Today Canada celebrates National Hockey Day, based in Stratford, Ontario and featuring several hours of community activities and in-country NHL action. So it’s pretty perfect (although admittedly unplanned) that we featured two great hockey guest posts this week – one on teaching kids a better way to play from a Canadian blogger, mom and hockey fan, and another from New York on its healing powers.
The United States has the Super Bowl – you may have heard of it, it has commercials – and the World Series, both with two teams competing the national championship in a specific sport. The world has the Olympics, which I hope I really don’t need to explain because I haven’t had enough coffee yet. But Canada’s day to celebrate a sport that means a lot to so many of its citizens makes it seem like a giant, fun, frozen national field day to this U.S. hockey fan.
It is also at least partially sponsored by Tim Hortons, which I am told has delicious coffee and about which I know nothing else although my Canadian friends talk about it a lot.
The first story that caught my eye today on NHLNet’s all-day Hockey Day coverage featured Irene Bryson, an 81-year old league hockey left-winger who still plays competitively every week. Seriously. I feel like I can’t get off of my couch, much less put on ice skates, and I am 80 minus 41.
Bryson is just shy of 5 feet tall and has played hockey competitively since she was 21 years old. Her husband of 50 years drives her to the arena lest, he says, he be made to sleep under the bed.
See? Hockey = magic.
Amazing.
Six Canadian teams will compete in three NHL games today. The Montreal Canadiens play the Ottawa Senators, followed by the Vancouver Canucks at the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Edmonton Oilers at the Calgary Flames. But most of those guys are nowhere close to 80.
Happy Hockey Day, Irene – and Canada, too.
You know that Tim Horton’s was started by a hockey player right?