USA Hockey texts 67-year-old Canadian to say he made Olympic team

Phones have made communication easy.

With a couple of finger-flicks you can order a pizza, dump a lover, or send your new lover a picture of you in a goat's milk bubble bath. There are occasions, however, when pressing send can hurtle you into the boards of life's chilly rink.

Which leads me to USA Hockey. Clearly feeling the need to be impersonal -- and yet immediate -- the governing body for ice hockey in the US decided to inform those who had made the Olympic team by text.

One can certainly imagine large, toothless multimillionaires huddled over their phones waiting for the word.

Perhaps more difficult to imagine are the feelings of a currently anonymous 67-year-old Vancouver, British Columbia, resident who got a text on Wednesday from USA Hockey telling him to pack his bags and prepare for Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.

As the Bleacher Report tells it, the text was meant for Ryan Kesler of the Vancouver Canucks.

Kesler, however, had changed his number. Perhaps he'd been receiving too many unwanted texts from strange people telling him he was to be the next face of Gucci.

So instead, USA Hockey called up a 67-year-old Canadian.

Yahoo Sports quotes Jim Johansson of USA Hockey as admitting: "I had one text exchange with a Canadian guy that had a sense of humor to him; basically a 67-year-old guy who can't skate but willing to serve 'his' country by suiting up for the USA."

TSN hockey commentator Gord Miller, who first revealed this slight misunderstanding, tweeted that the Canadian gentleman had added: "I think Canada would be even happier if I played for you."

A small slap shot of advice: the next time you use text to fire someone, dump someone, praise someone, or especially entice someone with your unclothed pulchritude, perhaps it's best to check that you have the right number.

Otherwise, the reception might be less like the Miracle On Ice and more like the chill of New York this Friday morning.