Meaghan and Betsy MikkelsonBefore the excitement hit her, Betsy Mikkelson says the first thing she felt was a huge sense of relief. Meaghan, her daughter and a defenceman for the Canadian women’s hockey team, had just won Olympic gold on home ice, something very few get the opportunity to achieve.

“In the moment I kind of stayed pretty steady – I cried about it after – because I’m one of those people who reacts emotionally later,” Betsy said of the moment in Vancouver on a phone interview earlier this week.

Meaghan also recalls the moment the buzzer sounded. She remembers looking up into the stands and waving to her family, celebrating in the CTV studio with her teammates and eventually – three hours after the game itself had actually ended – walking into a hospitality area with a Canadian flag draped around her neck and getting to share the moment with her mom for the first time.

“I’m a bit of a softie when it comes to that stuff,” Meaghan said over the phone. “You can imagine the emotions that run through you,

France shocked the Russia at the IIHF World Championships on Thursday. (AP)It may not have been against the highest caliber group of Russian stars, but France’s 2-1 victory over Russia at the IIHF World Championships was still a historic one.

Yes the Russians are missing Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin and Pavel Datsyuk, all NHL superstars who helped lead their country to gold at the 2012 tournament, but they were still the heavy favourites heading into this preliminary round matchup.

They have a handful of NHLers on their roster including New Jersey Devils star Ilya Kovalchuck and Artem Anisimov and Fedor Tyutin of the Columbus Blue Jackets , plus players like Alexander Radulov who’ve spent time in the NHL. France only has one current NHL player on their team in 23-year-old Dallas Stars defenceman Antoine Roussel and as luck would have it, he ended up scoring the winning goal with just over three minutes remaining in the second period.

"It was my first start, an unbelievably good result for us," France’s goalie Florian Hardy told the media after the win. "I

Ricky Romero will be on the mound for the Blue Jays Friday night. (Getty Images)Josh Johnson’s triceps injury can be seen one of two ways. Either it’s another piece of disappointing news for a Toronto Blue Jays team that is looking for something, anything to go their way in the early part of the 2013 season, or it’s a chance to inject a fresh face into the lineup, who may be able to provide the kind of spark this team has been looking for since, well, April 2 it seems like.

Ricky Romero is back. The Jays announced Thursday that Johnson would be added to the 15-day disabled list and Romero would take the mound at the Rogers Centre in his place against the Seattle Mariners Friday night.

It’s likely not the way Alex Anthopoulos or John Gibbons envisioned Romero getting back into the lineup being that the 28-year-old only made one start in the month he spent with the Class-A Dunedin Blue Jays. But has anything in the first month of the season gone the way Toronto’s general manager or manager expected it to?

Romero has spent the last month re-working his mechanics with

The Leafs are heading back to the playoffs for the first time since 2004. (Getty Images)Toronto hockey fans have been basking in the realization that for the first time in eight seasons – nine years if you include the 2004-05 lockout – their beloved Maple Leafs are heading back to the playoffs.

As the Toronto Star’s Rosie DiManno captured so nicely after the Leafs’ playoff-clinching win over the Senators in Ottawa, it’s been awhile since Leafs Nation has had the chance to enjoy meaningful spring hockey. Many will point to the coaching of Randy Carlyle, the departure of Brian Burke and the long-awaited arrival of truculence to the team (well, Don Cherry will hang his high-collar shirt on that one) as major reasons for the Leafs being in a spot to once again challenge for the Stanley Cup.

We’ve taken a different approach here, citing four surprises that have allowed Leafs fans to talk about the playoffs rather than looking ahead to the NHL entry draft and free agency as possible life jackets for next season.

1. James Reimer: He’s been the backbone of the franchise this

Members of the Coordination Commission join Michael Chan, Minister responsible for the 2015 Pan Am Games. (CP)Ivar Sisniega is familiar with the process, though he’s never been on this side of it before.

Two years ago Sisniega was the director of operations for the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico; now he’s the vice president of PASO (the Pan American Sports Organization) and a part of the Coordination Commission that spent two days in Toronto earlier this week to check up on the progress the city is making with the 2015 Pan Am Games just over two years away.

“They’re ahead of Guadalajara [and] they’re ahead of Rio 2007,” Sisniega said on a telephone interview earlier this week. “Construction is going at a very robust pace here and it’s on schedule and this makes us feel that many of the facilities will be finished a year before the Games . . . I’d say they’ve been better than past organizing committees and that has me feeling very positive after this week.”

In July 2015 Toronto will play host to more than 8,000 athletes, coaches and officials from 41 different countries for both

(Image via YouTube)How quickly things can change.

Three weeks ago Nazem Kadri scored a hat trick in a 4-0 Toronto Maple Leafs victory over the Ottawa Senators, a win that pushed them into fifth place in the Eastern Conference standings and catapulted Kadri into sixth in the NHL scoring race.

Kadri and Joffrey Lupul combined for eight points that night – they each had four – in what was arguably the 22 year old’s best performance in a Leafs uniform to date.

And Don Cherry felt like Kadri had earned some spotlight.

So having always been a Kadri advocate, Cherry pulled him out of the Leafs dressing room after the game and into the Coach’s Corner studio for an interview with Hockey Night in Canada’s Ron MacLean. One thing led to another and eventually a post-game chat led to a mini Leafs lovefest with Cherry standing alongside Kadri and Leafs enforcers Frazer McLaren and Colton Orr in the studio.

Before CBC could cut to commercial at the end of the segment Cherry laid a sweet smooch on Kadri’s left cheek

Emilio Bonifacio (Getty Images)Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter wasn’t referring to reigning National League Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey or all-star shortstop Jose Reyes when he called one of the Toronto Blue Jays off season acquisitions ‘a gem.’

Nope, it wasn’t Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle or Melky Cabrera either.

“It doesn’t matter where he plays, he can impact a game defensively in about four spots,” the O’s manager told the Globe and Mail in March.

Showalter was referencing utility man Emilio Bonifacio.

Unfortunately for the 27-year-old there haven’t been many compliments thrown his way since as he’s been one of a handful of Blue Jays who've gotten off to a slow start this season.

Brought to the organization as a part of 12-player trade with the Miami Marlins in November it was expected that Bonifacio would split the second base job with Maicer Izturis, another off-season acquisition.

But when Brett Lawrie suffered a rib injury in a tune-up game for the World Baseball Classic in March, the team was forced

Amar'e Stoudemire will be doing something a little bit different this summer. (Getty Images)Whether the New York Knicks hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy at the end of the 2012-2013 NBA season or they’re ousted in the first round of the playoffs, come summer time Amar’e Stoudemire will be busy in the gym.

Not because he's dedicating himself to a new training regimen or working on his interior defence though; in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Come mid-July, Stoudemire will be patrolling the sidelines in Israel as an assistant coach of Team Canada at the 2013 Maccabiah Games, better known as the Jewish Olympics.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard Stoudemire’s name and Israel mentioned in the same sentence.

In the summer of 2010, shortly after signing a five-year $100 million deal with the New York Knicks, several news outlets reported that Stoudemire took a trip to the country to explore what he believed were his ‘Jewish roots. Some critics believed he was only doing so as some kind of 'publicity stunt' to help the Knicks sell tickets seeing that there's a large Jewish community