How Drew Doughty grew from unsure Olympic rookie to Canadian cornerstone

LOS ANGELES – Drew Doughty swears he didn’t want the flag.

Of all the memories a two‑time Olympic gold medallist could lead with – the Golden Goal, the pressure of overtime, the legends in the room – he goes straight to the moment his teammates forced him, a 20‑year‑old rookie, to skate a victory lap with a Canada flag so massive it could’ve doubled as a parachute.

“I sprinted to Sid and kinda blacked out,” he said of the seconds after Sidney Crosby scored the most famous goal in Canadian Olympic hockey history.

“And then the guys made me skate around with this massive Canada flag, and I remember I didn’t want to do it. But they’re like, ‘you’re doing it, no option. You’re a rookie.’ I didn’t want all the attention on me. I hate that.”

That’s the beauty of Doughty. Even in the middle of a moment that will be replayed in this country for generations, he was just a kid trying not to be noticed.

And yet, he was impossible to miss.

Doughty’s Olympic story starts long before the Golden Goal, when he started the 2010 tourney as the seventh defenceman on a team so stacked it could’ve iced two medal contenders.

“I was just so nervous that I don’t even remember what the (expletive) happened,” laughed Doughty of his earliest Olympic memories.

“I was roommates with Chris Pronger, so I remember spending time with him, and he made me laugh a lot.”

Imagine being 20, walking into a room with Pronger, Crosby, Niedermayer, Iginla, Nash, Toews, Bergeron: the hockey equivalent of sitting at the grown‑ups’ table for the first time.

“We all sat on our own on the bus, but once in a while one of the vets would just come and sit with me on the bus and talk to me,” said Dougthy, who was less than 200 days older than Macklin Celebrini will be when the 19-year-old plays in Milan this week.

“I remember one instance, Sid doing that, talking to me the entire time until we got to the practice arena. I just remember thinking, ‘Damn, I’m lucky to be here.’”

Lucky, maybe. But he wasn’t just there to soak it in.

He was there because Team Canada’s executive director Steve Yzerman saw something in the second overall pick of the 2008 NHL Draft.

“I didn’t really know if I felt like I belonged until I kind of went from the seventh defenceman to, like, the fourth D,” said Doughty.

“And then Stevie Y came to me, and he could see in my game that I was just playing very simple. And he was like, ‘Hey man, we chose you to play the way that you play. Go out there and be confident.’ From that moment on I thought I stepped up my game and played much better.”

He didn’t want to let anyone down. He’d watched these guys as a kid. Now he was trying not to screw up in front of them.

Yet, there he was, on the ice in overtime of the gold medal game against the Americans, somehow comfortable in one of the most intense scenarios in hockey history.

“Back then nothing fazed me,” said Doughty, now 36, and the only Canadian team member other than Crosby with Olympic experience.

“I didn’t feel it in that moment. As I’ve gotten older, I think about things more, like maybe negative outcomes and things like that. But when I was young, man, it was ‘play, have fun off the ice, and that was it.’”

He remembers the play in Vancouver like it was yesterday, or at least the part before the blackout.

“I just remember seeing Sid in the corner, thinking not much was gonna happen,” he grinned, as he stood in shorts at the Kings’ practice facility.

“I was going to kind of go back door, so if he shot or missed the net, I was gonna go get that puck. And then it went in.”

And then the sprint. And then the flag. And then a lifetime of Canadians remembering exactly where they were while he was trying to hide behind a piece of fabric the size of a billboard.

Four years later, in Sochi, Doughty wasn’t hiding from anything.

He was driving the bus.

Doughty led Canada in scoring with four goals, something even his Kings teammates didn’t realize until recently.

“Someone spoke about that recently, I don’t know who it was, and guys on my team were all shocked,” said Doughty, well-aware his role now is as a defensive stalwart alongside Thomas Harley.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, screw you.’ Maybe I don’t put up the points I used to, or have the offensive touch that I used to, but I was really good back then.”

He wasn’t just good. He was dominant.

“In Sochi, I was more of a guy that was counted on, and I just ran with it,” he said.

“Even then, I remember I had so many good seasons with L.A., but I don’t think until that 2014 Olympics, and that 2014 Stanley Cup, that people actually realized how good of a player I was. I remember, even guys on the team saying, like, ‘Wow.’”

That’s the thing about Doughty: he’s always been elite, but he’s never been shy about reminding you he knows it.

Doughty’s Olympic arc is one of the great Canadian hockey stories – from the wide‑eyed rookie who didn’t know if he belonged, to the guy carrying the flag (literally), to the veteran who led the team in scoring four years later.

He didn’t ask for the spotlight. He didn’t want the flag.

But he earned both.

And he’ll always be part of the moments this country will never forget.