Maple Leaf Red Auerbach

While I'm disappointed that the U.S. Women's Hockey team came up short in their Olympic championship game against Canada yesterday, I loved the aftermath:

The International Olympic Committee will investigate the actions of Canadian women's hockey players who celebrated their gold medal victory Thursday night by swigging beer and smoking cigars on the ice in Vancouver.

A number of players, including 18-year-old superstar Marie-Philip Poulin, were drinking alcohol on the ice following the team's 2-0 defeat of the United States. (The legal drinking age in British Columbia is 19.) Players lingered for more than 70 minutes after the awards ceremony reveling in the arena, which was empty except for media and arena staff.

Gilbert Felli, the IOC's executive director of the Olympic Games, said that drinking in public was "not what we want to see" from athletes at an Olympic venue. The organization will investigate the actions and will speak with the international hockey federation and Canadian Olympic Committee and ask them to "act accordingly."

Drinking beers and firing up stogies after the game? Right on the ice? I'm apparently supposed to be outrageously outraged by it. I'm not – anything that offends the sanctimonious and corrupt IOC is by definition cool.

Most of all, this behavior is conclusive evidence that women's hockey is gaining parity with the men's game, because the women are acting like hockey players have always acted. Good for them. I hope that after the Canadian women finally left the arena, they went out and had huge steaks for dinner and drank gin out of rain barrels.