Olympic Gold!

One of the last events at the Olympic Winter Games is the men's hockey finals. The year the teams contending for gold in Sochi, Russia were the Swedes and Canadians.

Both teams had gone undefeated in the round robin part of the tournament. They were both considered very strong; the Canadians having let in the fewest goals in their games (only three in six games) and the Swedes with their standout netminder Henrik Lundqvist.

The game started 7:00 a.m. Sunday (local time). Of course I wanted to watch, but as most of you probably know, I'm not a morning person. I thought I would try staying up all night so I wouldn't have to wake up. But, by 3:00 a.m., I fell asleep.

I did wake up in time hear on the radio we were up 2-0. By the time I actually got up I was able to watch the last half of the third period. We were up 3-0 at that point (which happened to be the final score).

The Canadians were relentless on the forecheck constantly harassing the Swedish players whenever they had the puck. We totally smothered them.

Shifts were as short as 30 seconds with players hustling from the time their skates hit the ice 'til the time they left it. Superstar NHL players left their egos at the door and bought into the team concept willingly accepting reduced rolls and reduced ice time. It worked to a T.

The game finished at about the same time I had to head down to church. I could hear cars honking their horns and people cheering on the street below as I got ready to go.

Unlike four years ago when the Olympics were held in Vancouver, there weren't any street celebrations at Yonge and Eglinton after the Canadian men's team beat the Americans for gold. The main reason probably was because that game was broadcast in the evening while this one finished at 10:30 a.m.

Normally when I take the TTC to church I take the subway down Yonge and up the University line to St. Patrick station and walk from there. But, this time I had to get off at Dundas because they were doing work between Union Station and St. Andrew.

When I got off there was a huge street celebration as I sort of expected there would be. Police closed the road off to all traffic for a short time so revellers could enjoy themselves. It was a sea of red and white. Beautiful.

I managed to snap a few pictures before I had to run off to church. I wished I had a bit more time. Perhaps in four years I'll get another chance.

Atomic Green Beans

Danny, me, Andrew, Joe, Winnie, Holly, Karen and Jennifer

Atomic Green Beans - No, it's not some post apocalyptic food item, it's the name of our current Cornerstone Multi-Sport team (aka - the Beans). We're so named because of our bright, lime-green sports jerseys if you must know.

Our season began at the beginning of October. We played a variety of team building games. The following week was Thanksgiving so, of course, we had it off. After that we started eight weeks of volleyball.

Our team did well in volleyball. We had the best record during the regular season. The playoffs were a different story. We skipped directly into the semis where we lost the best of three series 2 games to 1 to Michael's Yellow Team (the eventual winners).

We ended up winning the rest of the games we played that evening unofficially ending up in third. That's alright... it was fun. We put in a good effort.

The picture (above) is from our team dinner at Holly's place. We met up on the first Sunday in December. It was hard finding a day where most people could make it especially in December (close to Christmas). Unfortunately Ken and Brian couldn't come. Freda came late.

Dinner was a little sparse. We didn't really coordinate it as well as we could have I suppose. Winnie and Andrew bought duck and roast pork. Jennifer made a vegetable platter with some dip she bought at the One-of-a-Kind Show,  Holly made some pork and a pot of rice and I bought a tray of sushi with the $50 the Multi-Sport organizers gave us.

For dessert Danny bought ice cream and pie, I bought pie and Joe and Karen bought two tubs of ice cream. Needless to say we had a lot of pie and ice cream.

After dinner we headed to the basement to play board games. I don't remember the names of any of the games we played, but they were fun. Holly has a lot of games.

Our next idea for a team outing is skating at Harbourfront. That ought to be fun.