Players, coaches and GMs at the IIHF men’s world hockey championship don’t hide. That includes Sidney Crosby, just some dude on a nearby park bench.
Before heading to the rink, Canadian winger Macklin Celebrini was talking on his cellphone in the lobby, hoodie pulled over his baseball cap, and goalie Jordan Binningtonwas taking counsel in a bar nook with a few of the coaches.
Outside, autograph seekers stood with hockey card binders while, unknown to them a few park benches away, Sidney Crosby and Mike Matheson were looking, and laughing at, something on Crosby’s phone. They were unassuming partly because of their muted dress — sweats, T-shirt — and partly because hockey players in the wild aren’t physically totemic, unless they’re named Zdeno.
Daring to blow their cover, I wished them “good luck,” they politely chimed “thanks!” and one of the greatest hockey players the world has ever seen went back to being some random dude on a park bench in Stockholm.
Settling in for a drink before heading back to our room, an older gentleman brought over his glass and can of Coca-Cola to a round elevated table where two young Swedish women — hotel employees at the end of their day — were roasting marshmallows over a small fire. They asked where we were from. My wife and I told them “Toronto” and the gentleman said he was from Halifax.
I asked if he’d been to the world championship often and the fellow, whose name was Troy, said: “Yes, a few times.”
I commented on the play of the Haligonian players here — Crosby and MacKinnon — and asked if he’d watched them come up through minor hockey, especially Sid, a phenom by the time he was 11.
The gentleman sipped his Coke and then returned the glass to its coaster. He told us: “Well, I’d say I did, yes. Seeing as I’m his father.”
sid must be loving being Just Some Guy
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