However, Team Canada has come under fire for its behavior later that night, when the celebration got a little out of hand.
More than half an hour after they beat the United States 2-0 on Thursday, the players came back from the locker room and staged a party on ice -- swigging from bottles of champagne, guzzling beer and smoking cigars.There's certainly nothing wrong with getting drunk to celebrate a gold medal, and I won't take issue with the fact that one of the members of Team Canada was still one month underage.
Meghan Agosta and Marie-Philip Poulin posed wearing goofy grins. Rebecca Johnston actually tried to drive the ice-resurfacing machine. Haley Irwin poured champagne into the mouth of Tessa Bonhomme, gold medals swinging from both their necks.
The celebration raised eyebrows at the IOC, which said it would look into the matter. Informed of the antics by The Associated Press, Gilbert Felli, the IOC's executive director of the Olympic Games, said it was "not what we want to see."
But I believe that the celebration should have occurred in the locker room, or at an off-site location; it strikes me as a little disrespectful to be sauntering around the ice surface with alcohol and cigars.
The incident has reminded some people of the 1998 games, when the U.S. men's hockey team trashed their hotel rooms after losing in the Olympics. Certainly, the Team Canada incident is surprising partly because it is something we would more expect from men's teams.
However, even at Cornell, we've seen evidence that the women's hockey team is capable of some antics. Back in 2005, freshmen on the team were caught after they stole 36 cases of toilet paper from residence halls. They had been instructed to do so by older members on the team.
Congratulations again to Team Canada, but I wish one of their coaches or team handlers had stopped them from going back onto the ice.
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