'Savour Every Moment': Brodeur's Olympic gold medal special treasure

An NHL career is defined by many events, players present and past cherishing a single snapshot, a game or a broader body of work. Eight players reflect in our weekly eight-part series "Savour Every Moment" presented by Olymel, sharing a personal slice of what makes hockey a special part of their lives. Today, in the seventh part of the series, Martin Brodeur reflects on his gold-medal performance for Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, his first real step on his road to goaltending immortality.

Martin Brodeur's trophy case is bursting at the seams with souvenirs of his incomparable NHL career. But it's a single medal won beyond a League arena that Brodeur views as perhaps his defining moment as a professional athlete, a victory he savors unlike any other.
In February 2002, the Montreal native backstopped Canada to the gold medal at the Salt Lake City Olympics, ending an almost unthinkable half-century Olympic championship drought for his native country.
"There are many different highlights for me on the NHL level," Brodeur said, considering his remarkable competitive history. "I just feel that winning the 2002 gold medal in Salt Lake City kind of put me on the map. I know that people had respect for my game before 2002 but they saw in me in a different way when I got out of my New Jersey Devils bubble and won gold for our country to end our 50-year drought.

"Apart from my 1994 Calder Trophy (voted as NHL rookie of the year), all of my individual accolades came after winning the gold medal. I was always toe to toe with Dominik Hasek for the Vezina Trophy (voted as the NHL's best goalie) but never won it until after the gold medal. Then I won it in four times.
"Salt Lake was my second Olympics, 1998 my first (in Nagano, Japan). But 2002 really solidified me as one of the premier goalies in the NHL. What a ride Salt Lake was."
Brodeur's NHL career is a thing of legend, earning him election to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018, his first year of eligibility.
The 50-year-old won the Stanley Cup with the Devils in 1995, 2000 and 2003. He is the NHL's all-time leader in regular-season games played by a goalie (1,266), wins (691), shutouts (125), saves (28,928), time on ice (74,438:25 minutes) and even goals scored by a goalie (2).

Brodeur won the Vezina in 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2008, and won the Jennings Trophy for statistical excellence five times between 1997 and 2010. The 1993-94 Calder winner holds the NHL record for most 40-win seasons with eight, nine times led the League in regular-season wins and seven times was among the top five in voting for the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player.
Brodeur was a spectator for Canada at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, Patrick Roy playing every minute in goal. The cradle of hockey assembled a so-called dream team for the NHL's high-profile debut on the Olympic stage, but Canada would shockingly go home empty-handed, defeated 3-2 by Finland in the bronze-medal game.
Four years later, Brodeur was on his country's roster again, Team Canada executive director Wayne Gretzky and his management team tasked with improving on Nagano's hollow result. The Salt Lake City team would be led by Pat Quinn, coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, his NHL goalie Curtis Joseph slotted pre-tournament into Canada's No. 1 position in net.
"I was anxious going to Salt Lake," Brodeur recalled. "Nagano was a disappointing time for us, not even winning a medal. Salt Lake was a chance for us to redeem ourselves as a country. We prepared ourselves toward that. Having Wayne as our GM was pretty cool, he was my roommate in 1998, now he was GM in 2002. To be able to play under him was pretty cool, that's one of the things that stood out."

The world was a different place as the Olympics approached, global tensions high and security ramped up dramatically in wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States just five months earlier, 9/11 on the minds of everyone.
"We came into this environment that was the biggest event on the world stage since 9/11 and there were a lot of unknowns about what we'd face in Salt Lake," Brodeur said. "Security measures at airports, travel around the venues ... a lot of things outside of hockey were unknown. We tried to tune that noise out and concentrate on what we needed to do."
By now a veteran of nine NHL seasons with the Devils, Brodeur realized his situation, pegged for the No. 2 role in Salt Lake City. By then he had twice won the Jennings, had some seasoning if no playing time on an Olympic rink and had 1996 international experience at the World Cup of Hockey and IIHF World Championship, winning the silver medal in each tournament.
"In 1998 I didn't have a chance, Patrick (Roy) played every second in Nagano," he said. "Now, Pat (Quinn) was the coach for Salt Lake with his goalie (Curtis Joseph) on the team. That put me at a small disadvantage right from the get-go, Joseph playing Game 1."

Martin Brodeur celebrates Canada's Salt Lake City gold-medal victory in the final seconds of a 5-2 win against the United States.
Canada lost 5-2 to Sweden in the opener, media and fans north of the border immediately strafing the team's flat play, the 50-year drought sharply back in focus.
The Edmonton Mercurys were Canada's most recent Olympic champion, winning gold in the 1952 Oslo Olympics. It seemed unthinkable the country's best pros, crushed at Nagano, were now skating in Utah quicksand -- no matter that an Edmonton ice-maker had secretly buried a $1 Canadian coin at center ice in Salt Lake City for good luck.
"No one on our team paid attention to the 50-year drought," Brodeur said. "You assumed that Canada was always there but that wasn't the case."
Indeed, the goalie was acutely focused on the tournament, the Olympic Village a secure shelter and a buffer from the first-or-last expectations of his country.

Martin Brodeur and teammates Simon Gagne (left) and Scott Niedermayer celebrate at the end of Canada's gold medal win at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.
"It was quite a two-week period," Brodeur said. "My wife was pregnant with our twins at the time, there was a lot of stuff going on. With your family there, it was good to be sheltered in the Olympic Village and not worry about too much. I always call Team Canada the next NHL team the way they treat you and take care of your family. Always first class. Hockey Canada took care of everybody for us so we didn't have any distractions in trying to win the gold."
Brodeur was craving a chance to become the second member of his family to play in an Olympic net; his father, Denis, had won a bronze medal in the 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Olympics, on the roster of the Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen, Canada's representative.
"I had spoken with 'Gretz,'" Brodeur said of his conversation with Gretzky. "With the experience I had in Nagano, I told him, 'I'm a team player, just give me a guarantee that I'll play one game.' I didn't want to play the whole tournament if I didn't deserve it but I just wanted to put a foot on the ice to be able to tell my dad that I also played in the Olympics."

Martin Brodeur during the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics and his father, Denis, who won a bronze medal playing goal for Canada's representative in the 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Olympics.

Denis Brodeur, a long-established sports photographer, had been in Nagano but didn't snap a single frame of his son in action. He would be in Salt Lake City hoping, as was Martin, for a second chance.
That chance came in Game 2, Brodeur getting the call to face Germany. He anchored a 3-2 victory and would go the rest of the way in Canada's net -- a 3-3 preliminary-round tie against the Czech Republic, the defending Olympic champion; a 2-1 quarterfinal win against Finland; a 7-1 win against Belarus in the semifinal; and finally, the dramatic 5-2 gold-medal victory against the U.S.
Brodeur, then 29, recalls one save in the championship game as among the best of his career, stoning U.S. forward Brett Hull early in the third period with Canada clinging to a 3-2 lead.
"The Americans had a power-play, Phil Housley was skating alongside from the point to the boards to the hashmarks and threw a pass across to Brett," he remembered, the play burned into his memory. "I knew exactly where Brett was, he loved to hide himself behind the play. I threw my leg right on the goal line and he hit my toe. Maybe 30 seconds later we scored to make it 4-2."

Simon Gagne jumps into roommate Martin Brodeur's arms at the end of Canada's 2002 Olympic gold-medal victory.
Simon Gagne vaulted into Brodeur's arms at game's end, a drought ended, a nation delirious with the result.
"Simon was my roommate in Salt Lake, a young guy (five days from turning 22)," he said, laughing. "The first picture taken of me celebrating is of him jumping in my arms. He was first off the bench. He didn't play as much as some others so he had more legs to get to me first."
Brodeur posted a 1.80 goals-against average and .917 save percentage in Salt Lake City, later representing Canada in the 2006 Torino Olympics (seventh place, Canada's worst finish in Olympic hockey) and 2010 Vancouver Olympics (gold).
"It took me a while that night in Salt Lake to see my dad, who got caught up taking pictures everywhere," Brodeur said of the chaos. "When I saw him, I said, 'I beat you, finally!' His 1956 bronze medal used to be hanging in our house where I grew up, his pride and joy for the right reasons. I saw it all my life. For us to win the gold medal gave me bragging rights a bit, but he was so proud. He couldn't wait to get back to New Jersey. He brought his 1956 sweater and medal and we took pictures together. Great memories."

Martin Brodeur and his father, Denis, with Denis' 1956 Olympic sweater, a mask he wore late in his goaltending career, and with their Olympic medals - Martin's 2002 Salt Lake City gold and Denis' 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo bronze.
Denis Brodeur died in 2013 at age 82, having photographed nearly all of his son's career. Martin cherishes his father's Olympic sweater and medal.
"There are a lot of things I achieved in my life but this is something personal because of who I became as a player in the eyes of everybody and also the relationship I had with my dad, what the Olympics meant throughout my life while growing up," he said.
"To this day, 20 years later, people will thank me for the gold medal in Salt Lake. So many people sat for two weeks wanting us to win. Vancouver was the same way. I went back to Toronto maybe two weeks after Salt Lake and I got a standing ovation playing against the Maple Leafs, wearing my New Jersey Devils jersey, playing against 'CuJo' (Joseph). It was amazing, the recognition that we all got for being part of that team."
Salt Lake City gold, Brodeur says, is not to take away from his NHL achievements, of passing dozens of great goalies to the summit of many statistical categories.
"There are so many things that I've accomplished. I was really fortunate to play on really good teams," he said. "But I feel that this is something different on a personal level. Salt Lake City was a game-changer in my career."
Photos: Getty Images; courtesy Martin Brodeur