Hockey

He was standing in the visiting coaches office in the Pengrowth Saddledome, putting forward a unique theory about the 2010 men's Winter Olympics hockey tournament and what Canada can expect from the opposition.

This was Ken Hitchcock, the thoughtful Columbus Blue Jackets coach, who doesn't mind tilting against occasional windmills - or conventional thought.

"I see this as being very much a North American style of game - NHL players playing on NHL surfaces with international rules," said Hitchcock, one of Canada's three assistants for 2010 Games in Vancouver. "Size will matter. There will be more shots on goal - lots more. There is going to be more physical play. There is going to be more dump-and-chase.

"You can't stand back in the neutral zone in a small rink because the rink is tighter, so it's easier to chip the puck in and then go in and get it again. You can't do that stuff."

Hitchcock was included on Mike Babcock's coaching staff for 2010, largely because of the perspective he brings to the mix. Hitchcock was there to see what went right in Salt Lake City, when Canada won its first gold medal in 50 years in men's Olympic hockey, and what went wrong in Turin, when the team finished seventh and was eliminated by Russia in the quarter-final round.

To Hitchcock, a third event - the 2004 World Cup, played at different venues across North America - may be the best predictor of what lies ahead for Canada's team, largely because the 2010 Games will be played at Vancouver's GM Place, on a regulation-size 200-by-85-foot sheet of NHL ice.

"When we went to Turin, we thought the ice would be like the ice was in Salt Lake - and it wasn't," Hitchcock said. "It was huge. The corners were huge. It looked like this big soccer field.

"So we went over there and found that all the teams played differently. There was no fore-checking pressure. The whole game was played in the neutral zone. We got really frustrated because we would be behind the net with the puck and there'd be five guys standing in the neutral zone. It was this big-ice counterattack game that we'd never seen before.

"You can't play that way in a small rink."

According to Hitchcock's premise, Canada cannot therefore build a game plan solely around fixing what went wrong four years ago. An Olympics played on the aforementioned smaller ice, in a familiar NHL city, with no major time zone issues to deal with will create a greater sense of familiarity for Canada's players, most of whom are creatures of habit and thus don't handle disruptions to their daily routines all too well.

The other quality that Hitchcock can provide to Babcock - who previously led Canada to junior and senior world championship wins but is making his Olympic debut - is advice on time management. Hitchcock described the Olympics as a made-for-television event, where the demands on players, coaches and staff far outweigh the ones normally placed on them in their regular NHL lives.

Example: In 2002, one of the more quirky memories of the Salt Lake City experience was seeing the coaching staff, in the same line as everyone else, to be searched, poked and prodded entering the venue for the gold-medal game.

"You need to understand how much energy can be drained by the distractions of the Olympics," Hitchcock said. "Understanding those pitfalls and avoiding them is important. You need your down time and you need to fight for your down time. If you say yes to everything, by the third or fourth day, you're burned out.

"It will be the same for players. They go to Olympics and think, ‘I'm going to see this event or I'm going to see that event.' Well, after about three days, forget it. The hockey's so hard. The competition's so hard. The travel to venues is so difficult. You're there to play hockey - period."