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He wanted to line up against Crosby. Or Connor McDavid. Or some other hockey legend.

And now the faceoff for the 34-year-old from New Hamburg, Ont., may come against Derek Roy, whom he played against in minor hockey, or maybe against Chris Kelly or Linden Vey. Hockey dreams are taking on an entirely different spectre in these unusual Olympic Games.

“It’s still great,” said Radunske, “it’s just not the same.”

Not the same for a player who came to South Korea 10 years ago with the hopes of staying a year or two and maybe moving on to a better league somewhere in Europe, not knowing anything about upcoming Olympics. He had kicked around as an Oilers farmhand long enough to know he had to play somewhere else. He went to Germany for a year, had offers for some second-division teams, and then the offer from South Korea came in and not only is he still here, but he’s officially a citizen and the face and leader of the national team.

Photo by Ivan Sekretarev / The Associated Press

And all the while, so far from home, carrying around the emotional difficulty of a family divided by circumstance. In his draft year, his mother, an avid jogger, a hockey nut, was hit by a car. She survived the accident; her personality did not. She lost a lot of her memory, almost all of her warmth, and the passion she had for watching her son play hockey, that simply disappeared. She didn’t really know who her family was anymore and didn’t emotionally have the wherewithal to be in involved with anyone.

The marriage to Brock’s father broke up. The family tried its best to deal with a mother they hardly knew and who didn’t want anything to do with them. For years, there was almost no connection between Connie Radunske, former avid hockey mom, and her kids.