Defenceman Maxim Noreau is an alternate captain with Team Canada at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and will be writing for The Athletic throughout the men’s hockey tournament to share his thoughts and experiences at the Games. This is the first installment of his Olympic Diary.
I have a confession to make right off the bat. I can’t honestly say that playing in the Olympics is something I dreamed about my whole life. That’s because it only really became a possibility last summer, when it became clear the NHL would not be sending its players. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t worked extremely hard to get here, because I have. We started out as 80 players being considered by Team Canada, and today we have 25 guys who have worked their asses off, 25 guys who have traveled a ton over the past year, 25 guys playing in a tournament that means the world to them.
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I’m only starting to get my head around the idea that I’m an Olympian and, frankly, it’s a difficult feeling to describe. It’s only been a few days since we were in Riga, Latvia to play two exhibition games against Latvia and Belarus, two countries that didn’t qualify for the Olympics. I tried not to think too much about the Olympics while playing those games because I didn’t want to jinx myself and get hurt. I must not have been the only one because the whole team felt we had a bit of hesitation in our game, basically because no one wanted to get hurt. But now we’re here – we arrived last Wednesday – and everyone is ready to go to war. You can really feel it in the dressing room.
I’m in a state of mind where, without my team even asking me to do something, I’m going to do it on my own anyway because it’s for my country. My parents, who are coming here, raised me the right way and they’re very proud. They also taught me to compete and take pride in what I do. I have every intention to do just that while at the Olympics.
Many leagues, one country
Aside from a few years playing in the AHL in the Minnesota Wild and Colorado Avalanche systems, I’ve been playing defence in the Swiss National League for many years. Some of my Canadian teammates play in Sweden, others in the KHL. It’s a big challenge when it comes to building chemistry, but Hockey Canada has made sure we’re well equipped to meet it head on.
When you play a certain style of hockey for a long time, you get used to it and start adapting your game as a result. But we all know what Canadian hockey is. It is often said you can’t simply flip a switch to make something work, but when it comes to playing the Canadian style of hockey, I think we’ll all be able to flip that switch. Some guys on the team play on the first line on their club teams, they don’t need to play a very physical game and often manage their energy because they get so much ice time. But we saw it in our last pre-tournament game against Sweden, no one was hesitating to throw a hit and we really dominated the 1-on-1 battles. We were very happy with the way we played and later on the bus, one of the guys said, “Now that’s Canadian hockey.” It’s true, it’s 20 guys who compete and win their battles.
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If we compare ourselves to some other teams, like Team USA, that only played one tournament together, Hockey Canada has done a good job getting us together at different tournaments throughout the year. It allowed us to get to know each other because not only do we play in different leagues, I didn’t know at least half the guys on the team when we started. Those tournaments helped us a lot because it didn’t feel like everything was brand new when we arrived in Latvia. For example, we already had a good idea of what our special teams would look like, so by the time we played Sweden on Monday we could already see some chemistry there.
It was good preparation for our first real game against Switzerland on Thursday.
Mingling and making friends
There was some concern before the Olympics about the political situation here and what might happen with North Korea. It is something that interests me a great deal and I loved seeing the athletes from the North and South marching in the opening ceremony under the same flag. For all the Koreans in the stands, it had to have been a very special moment, at least based on the thunderous applause.
But otherwise, South Korea is trying to minimize the impact of the current political drama. Everyone feels safe and there isn’t much concern among the athletes.
Our team hasn’t been at the Olympic Village very often since the opening ceremony. We had to play our final pre-tournament game in Incheon, just west of Seoul, because there weren’t any rinks available in Pyeongchang with the Olympics underway. But even if we missed out on two days here, the experience in the Village looks like it will be great. There’s a big lounge where you can meet athletes from other countries, but when there isn’t much room to eat we tend to look for the Canadian jackets. They’re pretty easy to pick out of a crowd.
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On Sunday, we sat with the curling team and chatted. We went to watch Charles Hamelin compete in short-track speed skating and it was really fun sitting in the stands as a group of Canadian athletes surrounded by fans. We’re going to try to support Canadians when they compete in other events as much as we can.
Speaking of support, my family is arriving shortly and I’m so glad they’re going to be close to me during this amazing experience. I already know this is going to be the biggest moment of my career. I can’t see anything ever comparing to representing Canada. This will be very tough to beat.
As told to Marc Antoine Godin
(Top photo credit: Anton NovoderezhkinTASS via Getty Images)
