Damian Clara Was Italy’s Improbable Bastion

The Olympic spirit takes a few forms. There's total dominance, as the best athletes in the world display their mastery. There's the unlikely upset, when deep underdogs overcome the odds. And then there's the Olympians with no chance in hell. The ones who are outclassed, outmatched, mostly just happy to be there. Sometimes those Olympians don't know or don't care that they have no hope, and put on the performance of their lives, and that it's still not nearly enough only makes it more moving. This can be the most inspiring form of Olympic pride: battling to the last in the face of certain defeat.

Italy's men's hockey team had no chance against Sweden. The Swedes, medal favorites, boast a combined 16,880 NHL games of experience. The Italians? A big fat zero NHL games. This was by design: Team Italy could have pursued NHLers with Italian heritage, and convinced them to spend the minimum two years with the national team to be eligible for the Olympic, but instead chose to actually try to build a program more or less from scratch—Italian-born players, and guys playing in lower-tier leagues across Europe. The idea was that this should be a sustainable program, one that even if it can't really compete now, hopes to be a genuine force on the European scene in decades to come. A roster like that was going to get its ass beat in Milan Cortina, where the Italians as hosts would receive automatic entry into the field of 12; that was understood. Their first game, against Sweden on Wednesday, should have been a laugher. It was not. It finished 5-2 Sweden yet felt like a victory for the home side.

Don't get it twisted: Sweden was dominant. I suspect that before their next game their coaches will tell them, "Do exactly what you did in that one." They controlled the puck. They dictated the pace of play. They peppered the Italian net to the tune of 60 shots, an Olympic record in the NHL era. That they did not put up historic blowout numbers—it was still a one-goal game with five minutes left—is almost entirely down to Damian Clara, the Italy goaltender who played the game of his or anyone else's life.