Dallas Stars fan Gretchen Gerken made the trip from Texas along with her father Jim and got the opportunity to take her first shot with a puck on ice.
“It moves better than I thought it would,” she said. “I thought there would be a little bit more pushback but it really does slide so easily. And then I had to buy snow shoes so the full Montreal experience.”
The Texan tandem met up with Jim’s sister and brother-in-law, an American-Canadian couple from Vancouver, B.C., who celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary Friday.
Like her brother Jim, Susan LeBlebec was wearing a Mike Eruzione USA jersey. The night before, the group watched “Miracle,” the Hollywood version of the United States’ iconic gold medal win at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.
“I was a teenager at the time but I do consciously remember that game,” LeBlebec said. “I wasn’t as much of a hockey fan necessarily, and I don’t think you had to be during that time. It was just very patriotic. So for Americans to beat the Russians when they hadn’t beaten them in 20 years, that was pretty amazing.”
Wearing a Canada jersey, her husband Bob LeBlebec stood out in the group of four.
“We sit in separate sections,” he joked. “We’ve been through this before. Anything that’s Canada-USA, I mean, it is what it is. We’ve been married for 30 years so we’ve been dealing with it for a few years. She’s a proud American, I’m a proud Canadian.”
Austin Melo had to miss his youth hockey game to make the trip with his parents, Kylie and Jason, from Amherstview, Ontario, to attend the United States-Canada game.
He hit paydirt with the virtual slot machine, which paid off with a Connor McDavid autographed puck.
“I was thinking I would probably get a poster,” Melo said. “I was just crossing my fingers and look what happened.”
The 20-minute wait in line at that station proved particularly worthwhile for one father and son who attended the Fan Village for the experience but did not have tickets for the games. The luck of the draw won them a V.I.P. experience including premium tickets to the United States-Canada game.
