A very gracious observation, Ed. Hockey is part of Canada's DNA. Oddly, up until 1994 lacrosse was officially recognized as Canada's National Sport. Lacrosse was recognized because of the cultural heritage associated with the game. Its origins trace back to the Iroquois nation. Bill C-212 passed parliament in 1994 changing the official sport to hockey. A short time later the bill was amended to recognize hockey as the official winter sport and Lacrosse as the official summer sport. I had a similar experience to your story about the little Saskatchewan town. I was driving through a little town outside of Brownsville, Texas. I passed a high school football game in progress with thousands of people attending. It absolutely amazed me! Generally, you are lucky to get fellow classmates out to see a high school football game in Canada.
A lot of the kids around our town play hockey in the winter and lacrosse in the summer. It helps that we have a couple of professional lacrosse players coach the kids for us - certainly raises the profile. It certainly is an integral part of our culture. There wasn't even any question that our son would start skating lessons at 2 1/2 and be playing houseleague by 5 and rep at 6. All the Dads play in the Tuesday night men's league (or if they are too old to stay up that late - the Sunday morning league) Half of my son's team went down to Buffalo on Monday night to watch the game - and most of them had tickets before they even knew who was playing!
And the other funny thing was ... friends of ours moved down to North Carolina a couple of years ago with their 8 year old son, and before they even had a box upacked a couple of neighbours came over to ask Mr. Dad if he could coach the kids local team - didn't even asked if he played or knew anything about the game - just knew he was Canadian :flagcanada: - Enough said.
Under 17 tournament Winnipeg Arena was sold out to watch the gold medal go to Team Ontario in last nights game against the USA. Team Ontario's final goal, in the 5-3 win, came on a penalty shot, late in the game. All the players were 16 year old or under. Team USA participants were from all over the country, showing a growing interest in the game. The gold medal could just as easily have gone their way. They showed remarkable skill and poise for players so young.
Holy Crap!!! What a disaster!! Canada fell apart. Ultimately, I blame the coach for this one. You could see the guys sitting back at the beginning of the 3rd period. They thought they had it in the bag. After the first 2 quick Russian goals our goalie should have been pulled. Not that the goals were his fault but you know he is going to be rattled. Replacing the goalie shakes the team up. Shames them bit. They work harder to protect a fresh goalie. Aww well. Congrats Russia. They were to come back kids of the tournament.
Shocking to put it mildly. It does put things into kind of a perspective when you look at the last four teams. It seems like they each beat other at one point or another in the tournament. Hockey is indeed a strange sport at times when momentum swings can take a team into or out of its comfort zone very quickly. Sometimes the hockey gods just don't smile on your team or sometimes they just have a huge letdown at the worst possible time. I can't imagine how somber the Arena must have been last night after that last game. Overall the tournament was a success with over 330,000 tickets sold for the 11 day event. It was the best attendance ever for the tournament when it was held in the US. Granted, almost 70% of the tickets were bought by Canadians so it was more than a slightly skewed stat. Congrats to the Russians for the gold and to Canada for the silver. The medal should have been gold for the Red and White.
TSN (The Sports Network) carried the games in Canada. I was able to watch them streaming on their website. That may be an option for you in the future? It was kinda neat to see how excited those Russian kids were after the game. They were skating up to the ice level camera and shouting and waving their jerseys. A couple of times during the game the announcers said that this was the first time a Junior championship game was being airing nationally in Russia. The country must have been going nuts!
Would have loved to stream but I have dial up at home..... I did see some of the highlights and it really was a shocker to see them score so many in the 3rd period. Your right they should have changed goalies, look what happend when Russia did. I coached 12-14 year olds about 10 years ago and you really need to be a thinker to coach. (I wasn't, but had fun trying)
