1. On a hockey note, it's worth reading this piece by Jeff Z. Klein in the New York Times who notes that finishing your checks is nice-and-dandy but if often means that you're hitting some dude without the puck and taking yourself out of the play. Are you paying attention, Ryan Getzlaf?
2. My stick-time in Pasadena ended at 4:45 p.m. yesterday, so I was able to drive home and switch straight from playing hockey to watching a sporting event so ridiculously entertaining that I almost twice pulled my groin jumping off the couch.
3. How can anyone watch baseball after watching a game like that? Really--a bunch of guys standing around the grass fondling themselves? Yaaaawn.
4. I couldn't help but notice a six-day lift ticket to Whistler in March is $100 more expensive than a six-day ticket to Mammoth. And that's taking into account the weaker Canadian dollar. Hotel rooms during the Olympics have been insanely priced so as to keep all but the wealthy or the fiscally insane away from the Great White North. To this I say: Fuck You Canada! Enjoy that semifinal game against Team Russia and Mr. Ovechkin -- who knows how to check.
5. On a somewhat related note, Team Canada's women's curling team has a couple of players who are not unattractive.
6. I think my excitement level red-zoned when after watching the hockey game I switched over to see Bode Miller win a gold in the combined event. The media has been trying to define Miller for years now, he's been stubbornly refusing to be defined by a bunch of d-bags who don't know him and now he won a gold skiing like a Real Man.
7. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but if the U.S. squad wins its quarterfinal game against either Switzerland or Belarus, its semifinal will be Friday against the winner of the Czech Republic vs. Finland/Latvia quarerfinal. Here's a link to the Olympic tournament bracket. Sweden seems on-track to play Russia or Canada in the other semifinal.
Which means that a U.S.-Canada final is still possible next Sunday.
Oh, please take time from your busy Monday morning to watch this clip featuring the late, great John Candy.
--Steve Hymon
So, let's see . . . in Europe there's little to no fighting in hockey, and the region sends the NHL some of the game's biggest stars. In the U.S. there's little to no fighting allowed at all amateur levels of the sport, and the region sends the NHL some of the game's biggest stars. In Canada fighting is allowed--and in many cases promoted--at all levels of the game, and the region continues to provide an ever dominishing percentage of players to the NHL.
ReplyDeleteI hope there's a tipping point at which the European and U.S. attitudes toward fighting in hockey overwhelm the outdated Canadian attitude.
But wait! Hockey's not attractive to fans without fighting! Just look at the Olympics!
John Candy was one fat funny f@ck.
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