“Who were you rooting for?” Several people asked me. It was the day after the Olympics, and the USA men’s hockey team had beaten Team Canada to win gold, in dramatic overtime fashion on a beauty of a Jack Hughes goal that made him an instant sports icon.

People asked — “Who were you rooting for?” — because they know my family history. My Mom and Dad immigrated, legally, from Canada in the 1960s. I am a child of immigrants, the first U.S.-born member of my immediate family. We had nothing handed to us. Neither side of my family was affluent when they came here. I come from hard-working stock.

So people wonder: USA or Canada? Who were you rooting for? My answer: “I’m not like those people who come here illegally from Mexico and then wrap themselves in the Mexican flag at soccer games and root for Mexico AGAINST the U.S.”

I rooted for Team USA. Not only in the men’s final, but in the women’s, too. When Megan Keller scored the golden goal against Canada in OT, I was watching, and shouted as loudly as if the Kings won the Stanley Cup. I was so happy for those women who achieved their lifelong dream, for Team USA.

I did the same when Hughes scored the golden goal in the men’s game, on my 60th birthday. It was 46 years to the day after my 14th birthday — aka the Miracle on Ice, when a ragtag band of U.S. college hockey underdogs took down the Soviet Union’s arsenal of professionals, spawning the greatest sports play-by-play call ever from Al Michaels.

I have Team Canada jerseys in my closet, including one sized for a 10-year-old bearing the No. 4 of Bobby Orr, my childhood idol who starred in the Canada Cup all those years ago. I stop and listen when they play “Oh Canada” on TV. If Canada........

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