three podiums this season.

Ester Ledecka, Alpine skiing 🇨🇿

The unexpected can happen on Olympic slopes, as Mikaela Shiffrin showed this week. The American superstar missed early gates and failed to finish the giant slalom and the slalom, her signature races. Shiffrin did complete the super-G, placing ninth, and remains a medal threat in downhill and combined.

She'll be out to salvage her Games next week. Meanwhile, Ledecka has an outside chance to make history.

The Czech athlete is the only woman who's won gold in two sports at the same Games. In 2018, Ledecka took snowboarding's parallel giant slalom crown and also won the alpine super-G by 0.01 seconds, an inconceivable result considering her best World Cup result to date was 19th. She looked dumbfounded at the finish line.

Ledecka defended her snowboarding title in China but settled for fifth in the super-G, skiing 0.36 seconds faster than Shiffrin and 0.13 seconds off the podium. She has two more shots to double up on gold, via downhill or combined. Ledecka won downhill bronze at a recent World Cup stop and is 13th-best in the event this season, suggesting she’s capable of surprising the favorites again.

Madeline Schizas, figure skating 🇨🇦

As Canada rebuilds following a slew of high-profile retirements, 18-year-old Schizas laid down the signature skates of her young career in the team event. Personal bests in the short program (69.60) and free skate (132.04) last weekend placed her third in both categories and helped power Canada to fourth overall.

Kamila Valieva landed historic quad jumps to dominate the women's skates. But it remains unclear if Valieva will be disqualified from the Games for testing positive for a banned heart medication at the Russian championships in December. If the Russian team's gold-medal performance is negated, the U.S. would be awarded gold, Japan silver, and Canada bronze.

Regardless of what happens, Schizas' Games continue this week in women's singles. The short program takes place Tuesday and free skates follow on Thursday.

Schizas only had to face one Russian in the team event, but the Associated Press predicted ahead of Beijing that Valieva, Anna Shcherbakova, and Alexandra Trusova would sweep the women's medals. Including them, 15 Olympians have posted better scores this season than Schizas did last weekend. The U.S.'s Alysa Liu, Japan's Kaori Sakamoto, and Belgium's Loena Hendrickx headline the next tier of medal hopefuls.

Canada's done well in the women's event at recent Olympics. Kaetlyn Osmond won bronze in 2018 right before she retired and Joannie Rochette managed the same result in 2010. Rochette and Osmond were second-time Olympians who finished fifth and 13th, respectively, in their Games debuts. If Schizas' trajectory mirrors theirs, pencil her in as a name to watch this week and in 2026.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Dave King, the retired NHL and Team Canada coach, is from the Prairies and has seen the world. When the Calgary Flames fired him in 1995, Japan offered him work. The Nagano Olympics were approaching and the home team was keen to contract his expertise.

King signed on as general manager, taking over a national program that was versed in the merits of possession hockey. Japan was skilled with the puck and made smart cuts without it into open space. King pinpointed two team weaknesses: defense and aggression. Politeness and conflict avoidance are cultural norms there, but he felt the players were respectful to a fault: "They just don't hit anybody."

The summer before the '98 Olympics, King asked a Canadian university football coach, Tony Fasano, to teach his players how to hit. Donning football pads on turf, they squared off in contact drills to fine-tune their technique and allay the fear of injury. Battle on the field, King reasoned, and they'd be ready to battle in the corners on home ice.

"We did things like that," King said in a recent interview, "to try to get them to understand that we're going to play above our head."

Japan didn't finish last at Nagano 1998, earning a moral victory as it avoided the host country's nightmare outcome. Olympic hosts qualify automatically for all events, an afterthought when the Games are in Canada or the United States and cause for concern when the host is a hockey minnow. Foreseeing double-digit blowouts, the IIHF almost booted China's nascent program from this month's tournament in Beijing.

"Watching a team being beaten 15-0 is not good for anyone," IIHF president Luc Tardif told Agence France-Presse this past fall.

Green-lit to play, the burden is on the Chinese team to prove it belongs. Recent Olympic underdogs have achieved this. At Turin in 2006, Italy scored twice on Martin Brodeur and tied multiple teams that had NHL goaltenders. South Korea lost every game in PyeongChang four years ago, but threatened to upset Czech Republic and Finland.

Nontraditional hockey hosts aren't created equal. Turin was Italy's ninth Olympic hockey berth. The South Korean team was ranked 21st in the world in 2018. Flanked by Spain and Australia, China is 32nd in the current world rankings, illustrating that it's hard to build a program from scratch.

China's first Olympic game is against the U.S. on Thursday; Germany and Canada await this weekend. Group A is loaded even without NHLers present.

That Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid aren't in Beijing is a source of faint hope, though. Also: There are lessons from past Games that China's already heeded and could follow this week. History supplies the roadmap to Olympic respectability.

"The main thing was: Can we be competitive and not be embarrassed?" King said, describing Japan's priority in Nagano.

"We knew we weren't going to win a medal. But we wanted to surprise some teams," said John Parco, who played forward for Italy in 2006.

"Someone said in Canada that we'd get beat 120-something to nothing," said Jim Paek, South Korea's head coach in 2018. "That type of disrespect. For us to compete - and not be embarrassed as people thought we would - was a great accomplishment."

Recruit North Americans

China's 25 Olympic players all play for Kunlun Red Star, the KHL's last-place club this season.

Six are homegrown, one is from Russia, and the rest hail from the U.S. or Canada. Vancouver-born winger Brandon Yip was in the NHL for five seasons. Defenseman Jake Chelios is Chris Chelios' son. Jeremy Smith, the starting goalie from Michigan, spent a couple of months with the Colorado Avalanche in 2017. Each foreign-born player has Chinese heritage or was with Kunlun for a few seasons, which makes them eligible to compete in Beijing.

Importing floor-raising talent from hockey countries is an Olympic tradition.

In 1998, Japan's Olympic goalie was Dusty Imoo, the British Columbia product whose objectionable social media activity cost him a coaching job with the Toronto Marlies last year. Imoo's save percentage in Nagano was .925. Five fellow heritage players had starred in junior in Canada, and King appreciated their feistiness.

"They gave us a nucleus," King said. "Because of their Japanese parentage, the Japanese player from Japan could see that this was all possible."

Some of Italy's Turin Olympians shared a backstory: they were late-round NHL draft picks, like Parco and Tony Iob, whose parents were Italian and who signed in the domestic Serie A as young pros. Early in the 1990s, when Parco and Iob headed over from Ontario, Serie A teams played in packed arenas and handed out some of Europe's richest contracts. The arrangements beat AHL bus rides, Iob said: "We got treated like soccer players."

The money that coursed through the league diminished over time, and Italian members of the national team came to work day jobs, Iob recalled - in construction, as bakers, as electricians. They were solid players but needed support. At Turin, nine of Italy's top 11 scorers were from Canada or the U.S, and a former NHLer, Jason Muzzatti, started in net.

"We were always one of those teams that was in your face," Iob said. "We still had that Canadian strength in an Italian jersey."

In 2018, seven South Korean Olympians were naturalized citizens from North America. Defensemen Bryan Young and Alex Plante peaked in the NHL as Edmonton Oilers call-ups. Michael Swift played in the AHL before he followed Young, his second cousin, to the Asia League. Goalie Matt Dalton, who's from the same Ontario town as Ryan O'Reilly, made 45 saves against Canada when his countries faced off in PyeongChang.

When Brock Radunske joined Anyang Halla, Korea's top pro team, in 2008, a translator coined him a nickname: Canadian Big Beauty.

"It was more of a literal translation," said Radunske, who's 6-foot-5 and blue-eyed. "He may have even added it to Wikipedia himself at the time. Just trying to promote the sport over there and get some interest."

Radunske was an Oilers draft pick, and he signed in Germany when his entry-level contract ended, which opened his eyes to jobs further afield. Playing in South Korea enabled his wife to teach English there. To attain citizenship, Radunske and his Olympic teammates took language classes and learned to sing the Korean anthem, establishing their immersion in the culture.

Speed and skill abound in Korean pro hockey, and the North Americans weren't relied on to be saviors. But they'd played in top leagues and were assertive on the ice, spurring deferential teammates to ask questions in practice that helped them develop, Paek said. Early in the 2018 Olympic opener, Radunske fed Minho Cho in the slot and his snapper evaded Czech goalie Pavel Francouz, putting Korea up 1-0 as the crowd roared.

"The combination of the imports, if you want to say, and the Korean players working together as a family and teammates allowed us to be one cohesive team," Paek said.

"In our dressing room, we needed to be, as our president says, one body. They had to understand the Korean culture, and vice versa."

Play to your strengths

Seoul-born and Toronto-raised, Paek won two Stanley Cups as a Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman in the early '90s. In 2014, he left the AHL coaching ranks to run South Korea's undermanned national program. When he came on as coach, the team hired equipment and video staff and bought a skate sharpener.

Paek and his assistant coach, fellow ex-NHLer Richard Park, optimized how Korea prepared and played. They introduced video review and the use of analytics. They landed an invite to the 2017 Channel One Cup, securing Olympic tune-up games against Canada, Finland, and Sweden. They preached defensive attentiveness, figuring bigger teams that dominated the puck had to be repelled with structure and great goaltending.

"After that, we just had to play to our advantages," Radunske said. "If our guys kept their legs moving and used their speed, some of the European countries struggled with that, because our guys were so quick. They would take some penalties against us. Then the scales would tilt in our direction for moments in the game."

Outshot 159-81 over four games in PyeongChang, the Koreans managed to rack up small wins. They gave up power-play and shorthanded goals to the Czechs but outscored them at even strength. They held Canada to one goal for more than half of that matchup. Down 3-0 to Miro Heiskanen's Finns, goals from Radunske and Jin Hui Ahn forced a tense third period, at the end of which the losing team saluted the exuberant home fans.

The Italians fared better in 2006. Italy ranked top 10 in the world throughout the 1990s, cultivating a no-quit attitude in pressurized games. At the Turin Olympics, Germany and Switzerland iced eight NHL players between them, including goalies Olaf Kolzig and David Aebischer, yet the hosts led both games 3-2 before conceding late equalizers.

Six Hockey Hall of Famers (and counting) suited up for Canada at those Olympics, but in the first game of the tournament, Italy capitalized on a couple of openings. With Dany Heatley in the box for charging, Toronto native Jason Cirone tipped a shot past Brodeur to tie the score at 1-1. Down 6-1 later, Parco countered the onslaught with a slapper off the rush from the faceoff dot, impressing CBC broadcasters Bob Cole and Harry Neale.

"The famous Marty Brodeur," Parco said. "(Scoring that goal was) a high point of my career. It was a lot of years of hard work."

At Nagano in 1998, top teams got byes past the preliminary round robin, which pitted Japan against Germany, France, and Belgium. The Japanese still got to face some NHLers, including Jochen Hecht and the late Ruslan Salei, and they broke through in the 13th-place game. Shin Yahata, Akihito Sugisawa, and Tsutsumi Otomo scored on Austria and the host nation prevailed in the eighth round of a shootout.

King coached Canada at three previous Olympics, winning silver in France in 1992. His Japanese team was mobile, and King wanted it to forecheck hard and backtrack with speed, not content with hunkering in the neutral and defensive zones for 60 minutes. The year before the '98 Games, Japan faced the Canadian national team in a dozen exhibitions. Like Fasano's gridiron teachings, they were tests that pushed the players to be physical.

"They didn't get, to any great extent, to that level," King said. "But they got better. And we actually became a team that was pretty hard to play against."

Compete with pride

Italy's Turin Olympic opener reunited Iob with familiar faces. Canadian defenseman Adam Foote was his teammate in the Ontario Hockey League. Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis, the retired Tampa Bay Lightning forwards, remembered Iob from a distant training camp he attended. When Italy goalie coach Jim Corsi suggested he test Brodeur by shooting low, Iob beat Brodeur but hit the post on his first shift.

Parco, the guy who solved Brodeur, today directs hockey development for the Italian federation.

"We have, basically, about the same amount of youth players as Sault Ste. Marie does," Parco said, referring to his Ontario hometown. "Just to make people understand: It's still a very small hockey country. I'm sure the (Italian) people were really excited about the way we played (in 2006)."

That's not to say the Italian players, nor other past hosts, were happy just to be there. One of Paek's first games as South Korean coach, he recalls, was a narrow loss that would have devolved into a blowout in earlier seasons. Keeping Olympic games close was a feat that he celebrates, but in that moment, he told his players they shouldn't feel satisfied.

"We have to believe that we're able to win," Paek said. "Every game we played, we had that belief."

Long after he guided Japan to Nagano, King was an assistant coach for Canada in PyeongChang. He confirms that Paek's squad impressed people, and he thinks Olympic participation fosters respect for hockey in the host country. After Beijing was awarded the Olympics in 2015, the NHL staged preseason games and opened an office there, eager to grow fan and player interest.

China was the world's 34th-best national team when Kunlun Red Star, the country's only pro franchise, debuted in the KHL in 2016. Kunlun hired Mike Keenan and other prominent coaches to man the bench - the current coach, Ivano Zanatta, was an Italian Olympian in 1992 - and China funded a youth academy system to bolster the national talent pipeline.

This was before the pandemic. COVID-19 curbed academy attendance, nixed training opportunities abroad, and prompted the cancelation of last year's fourth-tier world championships in Beijing. Kunlun relocated to Moscow temporarily and, in Zanatta's first season as coach, is 9-32-7 in KHL play, suggesting the home fans should brace for big Olympic losses.

"If they get beat badly but they go down fighting, I think Chinese people can appreciate that," said Susan Brownell, a University of Missouri-St. Louis anthropology professor who's an expert on Chinese sports. As a reference point, she brought up 2008's Beijing Summer Olympics, where China went winless in men's soccer and the team captain was red carded for dirty play.

"(That) performance was considered a national embarrassment," Brownell said. "The main reason wasn't that they lost, but that they seemed to be playing like they didn't want to win - or that they didn't care, or that they had given up."

Before the NHL dropped out of these Games, Chinese hockey stakeholders shared how they'd define Olympic success. Speaking in the fall to the Associated Press, Longmou Li, Kunlun's vice president of communications, said the goal should be to score on Germany and avert "disaster" against the U.S. and Canada. Yip thought long term, voicing his hope that some future Chinese NHL draft pick will say the 2022 team inspired him.

Yip is the Chinese team's elder statesman at 36, about Iob's age when his career crescendoed in Turin. The '06 Olympics was "my NHL," Iob told reporters at the time. Recently, he reminisced about the opening ceremony, where Luciano Pavarotti sang opera and Iob marched in step with the world's best athletes. He has a tattoo that calls this to mind.

"I got the rings on my arm," Iob said. "No one can ever take that away from me."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Seventy years ago in Norway, Czechoslovakia's Olympic hockey captain carried an olive branch past center ice. He was about to face Canada and wanted to hand the opponent his national delegation's flag.

His sportsmanship surprised the Canadian players. They didn't have a gift for him.

"Already sadly deficient in (medals) in the 1952 Winter Olympics," The Canadian Press reported at the time, "Canada now has been caught with its courtesies down."

In 1952, Canada and the United States combined to alienate foreign teams, fans, and sportswriters, spurring some to suggest that the Olympics should drop hockey. Onlookers in Oslo objected to their physical play. The Soviet press accused both teams of fixing the tournament finale. Processing the criticism, the head of Canada's hockey association said the country should sit out future Games.

No boycott materialized, and the 1952 tournament entered Canada's lore. Only one other Canadian, speed skater Gordon Audley, medalled at the '52 Games, but the men's hockey team went undefeated. It was Canada's last Olympic championship in the sport for half a century, the wait ending once NHL stars started to play in the event.

Some Olympic tournaments are remembered for an indelible sight: 1980's Miracle on Ice, Wayne Gretzky's benching in a '98 shootout, Sidney Crosby's golden goal in 2010. One theme defined what went down in '52.

"Europeans regard the North American type of game as 'too rough,'" Robert Ridder, the manager of the American team, wrote in his post-Games report to the U.S. Olympic Committee.

That hockey was played in 1952 was a small miracle. Two rival American teams boated to 1948's Winter Games in Switzerland, inciting an eligibility dispute. The IOC sidelined the squad it preferred but, seemingly out of spite, disqualified the participating U.S. team from medal contention. Canada won gold but called the referees incompetent, bashed the quality of the Swiss ice, and contemplated skipping the next Olympics.

Instead, the Edmonton Mercurys were sent abroad in '52 to defend the title. The Mercurys were a senior amateur team bankrolled by Jim Christiansen, a local car salesman who employed several players at his Ford dealership. One veteran forward, originally from Saskatchewan, was nicknamed "Mr. Hockey." This wasn't Gordie Howe, but George Abel, an expert puck handler whose brother Sid won the Stanley Cup with Howe on the Detroit Red Wings.

The Mercurys outscored opponents 88-5 and cruised to gold when they represented Canada at the 1950 world championships. That earned them the trip to the Olympics, and they toured Europe to play dozens of exhibition tuneups ahead of the Games. On a Swedish highway, the team bus slid into a ditch and hit a tree, according to journalist Tom Hawthorn. Injuries were limited to cuts and sore backs, and the Mercurys won that night's game 7-2.

The Olympic contests were played outdoors at Jordal Amfi, a 9,000-seat rink built on time because Norwegian players volunteered to lay the piping. The Mercurys thumped Germany 15-1 in their tournament opener while wearing black armbands to mourn King George VI, whose state funeral was held in London the same day. Canada's next opponent, punchless Finland, lost 13-3 despite deploying up to four defensemen at once.

The U.S. sent a plucky, all-star collective of recent college players to Oslo. (Winger Ken Yackel, representing the U.S., was the only American in the NHL when he debuted with the Boston Bruins in 1958.) The Americans started slowly, opening the tournament with a narrow victory over a Norway team that finished winless. Up 3-2 late, the U.S. goalie was caught out of his net, but Norway's shooter fired wide from close range.

"It was at this point that coach (Connie) Pleban almost blacked out!" Ridder wrote after the tournament.

The U.S. rebounded to beat Finland 8-2 during a snowstorm - the puck came close to disappearing at points - and then blew out Switzerland by the same score. However, trouble brewed in the Swiss game. American defenseman Joseph Czarnota jumped on an unsuspecting opponent during a third-period scrum. Referees escorted Czarnota to the penalty box while the Oslo fans, some yelling "Chicago gangsters," threw orange peels on the ice.

"The 'sins' attributed to this minor American ice hockey player," The New York Times reported later, "so thoroughly disturbed (one Oslo) newspaper that it proposed the introduction into the Norwegian language of a word 'czarnota' as a synonym for cheat and ruffian generally."

Canada annoyed the locals, too. On the day of the Czarnota fracas, the Mercurys beat Czechoslovakia 4-1 in the tournament's rowdiest and most physical game. The Canadians snubbed the opposing captain in the gift exchange, then slashed, hooked, held, and hammered his teammates all over the rink.

The Mercurys took 17 penalties, and the crowd booed their barrage of body checks, "not understanding that this is all part of hockey," The Canadian Press noted. Fed up, a Swiss newspaper wrote that "overseas teams" were polluting European hockey and urged the IOC to consider dropping the sport.

"If there is no hockey in the next Olympics, they may as well cancel the Games," Doug Grimston, the president of Canadian amateur hockey, said in response, per CP.

"Hockey is the big drawing card, and no one is kidding anybody about that."

Canada's Olympic finale proved him right. Unbeaten through seven games with a plus-57 goal differential, the Mercurys had already secured gold entering their last clash with the U.S. The Americans owned a 6-1 record - Sweden beat them - and needed a point from the game to finish on the podium. A loss would relegate them to fourth.

An Olympic classic transpired. Canada outshot the U.S. 58-13 but nursed a 3-2 lead in the waning minutes when American defenseman James Sedin converted a give-and-go play. Pleban and a few players huddled at the U.S. bench and decided to sit back to protect the tie.

"The Canadians had come to the same conclusion themselves and literally froze the puck for the remaining three minutes," Ridder wrote afterward.

"At the final whistle, both teams poured over the boards in sheer delight - the Canadians because they had won the championship, the Americans because they had tied the invincible Canadians and won what seemed an impossible silver medal."

United Press International reported that "stony silence" greeted the Americans at the closing ceremony, though the Mercurys sparked laughs by showing up in cowboy hats. All the while, anger over the standings festered behind the Iron Curtain. The Soviet Union didn't play in Oslo, but the Moscow newspaper Trud claimed Canada and the U.S. conspired to tie so communist Czechoslovakia wouldn't medal.

"We expected something of that kind from Russians," Ridder told reporters, per The Associated Press. "I suppose the Reds cannot lose without throwing dirt on victors."

Eager to chime in, Grimston called the accusation "about the stupidest thing I've ever heard" and later grumbled the Mercurys weren't reimbursed for their expenses while touring Europe. He told reporters that Canada ought to pull out of future Olympic tournaments.

Grimston was blustering - Canada went to the next Games and placed third - but it took time to resolve the transatlantic schism. At the Summer Olympics in Finland later in 1952, the great Czech distance runner Emil Zatopek set records in the 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, and marathon, which he entered on a whim. His motivation to dominate was unusual.

"It was the brutal and harsh play of the United States ice hockey team in the Winter Olympics which drove me to my most recent performances," Zatopek said, per The Associated Press. "I made a pledge to win at least two gold medals for my country."

By then, the Mercurys had secured their place in history. Edmonton held a victory parade in the city center when the team returned, with players riding in Ford convertibles down Jasper Avenue as 70,000 people cheered. Christiansen, the team owner, died of pneumonia not long after the Olympics, and a group of players, including captain Bill Dawe, took over his car dealership.

While Sid Abel's Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in 1952, George Abel headed home to Saskatchewan, where he kept playing senior hockey and helped run his family's hauling business. He died in 1996, six years before Canada's next Olympic hockey triumph.

The Toronto Maple Leafs invited Dawe to a tryout when he returned from Oslo, making it possible the Mercurys would graduate a player to the NHL. Dawe, who wasn't a bruiser at 165 pounds, accepted the offer but didn't last long with the Leafs.

"He probably would have made the team," Dawe's son told the Toronto Star many years later. "But he said, 'I'm too small, and those guys hit too hard.'"

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2022 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.