Here Comes the Bride

The wedding date, the bride says, is “sometime.”

No cold feet here, just a bad shoulder. Sorry, Honey. We can move the wedding, but we can’t move the Olympics.

And now, after a year in which “I do” was preempted by two operations and months of physical therapy, Pam Dreyer could win a gold medal with the U.S. women’s hockey team.

“It’s definitely been a little longer engagement than I would have hoped,” she said with a laugh.

It’s 27 months and counting since that day in Sweden, in November 2003. She awoke in anticipation of a big day, of starting in goal against rival Canada, in the championship game of a major international tournament.

Little did she know how big the day would be. Her boyfriend, Ted Sunkinen, stopped her on the way into the arena and proposed.

“Luckily, I was kind of in game mode, so I didn’t cry or anything,” she said.

She faced 37 shots, stopped 36. The U.S. won, 2-1, a memorable step in her emergence as America’s No. 1 goalie.

A year later -- another tournament, another championship game against Canada -- Dreyer dived for the puck and hurt her right shoulder.

“Initially, I was told it was a muscle strain,” she said. “When I woke up the next day, I couldn’t move it at all.”

It got better, but not much, and after three months doctors ordered an MRI exam. Her rotator cuff was torn, and surgery was required. The Turin Games would start in 12 months, and so she chose intense rehabilitation at the Olympic training center in Lake Placid, N.Y.

Sorry, Honey. I won’t be back home in Alaska this summer for our wedding.

Dreyer said her fiance was “100% supportive.” The couple had not set a date, but they had played pickup hockey together for years.

“Once we started dating, he was on my team,” she said. “He didn’t like shooting on me too much.”

The rehabilitation did not go smoothly. In June, after she experienced what she called “frozen shoulder,” doctors operated again, this time to remove scar tissue that had restricted her range of motion.

When the Olympic selection camp opened in August, she was not ready to play. When the U.S. competed in an international tournament in September, she still wasn’t ready.

But, before the U.S. set its roster in December, she played well enough to win one of the two goalie spots.

“It was just grueling, what she had to overcome,” U.S. Coach Ben Smith said. “In August, she wasn’t in the top two. She really was on the outside looking in. But, as time went on and she went through the rehab, she came back to be the Pam we think can win a big game.”

As Dreyer rehabilitated her injury, Chanda Gunn of Huntington Beach became the No. 1 goalie. Smith started Gunn in the U.S. Olympic opener and Dreyer in the second game, but he has not said which one will start the probable gold-medal game against Canada.

“I’ve never been in a total backup role, ever,” Dreyer said. “I definitely don’t enjoy being on the bench. But you’re still a part of the team, and you need to help the team in whatever fashion you can, even if you’re just another set of eyeballs.”

Dreyer, 24, said she has not decided whether to end her career or shoot for a second Olympic appearance at Vancouver, in 2010.

For the rest of this year, she won’t play, she said.

She might get married, probably in Alaska, but definitely not in a faraway place with an Elvis imitator on hand. Sunkinen, in training to become a paramedic, called her from an internship in Las Vegas.

“There’s a lot of little chapels here,” he told her.

“Definitely not,” she replied. “I’m never getting married in Las Vegas.”