There’s nothing like a nation of 35 million collectively crawling out of bed on Sunday morning to watch a hockey game.
And why not?
Hockey is part of our fabric. In Thunder?Bay, Patrick Sharp gave us extra reason to cheer, one of our own taking on the Swedes in the gold-medal game.
Three days earlier, it was Thunder?Bay’s Haley Irwin collecting gold again, a key cog in Team Canada’s remarkable come-from-behind win over the United States.
For Canadians, anything less than top spot in Olympic hockey teams leads to four years of discussing what went wrong.
Sharp, who tweeted a picture of he and Irwin walking together in the closing ceremonies, took being a healthy scratch in?Canada’s second game in stride, returning to score a goal, one of the few Canadian forwards to put the puck in the net until?Sunday’s tournament-clinching 3-0 win over the Swedes.
Irwin, who missed three games, barely left the ice in the final minutes of Thursday’s final, assisting on the game-tying goal that sent the championship game to overtime.
And let’s not forget Rick Lang, who helped guide the Brad Jacobs Sault Ste. Marie rink to gold in an off-ice capacity. Congrats to all.
