Twenty years ago, on a sultry southern Ontario summer morning, Dwayne Norris and 43 of Canada's top junior hockey players gathered at Kitchener's venerable Memorial Auditorium for a world junior development camp.
It was the first step in selecting the Canadian junior hockey team, which would hit the ice five months later in Finland, at the 1990 World Junior Hockey Championship.
And it was, for Dwayne Norris of St. John's - a relative unknown sophomore from Michigan State University - a humbling experience.
"I remember it quite clearly," he recalls. "You show up at camp, with guys who are high draft choices - guys like (Eric) Lindros and (Owen) Nolan and Steven Rice and Dave Chyzowski - guys who are ripping it up in junior.
"And here I am, a kid who grew up in Newfoundland, a college guy when college guys weren't playing on those teams. I didn't recognize myself in the same category as those guys."
Norris would make that 1990 team. Others like Nolan, the first player selected in the 1990 NHL Entry Draft, would be cut. So was Scott Thornton, drafted third overall in '89, and Daniel Dore, the fifth pick in the '88 draft.
Even Chris Govedaris, who had started the 1989-90 season with NHL's Hartford Whalers, couldn't make the national squad.
But not only did Norris make the team, donning No. 10, he would go on to score one of the biggest goals for Canada in world junior hockey.
A lot has changed in the 20 years since Norris became the first Newfoundlander to play for the junior national team.
He went on to skate for the Canadian senior team, winning a silver medal in the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, becoming Newfoundland's most decorated international hockey player.
He played in the NHL, put up big numbers in the minors and eventually settled in Germany, where he became a star in Cologne and Frankfurt.
He retired from the Frankfurt Lions in 2007 and became the team's general manager, a job he still holds today at age 39.
One of the North Americans he recruited, John Slaney, another product of St. John's, also played in the world juniors, and also scored a big goal for Canada.
It's Slaney who is most often mentioned for game-winning goals - perhaps because his came against the Russians, late in the third period of the final game on Canadian soil a year after Norris's goal.
But it's Norris who will be remembered as the first to play, and the first to pot the big goal.
Dwayne Norris was something of a phenom coming up through the ranks of the Avalon Minor Hockey Association. At 15, he scored eight goals in four games and was the MVP at the Atlantic bantam hockey championship.
Soon after, he was off to Wilcox, Sask., the one-streetlight town that's home to Athol Murray College, or the Hounds of Notre Dame.
The school probably touts itself as an educational institution, but it is - make no mistake - a hockey factory.
Its alumni includes Wendel Clark and Curtis Joseph and Gord Kluzak, the one-time Boston Bruins defenceman who was destined for greatness until a knee injury wrecked those plans.
While in Wilcox, Norris would skate with Rod Brind'Amour, who would go on to enjoy a seemingly endless NHL career. Following in their footsteps would be Vincent Lecavalier and Brad Richards.
Michigan State, a perennial NCAA hockey contender, liked what it saw in Norris, enough so that the Spartans offered him a four-year scholarship, at 18 grand a year.
It never really made big news back home because, well, college hockey wasn't big news like it is today.
In that regard, Norris was ahead of himself.
However, seems as if State coach Ron Mason wasn't the only person eyeing Norris. Guy Charron, in line to coach the 1990 world junior championship team, had Norris on his radar.
To his surprise, Norris was invited to the junior team's pre-Christmas camp in Ottawa. There were bigger players at camp, and certainly players carrying even bigger hockey credentials.
But whatever it was Charron saw in Norris, he liked it.
Norris played the team's first two exhibition games in Ottawa, but was slated to sit out Games 3 and 4. In fact, he'd only play one of the junior squad's next four games.
"I wasn't a high (draft) pick, so I needed to get in there and show what I could do. It was pretty stressful.
"The (dressing) room is filled with future NHLers. At that time, going to Notre Dame was big so I'm wondering when this storybook will end."
Rather than end, a new chapter was added when Charron announced Norris was among the 20 players who would try to regain Canada's dominance after a fourth-place finish the year before in Anchorage, Alaska.
"After the smoke had cleared, Guy Charron had taken a big chance on me," he said.
"And there's a lot of pressure on Canadian teams ... gotta win, gotta win, gotta win."
Skating on the team's top line with Chyzowski and Mike Ricci, Norris helped Canada get off to a quick 4-0-1 start in the round-robin tournament held in Turku and Helsinki, Finland.
The only fly in the ointment came in a 5-4 loss to the Swedes in Canada's second-last round-robin game.
That set up a bit of a twist for the final day of competition.
In order to win gold, Canada needed a win over Czechoslovakia coupled with a win or tie by the Swedes over the Soviets. That would leave Canada and the U.S.S.R. locked at 11 points apiece in the standings, but because Canada had beaten the Soviets earlier in the tournament, Canada would win the gold medal.
It was in the third period when news arrived at the Canadian bench: Swedish wonderkid Mats Sundin scored with one second to go in regulation time to give the Swedes a 5-5 tie with the Soviets.
If Canada managed to stop the Czechs, the gold medal was Canada's.
Robert Reichel beat Stephane Fiset in the first-period for a 1-0 lead. In the second, Mike Craig knotted things up.
Then, with 2:57 to go in the second, Norris gave Canada its first lead.
A right-handed shot playing the left side, Norris was driving to the net when a juicy rebound landed on his stick. Norris swatted the puck with his backhand and it slipped past the goalie and into the net.
2-1 Canada.
"It wasn't the prettiest goal, but those are what wins championships," he says.
For the rest of the second period and all through the third, Canada shut down Jaromir Jagr and the Czechs. Late in the game, Charron tapped Norris to hop the boards. Then with 31 seconds left, Norris made the mistake of icing the puck, forcing a faceoff in the Canadian zone.
Rather than haul the Newfoundlander off the ice, Charron stayed with Norris.
Canada won the faceoff, got the puck in the Czech zone and Norris skated like a "son of a bitch," forcing the play.
And then the buzzer, which must have sounded like heaven's bells, went off.
"After it was all over, when all was said and done, I think the thing I remember most was Guy Charron (who today is head coach of the WHL's Kamloops Blazers). He took a big chance on me, a guy who wasn't categorized as one of Canada's best, and the end result was I came through.
"I don't mean that in an arrogant way, but sometimes the guys who come in the side door are the most productive guys."
That June, Norris was drafted 127th overall by the Quebec Nordiques, but he would complete his four years at Michigan State.
In 1992-93, he'd turn pro with the AHL's Halifax Citadelles. The next year, he'd play for the Nats in the Olympic Games.
After the Olympics, he dressed in his first NHL game, lining up against Wendel Clark and the Toronto Maple Leafs on his first NHL shift at Quebec City's Le Colisee.
"You don't realize it until it's all done, when your career's over, just what a special moment it was," he said of his world junior experience. "It was definitely a bit of a springboard for my career.
"I went from being a decent player to put into this category of a world champion hockey player. It was pretty gratifying and fulfilling."
[email protected]
