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April 7, 1997

DROLET REBOUNDS TO HEROINE'S ROLE
                                    
By STEVE SIMMONS 
Toronto Sun KITCHENER --  Five minutes and fifty two seconds before it
ended, Nancy Drolet lay on the ice of the Kitchener Memorial
Auditorium, not moving.
  She had been run over by a train of a woman named Victoria
Movsessian and violently crashed into the boards.
  For a moment, nobody in the raucus arena spoke. For a moment, nobody
was sure if she would get up.
  Nancy Drolet, once Canada's junior athlete of the year, wasn't sure
if she was hurt, wasn't sure if her neck, the neck she had hurt
earlier, was all right. Wasn't certain if she could get up.
  "Are you OK?" the Canadian trainer asked her.
  "I'll get on my feet," she said. "Then I'll know. When I was on my
feet, I was OK."
  She got to her feet, still wobbly, still feeling beaten up. She got
to her feet, was helped to the bench, and overtime continued.
  Five minutes and fifty two seconds after crashing to the boards,
Nancy Drolet provided Canada with another gold medal at the world
women's hockey championship. Her goal in overtime, her third goal of
the night, gave Canada a 4-3 win that was oh so close against a very
equal Team USA.
  On her second shift after looking like her tournament was over, the
puck inexplicably lay behind American goalie Erin Whitten, not moving.
It was just there, frozen one inch from the goalline, like Drolet a
few minutes earlier: not moving.
  KEPT GOING
  It was there, and then there was a crash of bodies and Drolet was
the newest and maybe the first hockey hero for Canada, a name to
remember between now and Nagano.
  "I kept saying to myself `Keep going, everything is fine,' " said
Drolet, still on the ice, wearing a goal scorer's smile and a hero's
glow. "The most important thing is everyone believes in each other...
It's special, special. I've never ... I didn't expect it.
  "It was me today. It could have been someone else. It could have
been a lot of people."
  As Nancy Drolet spoke, just minutes after she and her Canadian
teammates sang the national anthem, the cruelty of international sport
was evident. Standing on their blueline was Team USA, women with
helmets removed, eyes teary, expressions glum.
  They had matched Canada shot for shot, goal for goal, dirty hit for
dirty hit, for more than three periods. After losing in the finals of
the world tournament in 1990 and 1992 and 1994, this seemed to be
their night.
  They didn't just match Canada for most of the night: they had the
better of the play, of the physical interactions of everything but the
final score.
  And as they stood at the blueline, wearing their silver medals
again, their expressions didn't lie. They deserved a gold medal; they
go home with the wrong color.
  "It doesn't get any easier standing and listening to that national
anthem," said Cammi Granato, American forward, and brother of San
Jose's Tony.
  It couldn't have been easy for any of them.
  This was the fourth world women's hockey championship, the fourth
time Canada and the U.S. have met in the final. The first three were
won easily by Canada but nothing was easy about last night.
  The debut of women's hockey as an almost mainstream attraction comes
away with mixed reviews. For drama, the final two games played by
Canada, a 2-1 win over Finland, the overtime victory last night, were
breathtaking in appearance.
  But women's hockey is still women's hockey. They skate better than
they play. They handle the puck better than they shoot. They haven't
exactly picked up on the finer points of subtlety when it comes to
stick work.
  But that will change with time. There isn't just one country atop
the heap now. There are two. With Finland, there may be three.
  The sport grows slowly but the sport is growing nonetheless.
  And now we have something to remember. A moment. Two pictures of
Nancy Drolet. One prone. One ecstatic. An unknown yesterday. A
SportsDesk highlight today.
  And we have pictures of the valiant Americans, who keep losing these
games, but not for long.
  Women's hockey will be in the Olympics in Nagano next winter, like
it or not, a two-team race for gold, a first among equals battle.
  "This is incredible,'' Nancy Drolet kept saying, over and over.
"This is incredible."
  And indeed, it was.

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