NHL teams
Pierre LeBrun, ESPN Senior Writer 8y

Heated rivals during the season putting aside differences to unite for Team Canada

NHL

OTTAWA -- Claude Giroux playfully punched Sidney Crosby on the shoulder between drills Tuesday, producing a smile from the Team Canada captain.

Was it just four years ago these two guys dropped the gloves in a playoff game?

Go around Team Canada's dressing room and you'll find a long list of personal rivalries that have been put on hold for the World Cup of Hockey.

Or you might say, the hatred has been temporarily shelved for a month.

"It's pretty easy," Crosby said Tuesday after Day 2 of camp. "That's just the nature of competing and playing against one another. As soon as you put on that jersey, you're on the same team and you're all trying to accomplish the same thing. It's pretty easy. We played world championships last year and had a great experience there. He's a great player so, yeah, it's fun to play with him."

Some events are rather fresh. It was just over two months ago in the Stanley Cup finals between the San Jose Sharks and Pittsburgh Penguins that Logan Couture called Crosby a cheater on faceoffs.

They've buried that hatchet on that one already.

"He said, 'No hard feelings.' He understood what we were fighting for, we were down 2-0" in the series, Couture said, smiling, on Tuesday.

And what of Corey Perry and Shea Weber? There was a certain forearm shiver that pancaked Perry into the ice in Game 5 of the Anaheim Ducks-Nashville Predators playoff series.

"I haven't talked to him about the hit yet that's all over TV," Perry said with a smile Tuesday. "But he'll hear about it."

And definitely no hard feelings, either, despite a massively physical series between those two star players, Weber trying his best to make sure Perry didn't get to make his normal living in the crease.

"We've played together for a long time in different situations and different competitions. He's a great guy off the ice," Perry said. "We're always friends. But on the ice we're two competitors and we both don't want to lose."

Added Weber: "There's a lot of guys here that play against each other and play against each other a lot. You got to put those things aside. At the same time, a lot of us are friends. We've played on teams together for a long time. But especially in the playoffs, teams want to win. He's going to do everything he can to beat me and I'm going to do the same against him. At the end of the day, we're still going to be friends."

Perhaps there is no greater example of putting your country first than the intense rivalry between the Sharks and Los Angeles Kings. There are four Sharks and two Kings on Team Canada and their last two playoff series left wounds, to be sure.

"When you play each other in the playoffs, and one of us is crushing the other team's dream of winning a Stanley Cup, you're going to create a rivalry pretty quick," Kings defenseman Drew Doughty said. "Obviously, we played each other so many times in the season trying to battle for first place. We're both very good teams. We play a physical brand of style. That's going to create battles and hatred for each other. But I respect all four of those guys on this team, they're all awesome players and I'm so happy to get to play with all of them."

Add in the Ducks equation in that California triangle of hate and you also have Perry and Ryan Getzlaf on Team Canada. Getzlaf and Joe Thornton famously dropped the gloves during a 2009 playoff series.

"It's very intense," Thornton said Tuesday of the California hockey rivalries. "But they're all super guys. I see Drew in the summer with golfing and things like that. I've played with Pears and Getz before. So nothing really changes."

So intense again was the Kings-Sharks series, San Jose getting revenge this spring on L.A., that Doughty after the season told Los Angeles media not to overstate his friendship with Couture. a fellow native of London, Ontario.

Heat of the moment, Doughty now admits.

"When we come here, we put that stuff aside," Doughty said when asked about Couture. "We never even had to talk about it. It's just gone. We're back to being on the same team like when we were kids, trying to win hockey games together."

And yes, they've seen each other this summer in London.

"We've been skating together for a while," Couture said.

So, just to be clear, they're friends, right?

"Yeah, we're friends. Ask him, I think we are," said Couture, chuckling.

Crosby and Giroux, despite having the same agent, Pat Brisson of CAA Sports, never really crossed paths off the ice before finally playing together at the 2015 world championships, winning gold in Prague. They got to know each other there and there's a clear sense of respect and admiration there.

"We enjoy the challenge of playing against each other but we also enjoying paying together, too," Giroux said in French on Tuesday.

"[Before playing at the worlds], we only knew each other on the ice, and didn't like each other too much," Giroux added with a chuckle. "But it made those games fun when you have a rivalry like that with a player. Obviously, off the ice he's a great guy."

As Crosby noted, he loves the fact that rugby players will share a beer after an intense match. Team Canada's players have had a few bonding nights here together in Ottawa, putting aside those NHL battles for love of country.

"Once you're here, you're all buddies, and then once the month's done, you're enemies again," Thornton said, laughing. "It's kind of funny."

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