"They may have beaten us on the ice, but they can't beat us in beer," was the joke around Vancouver City Hall.
The Blackhawks advanced to the National Hockey League's Western Conference finals Monday with a 7-5 victory over the visiting Canucks. The Hawks won the best-of-seven series 4-2 and will play in their first conference finals since 1995 starting Sunday.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, paying up on a friendly wager, sent a tableful of Vancouver-area treats to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, including smoked salmon, chocolates, chips -- and a lot of beer.
The beer included Canada's Molson Inc. and beer from Vancouver microbreweries Granville Island Brewing Co. and Storm Brewing Ltd., "so Daley won't be hungry or thirsty as he watches the Blackhawks in round three," radio station CKWX in Vancouver reported.
Robertson admitted Vancouver hockey fans were still in withdrawal.
"This is the day we were dreading," he said.
"We thought the Canucks were going all the way, but we did lose, so we're putting forward our best stuff from Vancouver, for this day of reckoning," he said.
Robertson, a co-founder of Happy Planet, a Vancouver company that makes organic fruit beverages, did not say if he would also send any juices or smoothies.
He left the company in 2005 to get into politics.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International.
Chicago Scores Rare Vancouver Beer
An overlooked detail in the story above: the beer provided by Storm Brewing was the last bottle of their 12-year-old, barrel-aged, Black Currant Lambic—as rare as a Blackhawk Stanely Cup win. Brewer, James Walton, threw down a challenge to Chicago’s brewers that will be hard to beat—try to make a better lambic! If they do take up the test, we won't know for a few years if they succeed.
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