Canada’s Sakic Sidelined by Injury

Canadian center Joe Sakic, who led the Colorado Avalanche to the 1996 Stanley Cup championship, will be lost to Canada for the rest of the Olympics because of a sprained left knee. Canada is scheduled to face the Czech Republic in a semifinal game Friday.

“We feel sorry for Joe because obviously he has put a lot into this, and you hate to see anybody knocked out of the tournament,” said Marc Crawford, Canada’s Olympic coach and Sakic’s coach in Colorado.

“We’ve got to find a way to overcome this; we’ve got a number of options to replace him.”

Canadian team doctor Eric Babins said the injury will sideline Sakic for at least two weeks, but Sakic should recover without complication because no cartilage damage was found.

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Crawford is well acquainted with Czech Coach Ivan Hlinka.

Crawford was a player in the Vancouver Canucks’ minor-league system when Hlinka played for the Canucks in the early 1980s, and he has an indelible memory of Hlinka.

“He’s got a great wrist shot. He hit me in the head in practice with it once,” Crawford said.

“He played for the great Czech teams of the late 1960s and ‘70s. The thing everybody remembers is his strength and his wrist shot. It was very hard, very quick and very accurate. He had his best days before he got to Vancouver, but he was quite a player.”

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While Wayne Gretzky was finishing Canada’s 4-1 quarterfinal victory over Kazakhstan, the New York Rangers were firing coach Colin Campbell, a move that clearly caught Gretzky by surprise.

“Colie’s a good man. He’s been good to me and I feel for him,” Gretzky said.

“It’s disappointing the team didn’t do better.”

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John Vanbiesbrouck, the backup goaltender on the U.S. men’s hockey team, was one of the few players who attended the U.S. women’s gold medal game. He came away deeply impressed with them and their victory.

“The edginess, the feeling of conquering a dream, that feeling was certainly there at the women’s game [Tuesday] night,” he said. “I wrote in my journal that I was very proud to be an American. . . .

“It’s not professional hockey, but you know what? They won a gold medal. They were so passionate. I noticed how intense they were and how they overcame a lot of hurdles.”

Of the men’s quarterfinal loss he said, “We’re just a memory now.”

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The women’s hockey team’s victory and the men’s elimination continues a string of Olympic successes for women’s teams that began in Atlanta.

The women’s gymnastics and soccer teams won gold medals, but their male counterparts didn’t. The U.S. women won in softball, but the men didn’t win in baseball.

And in track, the women’s 4-by-100 relay team won, but the men’s relay team didn’t.