Crosby's childhood coach thrilled with Canada performance against Sweden

Paul Mason has coached minor hockey and minor baseball in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, for 46 years. He's been fortunate enough to have coached several NHL players, including Sidney Crosby, who is playing for Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off. Paul and his wife, Dana, and Crosby's parents, own Top Shelf Pro Shop at Cole Harbour Place, Crosby's childhood rink. Paul can often be found at the pro shop or on the ice there. His son, Liam, helps him coach and his daughter, Kirsti, coaches ringette at the rink.

In his second update, Mason talks about the show Crosby and the other Nova Scotia natives -- Nathan MacKinnon and Brad Marchand -- put on in the tournament-opening game, a 4-3 overtime victory against Sweden at Bell Centre on Wednesday, and how it was celebrated in Crosby's hometown. Crosby assisted on the opening goal by MacKinnon and the third goal by Mark Stone, and set up Mitch Marner for the dramatic game-winner.

What a roller-coaster ride this past week has been.

The question throughout last week was, will Sidney Crosby be playing for Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off? In our community that question dominated everything and there were a lot of people here who were worried the hockey hero from Cole Harbour might not be participating in the tournament.

I received so many texts asking if Sidney was going to play, but I had as much information as they did. So we were all relieved Monday when we heard he was playing and his injury wouldn't hold him back.

Then the excitement started to build because Sidney and Nathan MacKinnon were skating on the same line, and each was practicing on the first power-play unit.

You could feel the excitement for the opening game Wednesday growing throughout our community during the past 48 hours.

The Cole Harbour U-18 AA and U-18 A teams left for a tournament in Montreal early Wednesday. Several players and parents chatted with me about the growing excitement they had about going to the game. Many of the conversations at Cole Harbour Place centered around where everyone was going to watch the game. Local media was outside the rink interviewing people, asking about their thoughts and feelings on the game against Sweden that night and the impact Sid, Nate and Brad Marchand would have.

Nobody could imagine the impact the Nova Scotia Mafia would have in an incredible game against Sweden.

I watched the game at the local Boston Pizza with a few friends. The atmosphere at Bell Centre, even through the television, seemed electric. We had chills watching the pregame ovation for Sid, captain of Team Canada, that was only rivaled by the ovation for Mario Lemieux.

The bar erupted when MacKinnon scored the opening goal on the power play. All you could hear from almost every table was, "Did you see that pass from Sid?" The behind-the-back, blind pass is nothing that we aren't used to seeing here, but having his fellow alum from the Cole Harbour Wings program putting the puck in the net had a whole community bursting with pride.

That's something you might only have seen at one of their summer training sessions until now.

Shortly thereafter, Marchand scored on a pass from Brayden Point and there was a similar ovation in the restaurant. The fairy-tale start for the Nova Scotia brigade had people across our province brimming with pride.

I looked at social media quickly during the first intermission. My feed was full of proud comments from my fellow Nova Scotians.

"Nova Scotia 2, Sweden 0."

"Nova Scotia Mafia in charge!"

As we continued to watch the game, our pride grew. MacKinnon was dominating with his speed and strength, putting Sweden on its heels most of the night, particularly in overtime. Marchand was playing his gritty style of hockey and Sid was simply doing Sid things.

Canada ended up scoring four goals and the Nova Scotia boys factored in each. There were six assists on the four goals, three by Crosby.

After Sid's third assist, the final one being the game winner to Mitch Marner deep in overtime, I'm sure all of Canada reacted the same as us: ecstatic that Canada had won and equally as happy because the oldest player in the tournament, our local hockey hero, had just secured the first star of the game.

The cheers of "Crosby, Crosby, Crosby" echoed out of the TV and we all had a tremendous sense of pride.

We are 100 percent team-first people, but Wednesday it was special to see our Nova Scotia boys have such an impact on the opening game.

We can't wait until Saturday and the game against the United States!