28th February 2010, 5:35 PM
Quote:That was absolutely amazing. I just gave a shit about hockey for almost 8 full minutes!
Quote:Really!!! That's so weird, me also.. It's like some mysterious force made me ever so slightly give a fuck...
Awesome! Hopefully lots of other people who didn't care about hockey before start to care a bit more now. A game like today's definitely has that power, I think. Maybe now more Americans will realize just how good of a sport hockey is and how many good players they have. Most people I know will be hard-pressed to name a player who was better than Patrick Kane today, for example. He was a threat every single time he touched the puck and definitely caused an ungodly amount of stress among Canadians today. Maybe more Americans will want to get behind him now! And Parise, who's one of the best players in the NHL. And Miller, who's probably the best goalie in the entire league. This guy from Deadspin agrees that ultimately, the biggest winner today was hockey itself, in a nice little article:
Quote:Well, shit. How are you feeling? Gut punched? Broken? Just wanting to go to sleep and never wake up? Embrace it. It's a wonderful thing.
Just a brutal loss for the United States. The team that dramatically ties it up with 25 seconds left is supposed to have all the momentum. It's not supposed to end this way, you say. But it was.
It was always supposed to end like this. Canada were the favorites going in, and, despite hiccups against the US and Switzerland, were clearly the best team in every game they played.
Let go of your patriotism for a second. This is the perfect way to close Vancouver 2010. The home nation, topping off its most successful games ever with a gold medal in the biggest sport at at Olympics — and it happens to be their national sport, to boot. The fact that their golden boy scored the winning goal, against their biggest rivals? It's a storybook ending.
To be such a dramatic win, it had to be a heartbreaking loss for someone. And boy, it hurts right now. But you're not alone.
And that's the beauty of it. There are millions of Americans walking around like zombies right now. You're all going to be depressed for a while, and you'll spend the rest of your life thinking about what might have been.
It hurts because you care. And maybe you're already a huge hockey fan, and you understood every nuance of the game. But there are a ton of people out there who are only hurt because they supported their country by tuning in. They just happened to see one of the most exciting hockey games ever. Before Vancouver, maybe they never saw a hockey game. Now, hockey made them care.
Someone made the decision to watch their NHL team's next game. Some kid just made the choice to play hockey. Someone just learned the names Crosby, Miller, Luongo for the first time. Hockey has some new fans.
People are going to be talking about hockey tomorrow. So while Canada takes home the gold medal — and all due congratulations to them — it's hockey as a whole that wins.
Honestly I'm still reeling from how amazing that game was.
Oh God do I ever wish I was back in Vancouver. Whenever a Canadian would win a Gold Medal when I was down there, people would react as if their team just won the Stanley Cup. People high-fiving each other on the street and breaking out into renditions of O Canada just because they're happy to be there. It was hilarious. The first night I was down there, our skiier won a Gold Medal and became the first Canadian to ever win Gold on home turf. People were celebrating that until 5AM. I can only imagine how they're celebarating in Vancouver now.