4 NATIONS. FACING OFF.
oh yeah and thanks for all the love on the ttc poem!
Sheesh, Otters. I’m on the train right now listening to Julien Baker (it’s the release-anniversary of Little Oblivions, an album that changed my brain chemistry), and the post-reading week return-to-having-an-actual-social-life high over the last few days has been incredible. So why don’t we just start with that before we get to the hockey stuff. I know most of you don’t care for hockey anyway… so I’m actually kind of doing you a solid here. You’re welcome!
Yesterday
I had two midterms back-to-back and bombed them both. (I literally could not care less about school these days.)
Mitch Marner scored a beautiful overtime winner to complete the Leafs’ insane comeback over their archival in the Boston Bruins. They were down 3-0 at one point. I love him and I love my favourite team.
Today
I accepted a volunteer position with Canoe Kayak Canada! It’s been a dream of mine since I was a kid to work in Canadian sport. When I was ten I wanted to be a sports journalist, a job that requires a lot of travelling and working long, unconventional hours, and then I found out my parents would be mad if they didn’t get to see me and my nonexistent husband and kids every weekend, so I had to become a “writer” instead. Hahaha imagine. But I’m so excited to work with the team over the next few months—it’s a contract role and I’m so excited to learn all I can.
About five minutes ago I had to pause my furious typing of this post to recover from seeing the most insane email in my inbox. AN INTERVIEW REQUEST FOR MY DREAM INTERNSHIP. I am losing my mind. No idea how I’ll type out the rest of this post but whoops here goes.
Rest of the week
Tomorrow is the Ontario provincial election—GO VOTE!!!!!!
I’m also planning to see Inhaler and Been Stellar on Friday and could not be more excited.
ICYMI:
Right off the top, before we get to the fun hockey talk, I just gotta say thank you so much for the support around the TTC poem. Y’all have given me so much street cred in this city that I love (and hate) so deeply.
The cross-platform response has been mind-boggling. I haven’t had any new stuff published in three years so seeing my phone blow up like this for the first time in years has been really wild!
People I haven’t spoken to since the eighth grade are in my Instagram comments section congratulating me.
People who I didn’t even know read this silly little Substack are in the comments of my last post congratulating me.
Oh yeah, and MY GRADE 11 ENGLISH TEACHER REQUESTED TO CONNECT WITH ME ON LINKEDIN?!?!?!?
I for one find this absolutely hysterical. (I already texted my groupchat of high school friends.)
This will henceforth be my new definition of “making it”. If your high school teachers aren’t requesting to connect with you on LinkedIn, wtf are you even DOING bro.
I’m lucky, I had some really great teachers (and also just like straight-up English teachers) in high school, and I can totally picture them in the third floor hallway gossiping about me. Those of you who are longtime Otters from my Twitter (I refuse to call it X) days, this is the same teacher behind the famous “when they said god makes no mistakes they were talking about me” thread. Perhaps the best thread I have ever tweeted. If you know, you know.
Oh my god, we are 700+ words deep into this post and I STILL haven’t talked abut the 4 Nations Face-Off yet?!
I guess we’ll keep it simple, then. At the Winter Olympics they play hockey. But for the last ten years, because of *aloof shrug* politics of all sorts?????… NHL players haven’t been able to represent their country in best-on-best competition. This year, to fill that void, the NHL created a gimmick tournament called the 4 Nations Face-Off. NHL players will finally be retuning to the Olympics next year, but still, to get international hockey a year earlier than expected is sick.
The thing about best-on-best hockey that I learned from watching most of this tourney is that it really is the best hockey. The most competitve, physical, high-skilled game we have ever seen. All four teams—Sweden, Finland, the USA and Canada—were basically FIFA Ultimate Teams, but in real life.
The final last week between Canada and the USA garnered 9.3 million American viewers and 6.3 million up here. If it was the perfect gateway drug for newbies to the sport…it was like a shot of heroin for people like me.
Connor McDavid’s golden goal was something I’ll never, ever forget. That, and his goal against the USA in their round-robin game the week prior, one of the prettiest goals I’ve ever watched live.
We talked about Connor last year on Things You Otter Know, and more specifically him just coming up short of the Stanley Cup, hockey’s biggest prize. So what a beautiful thing it was to witness him have these big moments on a big international stage. I cannot wait for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in a few months, and the Olympics next year. Greatest sport in the world. Nothing else comes close. Not even soccer. (Sorry, Colbs.)
That is it that is all. A rare weekend post will be hitting your inboxes this Saturday! I never post on weekends because I find they perform poorly but whatever, I owed you after last week. Hopefully it will be about the concert that happened the night before but either way it will be fun. Toodles!