I have been looking forward to this game for a LONG time. Although we didn’t win any tickets in the lottery, we wanted to make sure we made it out to a few Olympic events so we didn’t pass up this once in a lifetime event. Of course, the one event we REALLY wanted to make it to was Men’s Team Canada Hockey… and here we are.

We got fabulous seats at Canada Hockey Place (a.k.a GM Place) and were literally Row 2 right behind the broadcasters. We got all ready for the game… we had our two signs, our flag, our face tattoos, and of course our jerseys.

It was seriously crazy trying to get into the stadium. There was a huge lineup of people, but fortunately we were at the very front. They made people wait for 2 hours before they could get into the stadium as the USA-SUI game had finished and they needed to clear people out and clean up. It was a long wait, and I was quite afraid someone was going to get trampled… but security and the volunteers kept it under control. They even split the group into two groups as you can see in the photos here.

The crowd went absolutely WILD when Team Canada stepped onto the ice. People were beyond excited to see our Vancouver Canucks goaltender Robert Luongo get the nod to be the starting goalie for Team Canada today. He looked relaxed, confident, and made some amazing saves throughout the game.

Here’s a shot of our amazing coaching staff with Mike Babcock and Ken Hitchcock, and one of our goalies, Brodeur.

Norway played great… they were fast and had some great goaltending… but not enough to stop Canada.

Allan and I were super stoked to be there as you can see from our excited faces here.

Jerome Iginla was a big fan favourite… he played extremely well… hitting, checking, shooting, passing… he played with a lot of heart last night.

Sidney Crosby also had a great game and I was surprised and impressed to see how tough he was playing, and with a lot of jump. I have a lot more photos on my Flickr stream.

Wayne Gretzky got a huge cheer when they showed him on the big screen. He says he’ll be around watching the games as long as Team Canada is playing.

Also spotted, Donald Sutherland, the two female goalies from Team Canada Women’s, my coworkers watching from a box, and a hilarious sign.

Chris Pronger had a great game as well and played solid defence against Norway. He loves to patrol the blue line.

Canada put a lot of pucks in the net, but here’s another one… we ended up winning 8-0. Sid congratulates Iggy as he gets a Hat Trick! A lot of hats were thrown on the ice.

There was lots of celebrating throughout the night.

It was rad to see the CTV broadcast happening at the other end of the rink. They actually have a collapsible “stage” that pops up and folds down in one minute so that they don’t disturb the view of the fans.

And to cap off a perfect night, we ran into the Director of Snowboarding for Canada, Christian Hrab, outside BC Place. He was proud to see his team up on the podium, especially to see Mike Robertson get the Silver Medal for Canada. He gave us free tickets to see the Victory Ceremony that night! Thanks Christian! Thank you for being so generous… loving the Canadian spirit around the Olympics!

And yep, we ended up watching the Barenaked Ladies perform live at BC Place from fantastic floor seats. I’m a huge fan (I even have their Christmas album), and I teared up a few times listening to them play some of my favourites. Allan and I ended up singing the songs all the way home and cheering ourselves hoarse at all the fans out in the city downtown. It was an incredible night, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Tags: 2010, Barenaked Ladies, BC Place, Canada Hockey Place, Chris Pronger, Christian Hrab, CTV, GM Place, ice hockey, Jerome Iginla, Norway, Olympics, Sidney Crosby, Team Canada

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 12:23 pm and is filed under 2010 Olympics Vancouver. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.