Team Canada Beats Canadian Soldiers 9-2

General Rick Hillier and Defense Minister Peter MacKay jokingly searching for the time, more than 40 years ago, that Hillier’s favourite team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, last had its name on the Stanley Cup.

Team Canada, including players like Mike Gartner, Chris Hutchison and Bob Probert, coasted to a 9-2 win over Canadian soldiers. Man, I wish they had shown that game on TV. The Canadian Press

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"I love this place," TSN play-by-play commentator Jennifer Hedger quoted Laforest as saying as she introduced the latest motley group of former NHLers to visit Kandahar Airfield.

"You can smoke everywhere."

With that, the former pros forgot momentarily about the goodwill mission that brought them to Afghanistan and got down to ball-hockey business, waxing the floor with overmatched Canadian soldiers brave enough to swap their rifles for hockey sticks.

The Stanley Cup gleamed in the afternoon Afghan sun to inspire a team of troops that included Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of defence staff and an unabashed hockey fan, and Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche, the diminutive commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan.

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The troops changed up their teams for each period, and Lyster spent the game's final 20 minutes in goal, facing shots from players like former Toronto Maple Leaf Mike Gartner, two-time Stanley Cup winner Mark Napier, tough guy Bob Probert and the fearsome Stu Grimson, known in his NHL fighting heyday as the "Grim Reaper."