By: Isabella Urbani, Sports Editor
Do you know where you were during the golden goal? 16.7 million people do.
February 28, 2010. It’s the 2010 Winter Olympics, hosted in Vancouver. Canada and the US are deadlocked at two in the gold medal game. Two hours earlier, this seemed impossible. Canada was sitting pretty with a two-goal lead halfway through the game. However, just minutes after Canada’s insurance marker, the US cuts the deficit in half. In true anti-hero fashion, Ryan Kesler, former Vancouver Canuck, gets the US back into the game in the same city he’ll try to win a cup for the next season.
As the game clock winds down, the US pulls their goalie, desperate to score the equalizer and push the game into sudden death overtime. Pressure mounting, six-year-old me went from checking in on the score each period to being pressed against the television. Nerves so shot, I couldn’t look anywhere but the clock, trading in my view of the game for listening to the commentators.
25 seconds. They had done it. The US had tied it up. They had erased a two-goal lead. Shock was written across everyone’s faces in my living room. The next goal would decide it all. I was barely a hockey fan at this time, and yet, I felt this pit in my stomach. I couldn’t fathom the US winning. I didn’t want to go to school the next day and hear about it. I didn’t want to watch them throw their gloves, and I certainly wasn’t prepared to hear a pin drop in a packed stadium of over 18,000 people.
Winning aside, the goal wasn’t very golden. It happened in a flash. One minute the puck was on Sidney Crosby’s stick, and the next, it was in between the legs of US goaltender Ryan Miller and in the net. You didn’t celebrate because you saw the puck in the net. You celebrated because you heard the eruptions. You saw the players throwing their equipment on the ice in front of a sea of screaming fans, and you couldn’t help but get goosebumps as the remaining players fled the bench to jump on one another.
Now, as a full-fledged hockey fan, the golden goal is sacred. But even for those who don’t follow the sport, if you ask them where they were during the golden goal, they may not know the name, but they’ll remember the moment.
