As Elop had been speaking, one of those managers, Kirill Tatarinov, had groaned several times.
"Was it something I said," Elop asked Tatarinov, who runs a division that creates business software for midsize companies.
Sheepishly, Tatarinov confessed that he had been watching the Russia-Canada Olympic hockey game. If Tatarinov worked for some other bosses at Microsoft, that could have been what is known in Redmond as a "career limiting move." Luckily, Tatarinov works for Elop, himself a huge hockey fan.
"I respected his choice of priorities," Elop told me. "He didn't take a ding on it at all."
Plus, it was hard to be too mad. Each groan meant that Elop's beloved Canadian hockey team was winning.
"I was more pleased that Canada was winning," Elop said.
Elop even managed to wrap the meeting up a bit early so that he, Tatarinov, and the rest of the team could catch the action at the nearby Spitfire Grill. When the Russians finally pulled their goaltender after the deficit grew to 6-1, Elop lovingly put his arm around Tatarinov.
And being the hockey fan that he is, Elop, of course, found his way to Vancouver. In a bold move of his own, Elop showed up to the USA House on Thursday, hours before the gold medal game, decked out in his Team Canada jersey, getting quite a bit of ribbing from those at the U.S. Olympic Committee-run pavilion.
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