How Winnipeg’s water usage was impacted by the gold medal hockey game

As Canada’s Olympic men’s hockey team battled into overtime in Sunday’s gold medal heartbreaker against the United States, so too did Winnipeg’s water pumping stations.

According to the city, Winnipeg pumping stations recorded three clear spikes on Sunday that line up with the intermissions of the now notorious match-up.

The spikes happened between 7:50 and 8:04, 8:45 and 9:06 and 9:32 and 9:46 a.m.—all of which align with play breaks in the game that ended with Canada taking home the silver.

“Things like flushing toilets and washing hands impacts water usage. So, we all took bathroom breaks at the same time,” the city wrote in a news release.

The city’s pumping stations are equipped to keep up with such surges, it noted. This allows the infrastructure to run smoothly even when nature calls simultaneously for the legions of Winnipeg hockey fans who were holding in their morning coffee or game day beer until a break in the action.

“While the game didn’t have the outcome we’d hoped for, this is a fun reminder of how connected we are as a city.”