Patrick Sharp isn’t sure how he’ll spend his allotted day with the Stanley Cup, but he is promising he’ll hold another public event in Thunder Bay like the one he staged in 2010.
Sharp, a Chicago Blackhawks Olympic hopeful, captured his second Cup last month, a six-game battle with the Boston Bruins, won with a pair of goals in the final two minutes of the championship game.
The 31-year-old on Wednesday said it’s still up in the air how his public day with Stanley will unfold. He’s leaving the finer details in the hands of his parents.
“I want to make sure the public has a chance to see it, so more of the same that I did last (time). I want to make sure the public has a chance to see it,” Sharp said in a phone interview from Chicago.
“I’m proud to be from Thunder Bay and always love coming back there in the summer. I want to hit some charity places. There some guys with the organization, Carter Hutton and Norm McIvor, so we want to make sure they get to see it a little bit.”
He’s got a couple of places in mind.
“It’s either going to be at the Marina or at the Gardens again.”
That will give Sharp less than four weeks to recover before he has to make his way to Calgary on Aug. 25 for the start of Team Canada’s four-day Olympic orientation camp.
The high-scoring Sharp, who managed just six goals and 14 assists in 28 games during an injury-filled season – his lowest goal count since his sophomore season in Philadelphia – was one of 47 players who garnered an invitation to the camp.
A day later the Canadian Press pencilled him in on their projected lineup, along with fellow Thunder Bay forward Eric Staal, and two other Northwestern Ontario products, Chicago teammate Duncan Keith and Los Angeles Kings forward Mike Richards.
“That feels good,” Sharp said, not taking anything for granted.
“There’s a lot of hockey to be played and I don’t think you can go wrong taking any of those players on the roster. I know it’s going to be a tough team, a tough line-up to make, so we’ll see what happens.”
With Jordan and Marc Staal also making the trek to Calgary, there will be a huge contingent to Northwestern Ontario players in camp, which pleases Sharp to no end.
"It says a lot about the support and the hockey systems we have in Northwestern Ontario, which was a great place for me to grow up and play the game," said Sharp, adding he's still dealing with the shoulder injury that sidelined him for much of the strike-shortened 2013-14 season.
"The competition was strong and I couldn't be more proud to be from that area."
The Olympics, a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many Canadians, would be hard-pressed to beat the last-minute frenzy that delivered the Hawks second NHL championship in four seasons.
Down 2-1 with less than two minutes to play, Game 7 looming in the back-and-forth final, Bryan Bickell and David Bolland scored 17 seconds apart as the Hawks stunned the Bruins on their home ice to capture the Cup.
"I think on the bench a lot of us weren't really thinking about Game 7 just yet. We wanted to make our last-second push and hopefully force overtime. We scored to tie it up and we were going crazy on the bench getting ready for overtime and before we turned our heads the third goal was in the net and we were a minute away from winning the Stanley Cup," Sharp said.
"You're not prepared for situations like that. You've just got to roll with the punches and we were fortunate that we came out on the right end of it."
