Koivu's Nightmare Gives Way to Dream

After Battling Cancer, Finland's Captain Is On the Verge of Gold

Saku Koivu, center, whose case of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was diagnosed in 2001, leads the Olympic men's hockey tournament in points. (By Eric Risberg -- Associated Press)

TURIN, Italy, Feb. 25 -- All the evidence says the cancer is gone now, a point that could become official next January, when Saku Koivu undergoes the final battery of tests that, he hopes, will prove he has cleansed his body, if not quite his mind. He remembers how it started, just an oddly bloated stomach at a time more than four years ago when he was an athlete in peak physical condition. So still, every pain is met with a pang of remembrance. A sneeze, a headache, a bump or a bruise, they all bring back what he calls "my year."

"It scares you," Koivu said Saturday, thinking back to the stomach virus that bothered him early in these Olympics. "That's when it hits you. That's when you kind of realize how lucky you are that you're still playing hockey, you're still living your life. Every time when you start getting little aches or a little pain, it's kind of funny how it never goes away."

It is not, Koivu said, like cancer is in his thoughts minute by minute, hour by hour, and it will hardly be a distraction Sunday afternoon, when he will take the ice at the Olympic Sports Center wearing the jersey of his home country, Finland, the one with the letter "C" affixed below his left shoulder. His day job is to serve as the captain of the Montreal Canadiens. He is here, though, tending to a far more important matter, trying to win a gold medal as the captain of the Finnish team against the perfect opponent, arch rival Sweden.

This was his wildest wish, long before he was labeled a "survivor" and a "warrior," as teammate Teemu Selanne called him Saturday. Growing up in Finland, the Canadiens -- an obsession in Quebec -- were hardly on the radar.

"You grew up as a kid watching your national team play," Koivu said. "And that, for us, is the dream, the first dream. The NHL is too far. And if you can be a captain for your country, it's a very overwhelming feeling."

He can say these things, 24 hours before the gold medal match, because he knows what "overwhelming" means. He knows what it was like to feel ill on a flight from Finland to Montreal, to go to the doctor complaining of stomach pains only to hear this strange, unfamiliar English word: malignant. His fiancee had to translate it to Finnish so that he could understand. Cancer. He had cancer.

A few days later, the more specific diagnosis came: non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. New treatments have ensured that 75 percent of cases diagnosed in their early stages survive. The Canadiens' season was starting. They would go into it without their captain. Teammates were distraught. Yet those who knew Koivu well had a notion.

"When it happened," Selanne said, "I said, 'If somebody can make it, he's the guy.' "

There are stories of prominent athletes beating cancer, most notably champion cyclist Lance Armstrong and Pittsburgh Penguins star Mario Lemieux, people who have returned to the arena and, in a way, had cancer stricken from their records. Koivu has spent much of these Olympics as merely a spokesman and key cog for the Finnish team, the surprise of the tournament, not as full-time cancer survivor.

No team can approach the Finns' proficiency here. Sweden, which has discovered a remarkably potent offense in scoring 13 goals in its past two games, is the only team that has scored more goals than Finland, 28 to the Finns' 27. But in seven games in this tournament, all of them wins, Finland has allowed all of five goals, by far the least.

Koivu has led the way. With 11 points, he is the tournament's leading scorer. But he wears the "C" not because of his deft passing skills.

"It's his emotion and desire to play for the team, I think," Finland Coach Erkka Westerlund said. "That's the big thing. And he has played so many tournaments for Finland, so he knows what to do -- not only his own example, but he can support the other players, and that's the big thing for captain."