While in Toronto, I made it to Canada's most revered museum: the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Upon entering the museum, memorabilia from players who have been inducted into the HHOF are featured in display cases.
Gordie Howe.
Steve Yzerman.
There was a mock locker room that I was curious to visit but had to skip. It was a locker room for the Montreal Canadiens and since I'm from Toronto and therefore a Leafs fan, I couldn't set foot in enemy territory.
Canadians will all be familiar with the Golden Goal, but I'll explain it for the sake of rest of the world and my American neighbors who may be suppressing the memory. In the 2010 winter Olympics, Canada led the gold medal match 2-1 over the Americans until Zach Parise scored a goal with just 24.4 seconds left at the end of the third period to tie the match and send it into overtime. Oh, it was agony for Canada to realize we'd given up our lead and possibly the gold medal! But Sidney Crosby, Canada's golden boy, came through to score a beautiful goal less than eight minutes into overtime! Canada won the gold medal by a score of 3-2 thanks to Crosby's overtime goal. A storybook ending indeed.
The text in the photograph below is quite small, so I'll reproduced the story of the Lucky Looney here:
A team of Canadians was hired to create the ice for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Trent Evans, a supervisor at Edmonton's SkyReach Centre, tucked a Canadian one dollar coin – a loonie – into the ice under the centre ice faceoff dot. He hoped that the coin would act as a good luck charm for both the Canadian men's and women's Olympic hockey teams who, sworn to secrecy, used the loonie as a source of inspiration. In the gold medal contest on February 21, Team Canada's women claimed Olympic gold by edging Team USA 3-2. Three days later, Canada's men defeated the USA 5-2 to collect the gold medal. Following the men's final, the dollar coin was carved out of the ice and presented to Wayne Gretzky, Team Canada's general manager, who then turned the “Lucky Loonie” over to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Hockey was more than just a sport to several Eastern European players during the Cold War. It was a path out of the USSR. Players like Alexander Mogilny and brothers Anton and Peter Stastny were able to defect to the west during hockey tournaments in Western Europe.
The Great Hall is home to the Stanley Cup.
The Stanley Cup. There are countless tales of the Cup's adventures over the decades from being lost in the basement for years to whatever the members of the most recent winning team can think of.
Hopefully we'll get to update this in the near future!
Everyone on a Stanley Cup winning team receives a miniature version of the Cup to keep.
The original Stanley Cup.
The HHOF is a great place to spend a day!
