Louie Amonte has spent the last two weeks taking naps before hockey games and sitting in his living room in Massachusetts watching his son Tony play for their country in the Olympics in Utah.
Reason is, Capt. Lou, as he’s called by Tony, who is a captain himself with the Blackhawks, is 79 and has had some health problems.
“Triple bypass, double bypass, a pacemaker a couple years ago, diabetes,” Tony said. “That’s just off the top of my head.
“I kind of deterred him from coming. He can’t walk that far. It would’ve been tough for him. The parking (at the E Center arena) is way out. It would’ve been hard for him.”
But things changed Friday when Tony called home the way he has every day, twice if there is a game, and usually right there in the Team USA dressing room.
“I told him [Friday] morning,” Tony said before the United States’ monstrously hyped semifinal against Russia, “if we win, you’re on a plane [Saturday].”
U.S. 3, Russia, 2. Now boarding: passengers in the gold-medal section.
“I wanted him here,” the son said of the father. “I definitely wanted him here.”
That sentiment is perhaps the best thing about Sunday’s gold-medal game pitting the United States against Canada:
A father drives his son all over creation so he can play hockey as a kid, and then the kid grows up to be a college star and an NHL multimillionaire and later an Olympian, and after the kid becomes a father himself, he finds himself playing out a dream in the gold-medal game against the country’s biggest rival in what figures to be the most-watched hockey match ever. And he is a kid again, wanting his father to be back in the stands, the way it used to be in real life, the way it always will be in the kid’s memory.
“One to remember,” an almost giddy Amonte said of the story line: America’s children of the “Miracle,” 1980 being the last time America mined Olympic hockey gold, taking on the sons of Canada, whose last gold rush was 50 years ago.
Game on in the biggest nationalistic pond hockey match anyone could have dreamed up.
“I was going to ask Herbie this morning if we could find a backyard rink and let the two teams go at it,” Canada coach Pat Quinn said of American counterpart Herb Brooks.
It is just that kind of childhood joy that seems to be fueling this game.
“I had to fight back tears realizing I was going to get a medal, let alone maybe a gold,” U.S. center and former Hawks star Jeremy Roenick said.
It is grown men imagining being the heroes they idolized as kids.
“Someone is going to come out of this game as Paul Henderson or Mike Eruzione,” Canada’s Theo Fleury said.
Mike Eruzione, of course, is the leading scorer from that 1980 Miracle team. Paul Henderson is the Toronto journeyman who scored the winning goal in each of the last three games of Canada’s monumental 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union.
“I hope it’s me,” Fleury said. “I love these games. You’ve got to love them or you haven’t got a pulse.”
It is the world’s answer to a Game 7.
“One thing about Game 7s,” said Team Canada Executive Director Wayne Gretzky, “really good players really have the attitude of, `This is really fun. This is what I dreamed of as a kid. This is where I want to be.”‘
Sure, they all wanted to play for the gold medal. But to hear the boys talk, this “one-game grudge match,” as Roenick termed it, will be more for fun, for North American bragging rights, for a little one-upsmanship between big-money shinny players.
More Top Picks Best Golf Ball Retrievers For Water Hazards
“I bet if you asked everybody on the U.S. team, `If you could face somebody in the final, who would it be?'” Roenick said, “every one of us would say Canada.”
Said Gretzky: “Our guys were rooting for the U.S. to win (Friday against Russia). I think there’s a sense of the North American championship here.”
“Unbelievable,” said U.S. goalie Mike Richter, who has allowed just four goals in three games.
While there is a rivalry, there is also a deep respect.
“I’ve been saying that the U.S. is the best country in the world,” Roenick said. “Canada is a close second.”
So who will win? Perhaps it’s best to ask Belarus goalie Andrei Mezin, who faced both countries, losing 8-1 to the Americans and 7-1 to the Canadians.
“The U.S. didn’t start well, but they played well and they just killed us,” Mezin said. “Canada is just powerful. They have everything.
“I can’t pick one. Gold medals for all of them.”