I’d always wanted to go to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, but when I never got the call from Wayne Gretzky to be the fourth string goalie I had to make other plans.
It wasn’t until after the Games had already begun that my brother Jim, his friend Keith Reynolds and I finally decided to go for it – fly to Utah with absolutely no accommodation, no tickets, and no transportation arranged. We were going to completely wing it, in very fine Whistler fashion.
Our goal was singular: to see Canada win gold in men’s hockey. Leaving when we did, as Canada struggled mightily through the preliminary round, this did not seem a likely scenario.
The day we left was hectic. Jim and I worked, then played hockey that evening. I even squeezed in half a gig at Garf’s, before we packed up the car at 11.30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 19 and headed down the highway of the unknown. We picked up Keith in Vancouver and motored down to Seattle for our 6 a.m. flight.
We arrived in Salt Lake City at 9 a.m., groggy and just awaking to the reality that we had nowhere to go and no way to get there. We discovered, as expected, there wasn’t a hotel room to be had. But after about a hundred phone calls we finally stumbled upon Mrs. Green’s Bed and Breakfast. The planets seemed to be aligned favourably because shortly afterward, to our surprise, we scored a cheap rental car that had just become available.
In our new wheels we followed Mr Green, an 80-year-old Mormon, through the streets of Salt Lake City, noting the lack of traffic congestion along the way. We wound up in a sprawling, homogenous suburb on the south side of town. But when we walked through the front door of Mrs. Green’s Bed and Breakfast, I thought we’d entered the twilight zone.
The front room was densely packed with an incredible array of dolls, dwarfs, figurines and just about every other cheeseball item you can get on the Home Shopping Network. There were even five manger scenes and a huge white synthetic Christmas tree. There were so many electrical plug-in statues and fountains it would have taken all the power from the Hoover Dam to have them all up and running at once. But I digress.
We dropped off our bags and headed straight downtown. Main Street in Salt Lake City was where all the action was, and it was where we found Canada House – a home-away-from-home haven for all Canucks to hang out and drink free beer.
Just outside the front door of Canada House was where all the scalpers with hockey tickets hung out. Within minutes, we’d procured three tickets for that afternoon’s quarterfinal match-up between Canada and Finland, and for well under the face value of $225 US.
Ecstatic about the way things were falling into place, we grabbed a bite at a place on 3 rd & Main. Over our first beer in Utah, we witnessed the most improbable event in Canada’s march to gold – the shot from centre ice that caromed in off goalie Tommy Salo’s head. Belarus’ stunning 4-3 upset of Sweden, one of the biggest in Olympic history, would eventually lead to Canada’s softer-than-Charmin draw to the gold medal game.
Immediately after Sweden was sent packing, the epic Czech-Russia game began. The TV cameras panned the crowd and, noticing some empty seats, we sprung into action. Within five minutes, we had three tickets (at $50 US for the lot!), and were speeding down the highway to the Ice Peaks Arena in Provo.
In an incredibly intimate setting, amongst makeshift grandstands and port-a-johns, we watched in amazement as the Russians eliminated Nagano’s gold medallists. In the eye of the hurricane, we were among but a few thousand spectators at a game that was being watched in the middle of the night by nearly 100 million Russians – almost half of the country – glued to their TV sets.
We moved to a local sports bar to watch the U.S. team easily eliminate the Germans and then it was off to the 8,500-seat E-Center for the fourth game of the day, the one we’d been waiting for: Canada versus Finland.
There wasn’t a bad seat in the house. From our vantagepoint in the top row we watched the Canadians dominate and eliminate the pesky Finns in a closer-than-it-should-have-been 2-1 victory. We celebrated the occasion in another Canadian stronghold, the multi-tiered Port-O’-Call sports bar.
We awoke the next morning, a little hung but still not converted, in our Mormon gnome-home. We headed for Main Street and within no time Keith had secured a ticket for that day’s women’s gold medal hockey game, for $100 US.
Jim and I opted to take it in at Canada House, where we shared Canada’s amazing gold-medal-winning performance against the heavily favoured Yanks with hoards of jubilant Canucks. Keith was ecstatic about having attended it in person.
Tickets for the next day’s Canada-Belarus semi-final were a snap. We got them for less than half of face value. We toasted Mormon values at the Port-O’-Call and then returned to the B&B.
Friday morning we packed our bags, said a teary goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Green (the only Mrs. Green we met) and then rushed back to the E-Center. Although the game was close for a period and a half, the result was as expected: a relatively easy 7-1 Canadian victory over Belarus. Things were going exactly as planned – Canada was going to the gold medal game!
Back again at Canada House, our hearts cheered on the Americans to victory over the Russians, as our wallets suffered. We knew very well that the Americans’ presence in the final might price us out of the market. No matter, the dream match-up was on.
That night it was off to Park City, the site of the alpine events, for a change in party scenery. The setting there was quite similar to Whistler, and we got a premonition of what 2010 might be like in our little ski-town. Amidst the Mardi Gras-like atmosphere there were lineups everywhere – but none bigger than the 1/4 mile queue to the Roots store! There wasn’t a time, day or night, during our entire stay in Utah, that there wasn’t lineups around the block for these stores.
We finally got in to some massive 1,000-seat night club in Park City, complete with a Las Vegas style stage show. The night was spent partying with a large part of Canada’s alpine ski team. We slept that night on the floor of some sprawling mansion (courtesy of Whistlerite Shauna Hardy) – Keith under a blanket, me under a sleeping bag and Jim under two towels.
It may seem as though the coverage of the Olympics in this story is somewhat hockey-biased. Not true. Our intentions were to see the men’s slalom the next morning… but we slept in. We also tried to see the short-track speed-skating finals, but the presence of American boy-toy Apolo Ohno priced us out.
Saturday night in Salt Lake City was simply awesome – the Tragically Hip performed a private show for all the Canadian athletes and delegates, which was televised nationally on CBC. We’d obtained some free passes from connections made earlier in the week and spent the night doing the full-on tourist thing. Amongst the first people we met were four members of Canada’s last gold-medal-winning hockey team, the 1952 Edmonton Mercurys. The guys are all in their 70s now. We posed for cheesy photos with them and just about every other Canadian athlete we could find – bobsledders, curlers, even ice dancers. The highlight was a picture with speedskater and goddess Catriona Le May-Doan. (I think she liked me!)
Despite all this schmoozing, all our connections had come up empty and we went to bed that night still without tickets to the big game the next day.
But Sunday morning began promising enough, with a phone call from Barenaked Ladies drummer Tyler, an old music acquaintance of mine from Toronto. He’d located three tickets for us, but the price tag of $1,250 US per ticket was a little out of our league. So we checked out of our Super 8 hotel and headed back to scalper central.
It was about an hour and a half before the game, and the now predictable trend in dropping ticket prices began again. Within 30 minutes, we’d agreed to a deal for three tickets at $700 US each. Our money in hand, the nice scalper-man asked us to move 50 feet up the street to a less visible spot for our transaction.
It was at this point that the horseshoes up our asses did their best magic of all.
During that 30-second "window" Keith’s cell phone rang. It was one of his business connections that we’d completely given up on – and he had two extra tickets at the face value of $425 US.
We were still short one ticket, but within five minutes I’d bartered a Toronto scalper down to $500. Incredibly that improbable phone call, just in the nick of time, had saved us $750 US! We were on our way to the gold medal game.
At the E-Center we snagged a couple of Team Canada Jerseys on the way in, as we passed throngs of scalpers now asking $1,900 US per ticket.
Inside, the atmosphere was simply electric – unlike anything we’d ever experienced or will ever experience again. The fan split was probably about 60:40 American to Canadian.
After a quick stop in the can to don our Canadian tattoos, we went to our separate seats. (We were able to hook up and sit together for the second and third periods).
Its funny, but despite the fact the Americans were favoured, it never seemed that the outcome was in doubt. We all know what happened – a thoroughly entertaining 5-2 Canadian victory. The game was just close enough to be exciting, but not enough to give us coronaries. The climax was when we joined together, hoarse voices and all, in a spontaneous rendition of O Canada with about 30 seconds left in the game. Team Canada’s talent and desire were absolutely inspiring, and we were once again kings of the hockey world!
For all of us down in Salt Lake City, the game itself was cathartic and the celebration afterwards was rather subdued – a sense of relief more than anything. At the Port-O’-Call that night, we watched TV broadcasts of the incredible celebrations going on back in Canada and again pondered the magnitude of what we had witnessed, the most watched sporting event in Canadian history.
All the way home, we discussed the game, the incredible trip we’d had and the once-in-a-lifetime experience. Canada may never again send its very best team to the Olympics, and who knows when and where we may ever win gold again. Everything had magically fallen into place in an absolutely perfect way for not only Canada to win it, but for us to be there.
