Canadian Grudge Puck

Canadians love hockey.

I don’t know that we Americans can truly understand how deeply hockey is ingrained into the Canadian psyche. Probably the closest we come is the religious events that we here in the South call football games. Yes, the Super Bowl is routinely one of the most-watched television events of the year, but for many of the viewers it’s as much of a social event as a sporting one.

Hockey is different. Hockey is in the Canadian blood. Little Canadian girls play hockey and little Canadian boys play hockey and then the two grow up and have babies that learn to skate at the same time they are learning to walk. The entire country expects both the men’s and women’s hockey teams to take gold in these Olympics.

So imagine the shock to the Canadians this past weekend when the American hockey team beat the Canadians 5-3. The game-winning goal came against an unguarded net. At first I thought the goalie had simply been pulled away from the net in a puck-control skirmish, but then it was explained to me that taking the goalie out of the game is a strategic measure used in times of desperation. A team replaces the goalie with a sixth skater in an effort to outman the other team's goalie. It gives the goalie-less team a better chance of scoring. But sometimes it backfires.

It backfired on Canada. Taking out the Canadian goalie gave an American a chance to make a haphazard shot, one that shouldn't have worked. But it did.

I believe Canadians collectively did a national face-palm at that moment.

The US went on to get one more goal just for good measure and at the final buzzer, the tally was US 5, Canada 3. It was eerily quiet in the hockey stadium. If you’ve never seen a full-house hockey stadium go quiet, I’ll tell you – it’s downright spooky.

I tell you all of this so you’ll understand a little more when I tell you about the Canadian/German hockey game. The initial games are over and now we are moving on to the serious stuff—the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals which will determine gold, silver and bronze medals. Because of our victory the other night, the US got an automatic spot in the quarterfinals. Canada, however, had an elimination game with Germany before they could get to the quarterfinals. The Canadians were mad. And the Germans were in their way.

I’m positive that this was the first and only time in the existence of these two nations that Germany feared Canada.

Canada beat Germany 8 – 2. It was 8 – 1 until the last few minutes when Germany happened to score a second goal. The Canucks had a grudge and they were taking it out on Germany.

If the unthinkable were to happen, and the US were to wind up beating Canada for a second time on their home turf and taking the gold (or knocking Canada out of gold contention) it could spell the end of peaceful diplomatic relations with our neighbors to the north. Political scientists 200 years from now would study the Great Hockey Disaster of 2010 and how it affected international alliances for decades afterwards.

So in the interest of world peace, or at least North America peace, let’s all root for Canadian hockey. Go Canada!