FLAMES STAFF RECALL CANADA’S GOLDEN MOMENT
Crosby scored overtime goal in Olympics 10 years ago
Standing on Team Canada’s bench, Dr. Jim Thorne shoulda, coulda, woulda had one of the best vantage points in the building for Sidney Crosby’s golden goal.
Except that one guy in his way … and he’s absolutely not complaining.
“My view was obstructed by Sidney,” recalled Thorne, a team physician for the Calgary Flames. “Because where the bench was, there was Sidney, then (Team USA goalie Ryan) Miller, then the net. So I hear him yell ‘Iggy!’ and all of a sudden he’s going shot, and then finally Sidney goes behind the net and the arms go up and the place just exploded.
“It was unbelievable. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
It’s now been 10 years since Sid the Kid — with an assist, of course, from Jarome Iginla — set off a nationwide celebration with that sudden-death snipe, lifting the hosts to men’s hockey gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Thorne was one of a hat-trick of current Flames employees — athletic therapist Kent Kobelka and assistant general manager Brad Pascall are the others — on Team Canada’s support staff at that fivering circus.
Kobelka was also on the home bench for that championship thriller against the archrival Americans.
Well … on the bench for most of it.
Past the midway mark of the third period, with the Canadians clinging to a 2-1 lead, he was among those busy plastic-sheeting the locker-room for a champagne celebration.
Pascall, as Hockey Canada’s senior director for the men’s national program, was also part of that effort.
Then, with just 24.4 seconds left on the clock and an extra attacker on the ice for Team USA, Zach Parise banged a rebound behind Roberto Luongo.
It was deadlocked.
“We had all the champagne and beer and everything ready to go,” Pascall recalled. “So as it counts down and you’re up, you start sliding all that stuff in there. And then (Parise) scores and it’s like ‘Holy smokes!’ You have to rip it all down and move all the booze out so nobody sees it.”
“As soon as he scored that tying goal, two or three of us were sprinting back to the room,” echoed Kobelka, who had been back on the bench when Parise postponed the cork-popping. “You’re ripping everything down. Because you’re coming in for overtime, and everything has to be identical to how it was before.
“So we went from five minutes before the game was over, we were setting up the room to celebrate — because you have to prepare for that, too — to then taking everything down to then getting ready for overtime. For that to all happen … I mean, we didn’t want to go into that situation, but there’s no other way you’d want to remember a moment like that, as far as winning with an overtime goal, in Canada, with all the people and just the way that whole Olympics had been. “It was just unreal.”
Kobelka, Pascall & Co. were swift with the teardown, leaving no hint of their preparations for a party.
While hockey fans from coastto-coast chomped on their fingernails, it was apparently one of Canada’s forwards who ensured that his teammates weren’t too stressed as sudden death loomed.
“I remember Parise scoring that goal and the team coming into the room and Joe Thornton just defusing the whole thing, like, ‘Oh, ho, ho boys, who saw that coming?!? We were lucky to get overtime,’” recalled Thorne, also part of Canada’s golden group at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and again in Sochi in 2014. “That just brought the temperature of the room down. He asked who was going to get the goal. He said, ‘Sidney, you’ve got enough. Who else is going to get it?’ Then he says, ‘Luey, are you going to stop everything?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, so somebody get a goal.’ It was an incredible atmosphere.
“When it finally went off and it was Sidney, who ignored Joe, it was an incredible, incredible night.”
Pascall, who was also in Salt Lake City and then part of Team Canada’s hockey-operations management group in Sochi before being hired by the Flames, heard Crosby’s golden goal before he actually saw it.
A bundle of nerves, he was watching solo on a TV set outside the locker-room and players’ lounge area.
“There’s a delay on the telecast, right?” Pascall said. “You heard all the fans go crazy, and then (third goalie) Marc-andre Fleury and a bunch of the staff, they all run by me because they heard the goal scored. But I stayed — I wanted to watch it. So I remember these guys running by and high-fiving, all making their way to the bench, and I was staring at the TV, like, ‘What just happened?’ I wanted to confirm it with my own eyes, and then I ran right out to the bench with everybody else.
“And then, ironically enough, we were on the bench and we’re celebrating and high-fiving and giving hugs to everybody, and Sid comes over to us and asks, ‘Hey, where did I score? Where did it go in?’ He didn’t know. Because I had watched it, I said, ‘It went five-hole.’
“You knew that was a monumental win,” he continued. “Obviously, it’s the players that actually make it happen and execute on the plan, but being a part of putting it all together and giving them an environment for success, it was thrilling. I was fortunate with Hockey Canada to be a part of some great winning teams, great winning moments, and that one was right up there. Being at home, against the U.S., in overtime. … It was something else. It was extra-special.”
Support staffers, coaches even, don’t receive medals at the Olympics. Athletes only.
Kobelka, Pascall and Thorne do have Vancouver 2010 championship rings courtesy of Hockey Canada, plus memories they’ll cherish for the rest of their lives.
A decade after Crosby’s golden goal, those haven’t faded one bit.
“To be on the bench with all the staff for the anthem, that’s still the coolest thing you’ll ever hear,” Kobelka said. “When you hear that whole building singing a song …. That’s why you do those things, to be part of something special that you’ll never forget.”