HOCKEY DIARY
Play hard, watch hard, drink beer
Feb 24, 2006
TORINO, Italy -- One of my favorite parts of the Olympic ice hockey is at the end of games when players from each team line up and shake hands. I just think it’s a great message: Play hard, but leave on civil terms.
It’s even better when one of the losing players takes the opportunity to show he’s got a good heart: Take, for example, Friday. The Swedes had just beaten the living daylights out of the Czechs in a semifinal, but when Robert Lang came across his Red Wings teammates in the Swedish line, he told them all the same thing. “He wished me good luck,” Henrik Zetterberg said. “That was nice of him.” … Ditto for Russia’s Ilya Bryzgalov, who stopped to hug Anaheim teammate Teemu Selanne in the interview lane only minutes after Selanne’s Finns had shut down Bryzgalov’s Russians, 4-0.
“He’s a nice guy,” Bryzgalov said when asked why he went up to Selanne. “He didn’t win the Stanley Cup; I hope wins gold medal at the Olympic Games.”
Selanne appreciated the gesture. “It’s awesome,” he said. “Back home we are like big family. That’s why sometimes it’s tough to play against your buddies.”
OLYMPIC FEELINGS: Asked what the last few minutes of the semifinal was like, Red Wings forward Tomas Holmstrom explained, “You’ve got goose bumps all over, especially at the end of the game.” … The Swedes lost their last two Olympics in the quarterfinals, so making it this far is especially satisfying to the veterans. “I feel very good,” Red Wings defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom said. “This is something we have dreamed about. There are some of us here that were there in 1998 and 2002 when we had the devastating loss (to Belarus). You don’t get these chances often.”
STUCK WITHOUT A STICK: Red Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall described the feeling of being in a gold-medal game as having a blast, saying “this is where you want to be. You've been looking at these kind of games since you were a little kid.” His only beef is that he’s playing with teammate Niclas Havelid’s stick, because his own never made it from Detroit to Torino. Thursday he thought they were in Paris, Friday he was less sure about their location. “Good question,” he said. “I wish I knew. I hope they show up here before Sunday, that's for sure.”
ALL EYES ON TORINO: Kimmo Timonen said he figured it might be a pretty wild scene back in his native Finland. “I think so,” Timonen said. “I think today I heard somebody said there were over 2.5 million people watching the game so it’s a big sport over there and (it’s) Friday night. Everybody goes to the bar and drinks beer and watch the game. I’m sure they’re drinking more beer right now.”
