This Sunday, for the umpteenth time this year, I set my alarm to wake up early (anything before noon is early) to watch a sporting event. I stayed in my pajamas until nearly dinner time–again, not a rare occurrence. I watched the whole game and even suspended my binge of computerized Hearts to watch the tense ending–a fairly rare occurrence.

Yet this Sunday was a first for me. Why? Because I did all this for a hockey game.

I have to preface this by saying that I am not a hockey fan. In any way. I have great respect for it as a game, and I can see why people love it. But I am not a hockey expert by any means. The extent of my hockey knowledge is what I get from SportsCenter, which means I’m that guy saying “Hey, I’ve heard of Gaborik–he must be good!” I judge how good a team is by how many names sound familiar, and otherwise just have to take the analysts’ word.

Then why start now? Well, the Olympics are a special event, an event where people become obsessed with sports they forget about for the next four years. I watched the gold medal women’s curling match all the way through the extra end, and I’ll admit I found the collapse by Canada fascinating. I watched 50-kilometer cross country skiing, women’s short track relays and four-man bobsled. And I can’t ski, can’t skate and I’m sure I couldn’t bobsled without wanting to throw up.

So watching hockey–a game I can at least understand with players I might have heard of–was a no-brainer. I’m not going to lie–I became addicted to Olympic hockey. Not just U.S. vs. Canada. We’re talking Germany, Finland and the Slovakian women’s team. I’d watch anything that was on. So I really had to watch any game with the U.S. or Canada.

At the beginning of the tournament, I thought I’d just watch so I’d have something to look at, not to care about. I even considered rooting for Canada, just because of how much pressure the country had on the team to win, and because I’ve never really had anything against Canada.

By Sunday, that thought was gone. By Sunday, I was the biggest U.S. fair-weather fan out there. I was all about Langenbrunner and Rafalski (eight points heading into the last game led the tournament) and the Johnsons (no relation). And of course, like any fan out there, I loved Ryan Miller.

Even then, I was surprised by how into the gold medal game I got. I found myself really caring about it in a way that is usually reserved for my favorite teams. And I was not alone in this feeling–one look at Facebook told me just how many other people felt the same way I did.

This year’s Olympic hockey was truly amazing. I don’t know what could show this more than the common room of my suite this Sunday. With a minute left in the third period, three friends and I were freaking out at every close attempt by the U.S. trying to tie the game. The four of us had sweaty palms and frantically jittery feet in anticipation. And when Zach Parise tied the game with 24.4 seconds left in regulation, the four of us–who had watched a grand total of zero NHL games this year–erupted with glee. A runner, an NBA fan, a soccer fan and I jumped in the air and began to high five and hug each other in celebration.

Even though Sidney Crosby gave his country the world’s biggest sigh of relief and ended the Cinderella run of the U.S., I will still never forget that moment where we came together to cheer on a team of players we didn’t know in a sport we don’t follow against a country we don’t really have anything against (Canada haters, it’s really not that bad). And while we were all devastated by the loss (and trust me, we were), we all gained a new appreciation for hockey that I don’t think will leave any time soon.

Still, I’m not going to pretend to be a hockey fan now. That would just be an insult to all the real hockey fans out there. They’re all yelling at me right now that hockey is always this awesome and that we’re just idiots for not realizing it sooner. And they’re probably right. Every time I watch hockey it’s interesting, but I just can’t ever get really into it.

So I’m probably going to go back to my hockey-free life. I’ll flip to the Stanley Cup Finals a little and watch the occasional minute or two when I’m bored, but probably not much more than that.

But for a couple weeks, I was a hockey fan. And I loved it.