Wayne Gretzky loved many things about the Canada-United States gold medal hockey game in Vancouver—including the message it sent to every fan who has wondered, “Are they playing for the money or are they playing for the sport?” “When you see the Olympic Games,” he said, “and how hard they play, and how much they care, and how happy they are when they win, and how devastated they are when they lose, and they’re not getting paid any money for it—people really take a grasp of that and say, ‘You know what? I love the fact these guys play the game because they love it.”’ The good vibes have rolled on for hockey through the Stanley Cup playoffs. The first two rounds averaged 886,000 viewers per game in the U.S., up 19 percent from last year and the most since 1997—in other words, since before the lockout. http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news;_ylt=Ah9IxVB29xfaR0PdX0vSTxZ7vLYF?slug=ap-hockeyshot
