How quickly they forget.
With the soul searching the past month over Canada’s dismal standing in men’s soccer, it’s easy to overlook this country’s significant achievement in international sport earlier this year.
Yet it took Jamie Benn of Victoria being in the U.S. recently for it to fully hit home what it meant to win the gold medal in hockey at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
“When I was in Dallas [where Benn is captain of the NHL’s Stars], I saw how U.S. fans came together [watching the World Cup] even though soccer is not their chief sport,” he said Thursday.
Jamie and his brother Jordie Benn, a defenceman with the Stars, were in town helping out at Ryan O’Byrne’s annual youth hockey camp at the UVic Ian Stewart Complex.
“[International sport] is all about a nation coming together and supporting its national team. The Olympics, and bringing gold back to Canada, is an experience I’ll never forget.”
What made it even more special is the breakthrough role he played in helping Canada to win gold. As to what he’s done with his Olympic medal, Benn wouldn’t say: “It’s hidden somewhere in Victoria. I can’t tell [where].”
The Olympics, combined with an NHL season in which the Stars made the playoffs, has made for a draining year, both physically and emotionally, for Benn. Thursday was the first time he had stepped onto the ice since the Game 6 loss April 27 to the Anaheim Ducks in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“It was a long year and you need to let the body recover,” he said.
“But this is a good thing here that Ryan has done … I’m seeing a lot of smiles.”
At the club level, the chase for the Benn brothers is not for medals but for the Stanley Cup. And that quest suddenly got a lot more intriguing with the Stars trading for Ottawa Senators captain Jason Spezza to add to a forward corps that already features Benn and Tyler Seguin. The Stars also signed veteran forward Ales Hemsky.
“Getting someone like Spezza is a bonus. There are so many good teams in the West and we have to compete with them,” Benn said.
The Ryan O’Byrne camp featured other Island NHLers such as Matt Irwin of the San Jose Sharks and Tyson Barrie of the Colorado Avalanche. The camp raised $34,000 this year to push the total collected for KidSport-Greater Victoria to more than $100,000 over three years. That doesn’t include the 28 full sets of hockey pads the National Hockey League Players Association has given out each year.
Meanwhile, former NHLer O’Byrne is looking for a new team after his Lev Prague team of the Russian-based KHL folded this week. O’Byrne helped lead Lev Prague to Game 7 of the 2014 KHL Gagarin Cup final this spring.
