Nedved shot first for Canada and snapped a shot past Tommy Salo, who went on to play 526 NHL games, high to the glove side. Hakan Loob, who played 450 games with the Calgary Flames between 1983 and 1989, shot low on Hirsch and was stopped.

Kariya was up second for Canada and followed Nedved’s lead, beating Salo glove-side high. With Canada holding a convincing 2-0 lead in the five-man shootout, gold seemed almost inevitable.

That feeling didn’t last long. Svensson, a defenceman, got it back for Sweden when his deke froze Hirsch.

Norris, Parks and Johnson missed for Canada on its next three shots and Forsberg, Sweden’s fourth shooter, beat Hirsch with a backhand deke.

With the shootout now in sudden-death mode, Svensson shot first and missed. Nedved was up next and made a move that should have given Canada gold. No luck, though.

“Nedved went in and he had a huge curve on his stick,” Kariya says. “The European toe-curve, plus an upshot. He beat the goalie cleanly and tried to take a backhand shot, but the curve on his stick caused the puck to roll off the blade and he missed the open net.”

Forsberg then scored the goal of a lifetime. The man who would go on to win the NHL’s rookie of the year award the following season, capture the scoring title and MVP honours in 2002-03 and win two Stanley Cups with Colorado faked to his left, causing Hirsch to follow him. Then, with one hand on his stick, the 20-year-old Swede reached back and allowed the puck to roll off his blade and into the yawning cage.

“I thought I had it,” Hirsch says. “When you see me reach back with my glove, he barely gets around it. He dekes me and there is a thought in my mind when I cut him off at the post that I had him. He seemingly had nowhere to go. Then he does the move and it was like, ‘Oh, crap!’”

That left Kariya to try to tie it for Canada and keep the shootout alive.

Kariya headed to centre ice prepared to shoot, but an off-ice official held his arm up, signaling for the player to wait. And wait. And wait.

“They must have been replaying Peter’s goal over and over again because the official wouldn’t let me shoot,” says the man who would score more than 400 NHL goals and be Forsberg’s teammate for a brief time in Colorado. “I just kept circling and circling and the longer it took, the more nervous I got. My plan went right out the window. By the end all I wanted to do was make sure I got a shot on goal.”

He did. But Salo stopped it.

Gold: Sweden. Silver: Canada. Bronze: Finland.