Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.
I wasn't a jock in school, and by the 10th grade, when I was in boarding school I was carrying water buckets for the girls' hockey team. I was the kid with long hair and glasses and acne trying to learn how to play guitar and piano in the music center. I was not an athlete past the age of 13 or 14 when they start throwing the ball really fast.
That's the awesome part. Little girls now have a chance to look up and see women playing soccer, basketball, softball and now hockey - and know they can win a gold medal, too.
I was sporty in high school. I played tennis and hockey, and was basketball captain. Then I went to university and stopped doing sport and started eating ice cream.
I will openly admit that I've never really followed hockey. Given my New England upbringing, I have always adhered to the Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins mantra of professional sports fandom, but hockey was definitely the lowest sport on the totem pole - even when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup.
Thank you for reminding Canada that I'm a disappointment to them. I like hockey, I love it, but I'm not an avid hockey - let's face it, true Canadian - fan. I've always been more into snowboarding and skateboarding and sort of the alternative sports, I'm not crazy about hockey - but love it!
I think as a Canadian hockey player, you go through it in your mind so many times, being able to stand on that blue line and hear your national anthem play and being a gold medal champion, you dream of that. And then to be able to accomplish that and actually win a gold medal and represent your country its an amazing feeling.
You see a hockey player, you'd never know he's a professional athlete. But you put the skates on him, and he becomes a beast.
Since the beginning, I always loved the game. When you grow up in Montreal, one day you want to be a professional hockey player. When I was six or seven, I knew that was what I wanted.
Figure skaters have awful perceptions of hockey players.