Olympics: The Great Whine

You knew the moment would come when Wayne Gretzky was going to pop his lid. It just took until Monday night's post-game press conference for the water to boil over. At the Olympics after Monday night's Czech Republic vs. Canada game, which resulted in a 3-3 tie, Gretzky went off of the deep end and made the post-game press conference into a soapbox session.

Gretzky made President's Day his personal "Airing of Grievances" (a shameless "Seinfeld" reference), which can be interpreted in two ways.

One person might see this as an indirect inspiration speech to his team, while another person might see Gretzky's tirade as one great big whine-fest for the world to see. A list of quotations from Gretzky's session: "The whole world wants us to lose except Canada and the Canadian players." "Americans love our poor start. It's American propaganda." "Nobody wants us to win but us and our loyal fans." "Nobody understands the pressure. It's BS what our guys have to go through. We're very proud. I guarantee you we'll be standing at the end." It can basically be boiled down to one of the most overused cliches in athletics: lack of respect.

Gretzky feels that his team is the most disrespected in the tournament. This comes after an incident near the end of the game that featured Theo Fleury in a pileup at the Czech Republic's end when he crashed into, and held down, Czech goalie Dominik Hasek. After Fleury finally was done with Hasek, a Czech defender harassed him before getting crosschecked into the ice by Roman Hamrlik.

Gretzky had a field day with this incident, citing that if a Canadian player did what Hamrlik did, it would be all over the news and Canadians would automatically be classified as a bunch of goons. But since it's a European player, it's okay. He also basically guaranteed payback for Hamrlik. Which poses this question: if Hamrlik were a member of the Phoenix Coyotes, the franchise that The Great One is part-owner of, would his reaction have been any different than what he came out with on Monday night? Putting this all into perspective: if Canada fails to medal, it'll be Gretzky's fault. And he knows it. He made the mistakes in recruiting the wrong coach (Pat Quinn), and failed to recruit Patrick Roy, the top goaltender in the NHL last season, and Joe Thornton, arguably the best forward in the NHL this season.

Canada would be a much different team if Scotty Bowman was the coach, Roy was in goal, and Thornton was the left wing of a line with Mario Lemieux as the center and Paul Kariya at right wing.

It doesn't mean that I disrespect the Canadian team and the talent that Gretzky has picked out. The team has a host of Stanley Cup rings under their belt. But, it doesn't mean that I'm not going to point out the mistakes that Gretzky made. If Canada doesn't medal, he'll be highly criticized here, but he'll take the most heat from his own countrymen.

Mr. Gretzky, with all due respect, Americans are not reveling in the fact that Canada is doing so poorly. We're just happy that our boys are doing so well.