An east coast song celebrates Team Canada goals at world juniors for second year

For the second year in a row, Team Canada is celebrating its goals at the world junior ice hockey championship with a song from Newfoundland and Labrador.

For the second year in a row, Team Canada is celebrating its goals at the world junior ice hockey championship with a song from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Great Big Sea’s “Ordinary Day” came blasting out of the speakers on Tuesday near the end of the first period after Canada scored its first goal of the tournament against Finland in Gothenburg, Sweden. The upbeat trad-rock song would play another four times as the team beat its European opponents 5-2.

“Ordinary Day” is a song about perseverance and perspective, with lyrics, “And I say, whey, hey, hey it’s just an ordinary day, and it’s all in your state of mind.” It was chosen after two weeks of intense deliberation, said Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada’s senior vice-president of operations.

“It is taken very seriously, for sure,” Salmond said about the process of selecting a goal song. “We really believe it can have a huge impact on the game and on the team.”

Before the song is played for the first time, he added, there’s always some anxiety it may not catch on. But on Tuesday night, Salmond said, Canadians in the stands in Gothenburg jumped out of their seats and belted out the lyrics to “Ordinary Day” after Nate Danielson knocked the puck past Finland’s goalie, Niklas Kokko.

“They were standing and singing and cheering and clapping,” he said in an interview. “When the play resumed, there was still some people that were singing it, and I think it’ll just continue to grow.”

Every team in the world juniors has a goal song, played to ramp up the crowd and celebrate the puck landing in the net. Some countries, such as Finland, have a national song that plays when any of its teams score, Salmond said.