Olympic Hockey and Water Use

A little over a week ago the Olympics in Vancouver came to a finish, which concluded with the Men’s Hockey final between Canada and the United States. It promised to be epic, and it delivered. Being away from home, I had the ‘pleasure’ of pulling out my big Canadian flag and watching the game with some American friends, although I did wish from time to time that it was a Canadian network (instead of NBC) so that the commentary on the game would have been better. But I digress, it was an epic game, and an epic finish indeed with Sidney Crosby scored the game-winning goal for Canada seven minutes into overtime.

Reports since have claimed that it was the biggest event in Canadian sporting history, with 80% of the population tuning in at one point or another. To illustrate the effect of this, EPCOR (the water utility in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) release a graph showing the city’s water demand while the game was on. It’s amazing to watch the swings between when the game picks up and the end of the periods.

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