Day 6 and 7: Hockey Nights in Canada

The Canadians love hockey. They love it more than curling, more than snowmobiling, ice fishing, or any other completely stereotypical Canadian activity you can think of. They may even love it more than beer, although those two generally go together so its hard to say. The Canadians love hockey so much that they named and dedicated an entire evening every week of the season, just to celebrate the sport. ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ was a staple sports event on the television at the Ketola house brought to us on the Canadian channel CBC. In the past they used to be the official Olympic carrier for the Canadian Olympics. getting to watch on the channel instead of CBS or NBS is just one of the perks of living near the border. (Incidentally, if you do live near the border, watch the Olympics on CTV, they do a WAY WAY WAY better job of covering the events than NBC. NBC coverage of the Olympics sucks. Always has, probably always will.)

After my most excellent day of watching curling what could be a better way to end the night? Why with a little Olympic first round hockey of course! Dina and I did some double duty event hopping that night. After we finished watching curling, it was such a beautiful sunny day that we decided to skip the bus and just walk on home. The weather for the last few days had been phenomenal with blue skies, temps in the 50s, and sunshine that would make even Floridians jealous. The city of Vancouver is surrounded by gorgeous, snow capped mountains so the views of the skyline against them makes for a fantastic walk home. Along the way we stopped at a steak house to get some delicious Canadian beef and fresh salmon, a perfect meal to build on for the coming night.

Our first hockey night in Canada was between the powerhouse Russia (backed by some names that would be familiar to Red Wings fans) against the underdog Latvians. For this game Dina and I were the very last row up in the stadium (seats were still quite good) so we got a full view of the Russian and Latvian fans going to town. And by the Latvian fans I meant the Canadians who were clearly rooting for the tiny republic. This was evident when the place went wild whenever the Latvians got close to scoring or a good check was done. Both sides booed when the cameraman found a lone USSR flag being waved around. That guy didn’t put it back up the rest of the game. No commies allowed at this hockey game.

Overall that game was one of holding off the inevitable ~which was a Russian win. The Latvians simply didn’t play to the same level that the Russians did. Both sides were plagued with penalties, so it was power play after power play alternating sides (although there were a few more for the Latvians out of sheer frustration). I chalk up the difference to the rules and ice size that favors the NHL players vs the Europeans (Bigger ice, similar rules, etc). I speculate that on the big ice with international rules things may have been closer than the score of 8-2 revealed.

The next day was the game I was really excited for: the Finland vs Belarus game. This is mainly due to the fact that rarely do I get a chance to root for the motherland Finland. Cheering and seeing the other Finland-freaks was clearly the best part of the game for me. I had my Finnish flag, my blue and white tank top, and most importantly my flag painted cowbell. Even better was that the person sitting next to me was another 1^st generation Finn Joel on the Canadian side and his cool flag-waving wife Cindy. Across the crowd there were several Finnish groups that had fun hats and various body

paint, even Santa Claus came to cheer the team on. There were so many blue and white fans that we got to chant “Suomi” with the whole stadium (that is ‘Finland’ in Finnish for you non-Finns out there). The Canadians were clearly split on who to cheer for and seemed to just clap for good play in general (that and I was told that Sami Salo plays for the Vancouver Canucks).

Overall it was a good game with the main lot of scoring and assists done by the NHL

players (Such as Red Wing youngster Filpulla and Duck’s Selanne). This game had no excessive penalties or bad play. For the first period and a half it was a pretty even game. After that it seemed like the Finns had worn out the Belarusians and the inevitable went again and Finland added another win to their round robin score. It was such a fun time! I hope the Finland vs Sweden game goes well!