VANCOUVER, British Columbia — On a recent Friday afternoon, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity arrived in the form of a text message to many of Vancouver’s elite hockey players. It was a last-minute, impromptu invitation to perhaps the world’s most scenic and unorthodox pickup pond hockey game.
With the instructions vague and the destination unknown, the message read like a top-secret mission.
“My old teammate basically wrote, ‘Hey, we’re playing hockey tomorrow at the top of a mountain, are you in?’ ” said Federico Angel, 28, a former goaltender at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. “There was no other explanation.