OCC 16: Road Report

We were sent an amazing set of pics and tales from loyal Citizen of the Nations KS, who has taken the road trip of a lifetime with two buddies and attended 7 – count em 7 – separate Men’s hockey games at the Olympics.

Says KS: "I thought Travis Dakin’s article about coming to Edmonton to see Philly play was awesome and my buddies and I wanted to send home a road report of our own. I didn’t win at the casino, but I shook Scotty Bowman’s hand, so there."

"All of the fans at the games have been awesome but the hockey fans are hands down one of the craziest things we have ever seen. Everyone has a Canada Jersey, t-shirt, hat or jacket it seems – it has been really cool to see the Sea of Red everywhere we have gone."

"That picture is of our main man Judd, an NBC cameraman shooting the Canada-Slovakia game last night. Judd was kind enough to let my friend sit in his seat at the glass to watch warm up which was awesome.

On Sunday we will put the love away for a day when the Canadians face the US, but on Friday night Judd was a great guy hooking up some Canadian fans who wanted to get as close to the action as we could."

This has been the craziest week ever. We have basically seen every single hockey great you can imagine including Sakic, Peca, Kasatonov, Alain Vingneault, Neely and Roenick all wandering around signing autographs and taking pictures.

We also got pictures with Scotty Bowman who was in our security line to go through into the arena. In addition we got to meet MacT, Glen Sather and Laforge after the game last night and they were all really friendly and riddled with the Olympic Spirit virus that has infected us all. I’m sending you only the pics I took on my phone – the other ones will have to wait."

"Check out this power luxury box above our section at the game last night. Gretzky, Janet, Messier, Daryl Katz and families were all in a box. Mess was in the box too, so was Bryan Adams. I wanted to run up and shake everyone’s hand, but a small army of bodyguards kept us at bay. You can see Katz far right and Janet is 2 to the left."

Up in the boxes above us was Mr. Vince Vaughn. It’s a little blurry but he is the guy in the USA jersey. Everyone was yelling at him that he was going down on Sunday and he was really mixing it up with the fans and having a blast. He must be eleven feet tall if he is an inch. I heard he later got smashed at Molson Hockey House and had to be helped out." (I heard this too – WG)

"That last one is Jon Hamm, from Mad Men. No one I’m with knew who he was but someone yelled "there’s a celebrity" so we just started snapping pics and figured out who he was later."

"As crazy as the week has been, meeting so many pumped up Canadians, hockey legends and spying on celebs the coolest thing has to have been sitting next to the two sons of Mike Illitch and families at the semi finals. We were somehow able to score seats in the lower bowl, row 16. If I got these tickets to an Oilers game I would be pumped, tickets this good to the Olympic semis were insane.

"Anyway, we sat next to Illitch’s 2 sons and daughter-in-law, and her husband. My buddy was talking with Mrs. Illitch the whole game and afterwards she totally gave him her cell number and told us to come see a game in Detroit sometime. AWESOME! In addition, Mike showed us his two Stanley Cup rings. AWESOMER!"

So that’s our trip Wanye. Please share it with the 3 Olympic Nations. It has been a fantastic time out here.

And a big thank you goes out to the Men’s Team for bringing home the gold – and making our trip of a lifetime complete!!"

Yours Truly,

Loyal Citizen KS