If you’re interested in knowing who holds the honour of being Canada’s all-time leading goal scorer at the Olympic Games, the name might surprise you – Harry Watson.
And it’s not even the Harry Watson who won five Stanley Cups with Detroit and Toronto after the Second World War – it’s the Harry Watson who never played a game in the National Hockey League and who retired after scoring 37 goals in the 1924 Olympics, 13 of those in one game.
Those were the days when Canada won Olympic hockey pretty much by just showing up. It’s a lifetime, at least, away from the Team Canada that will start chasing the country’s 10th Olympic gold medal next week in Italy. Six of the nine were won before 1952, terminating an age when the boys who play at the local arena after midnight perhaps may have even won gold for Canada – as did the Winnipeg Falcons (1920), the Toronto Granites (1924) and the Winnipeg Hockey Club (1932).
Put another way, Watson is Canada’s most prolific goal scorer and Sidney Crosby is tied for 44th, in a group that includes notables like Romero Rivers and Patrick Guzzo. Ever the playmaker and being touted as Canada’s greatest Olympic player ever, Crosby ranks 47th in points.
So, it’s now time to accept the fact Olympic hockey records really singularly apply to the Games that feature the best players from all the competing countries. From Canada’s standpoint, that has happened five times, starting in 1998 when NHL players were first admitted to the holier-than-thou club the Olympics used to be. In those five Olympic Games, Canada’s medal count is three golds, a bronze and whatever it is they give teams when they finish seventh.
The last of those five Olympics was 2014 in Sochi, because the NHL declined to play in 2018 and the pandemic gave it a better excuse in 2022. From 1998 to 2014 the most goals, and most points, by a Canadian player were 10 and 14, respectively, by the modern version of Harry Watson—Jarome Iginla. The Canadian with most Olympic games under his belt is Chris Pronger, with 25, and he’s the only NHL player who has played in four Olympics. Both he and Iginla are, of course, long retired.
Eight players from the last Team Canada are still playing, but only two—Crosby and defenceman Drew Doughty—will be in Italy next week for their Olympic swan songs. They were part of what many hockey experts consider Canada’s finest Olympic team in history – better than the 2002 version that ended a 50-year gold-medal drought, better than the Crosby-driven 2010 gold medalists who won on home ice in Vancouver.
The team that won in Sochi and deprived Russia of its home-ice celebration was undefeated, and it was the only time Canada has won outside North America since the dark ages of total domination. Three of the six wins in 2014 were shutouts, two by Carey Price and the other by Roberto Luongo in his lone start.
The NHL players discovered something of value, something dismissed by predecessors and now so important to them. Edmonton’s greatest duo got it right. Wayne Gretzky once said: “It’s as much fun as I’ve ever had in hockey.” This week, Connor McDavid wrote: “Representing Canada means everything to me.”
Harry Watson probably felt the same way.
