'It was a gift': French goalie Junca's birthday was a memorable one despite 10-2 loss to Canadian stars

Chris Jones reports from Milan.

Imagine, for a few horrifying moments, that you have woken up as Julian Junca, the starting goalie for France.

It’s your birthday. You have just turned 28. You blink back the sun streaming through your window at the Olympic Village and head downstairs for breakfast. You try to tell yourself all the things that doomed athletes always tell themselves.

Nothing is predetermined, you hear yourself say. Nothing is inevitable. Compete.

You arrive at the Milano Santagiulia and take the ice for your warmups, still filling yourself up with lies.

But then you see them. You see the Canadians.

You play your club hockey for Dukla Trencin in the Slovakian league.

Canada blows out France to finish atop Group A

Now you look down the ice and see Sidney Crosby, one of the most competitive people on Earth. You see Nathan MacKinnon, who doesn’t understand why anyone would do anything for fun. You see Connor McDavid, who arrived in Milan earlier than anyone else, because he wanted his body to be ready for this moment, ready for you.

When you manage to snap your gaze from them, when you shake your head and feel your mask rattle and fight to return to the bliss of your denial, you see Mitch Marner, and Mark Stone, and Macklin Celebrini, and Drew Doughty, and, just for fun, Tom Wilson.

You watch them skate, and you’ve never seen hockey players move that fast. You’ve never seen men that size look that quick. You hear the pucks coming off their sticks, and it sounds like doors slamming, like guns going off. 

And as if things can’t get any worse for you, they get much, much worse.

Because Canada wants to enter the elimination rounds as the top seed, and because goal difference will likely factor into it, and