Today marks the end of the regular season in the NHL, meaning you will see a lot of hockey here for the next couple of months. Just warning you. If you happen to be a Vancouver Canuck fan, you may want to stop following me for this period, as I will likely have a few negative rants about this over rated group of crappy hockey players. Suck it up cause you suck. Oh…and GO BRUINS.
Hawksley Workman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
To celebrate the time of year please enjoy Hawksley Workman and “Hockey (The Greatest Game)”. There is a drum solo for the first minute and a half, followed by the song. The lyrics are on the wall behind the band, and you will understand Canadians love for their game more as the song goes on.
Don’t touch on sports to much anymore, but it has been an interesting few weeks. First off, the Rugby World Cup 2011was completed last week,
All Blacks
and I can’t believe this but I am now hooked on rugby. Great game and nothing beats the challenge (Haka) by the All Blacks of New Zealand at the beginning of each game. The All Blacks won it all, beating France in the final. On the way they schooled a game Canadian team by a score of 79-15.
Second up is the CFL. My beloved Saskatchewan Roughriders have crapped out. I
Taylor Field, Regina
cannot wholeheartedly cheer for any other team so I will make an objective prediction. Prior to last week I would have said the BC Lions in a cakewalk, then in true CFL fashion, they had their butts handed to them by the Hamilton Tiger Cats. Having said that, I will still go with BC, likely meeting up with Winnipeg in the Grey Cup.
Third up is the Vancouver Canucks. As I expected, they are playing as well as a non-playoff team and are already in panic mode. Roberto Luongo
Roberto Luongo
is a spent force in Vancouver and I am sure that the Canucks will make an effort to ditch him. He can’t stop anything right now. In addition they traded Mikael Samuelsson and Marco Sturm to the Florida Panthers for David Booth and Steve Reinprecht. Reinprecht heads straight for the AHL, so essentially they dumped 2 for 1. Booth, although having potential, is just another fast skater with no toughness and questionable defensive skills. He was a minus 31 in Florida last year, with 23 goals, 17 assists and 26 penalty minutes. Not the player they were needing. Even Samuelsson had more points and penalty minutes than that. All the Canucks gain is youth.
The Winnipeg Jets are rocking, doing as expected and giving the fans some hope for the future. Last night’s 9-8 victory in Philadelphia against the Flyers was both ugly and beautiful all at the same time. The Jets have an excuse to be on the bubble for the season, maybe the Canucks can learn something from the Jets.
Fourth, the World Series. Baseball is a wonderful game to watch when everything is on the line. In no other sport do you have such drama, literally hanging on every pitch. Last night was no exception. David Freese is now a legend, whose heroics will be remembered for eternity in baseball lore as will the St Louis Cardinals comeback. The Texas Rangers will have to shake this one-off if they want to win. Regardless the Series has been a true Fall Classic, and Game 7 could be one for the ages.
Need I say or write more?? Great video on YouTube of the 15 minutes prior to the game. I watched the first Winnipeg Jets game in a sports bar in
Image via Wikipedia
Montreal where there was a lot of cheering going on, but for the wrong reasons, but the beer was good and we had good seats. The place had a lineup and I spotted a couple of seats and asked the hostess if she could get us there as we were Winnipeggers and just had to see this game. Unfortunately, a 5-1 loss put a small damper on the festivities for me, but the fans there didn’t seem to care very much. How many teams have a full house at the end of a brutal loss giving them a standing ovation. It will get better. For posterity, Nik Antropov’s goal is here as well, it is historic after all.
Now we’re talking. The new Winnipeg Jets took another step towards being a real on ice product as the team unveiled its logo and and secondary logos.
At time of posting, the team has still not released their team colours or sweater design. I assume that with training camp a month away, this is a supply issue for the anticipated retail sales as it will be pretty tough to play exhibition games without jerseys. Stay tuned.
It was quite the weekend for our boys of summer. On July 9, as the Gold Coast Blue Tongues completely destroyed the Sydney Ice Dogs by a score of 7-1.  Matt Amado had a stellar game with 2 goals and 4 assists. Tobias Falk had a hat trick. The Blue Tongues thoroughly dominate the the Ice Dogs. It was a very important 3 points to the team. But, just to show that poor league rulings can destroy teams ability to control their own destinies, we have the game of July 10.
The game on this day was cancelled due to unsafe ice conditions. Fair enough, EXCEPT, the league decided that the Blue Tongues would forfeit the game, with the 3 points going to the Ice Dogs. Again, possibly, fair enough, EXCEPT, the team is not responsible for the ice, the owners of the rink are responsible. This has caused quite the furor as evidenced by the replies on the post the league made on their Facebook page. We have been ripped off, and may lose a playoff spot because of this unjust decision. Please make your voice heard and email the league at this address.
Tonight’s games are key to our heroes playoff hopes. The play 2 against the Sydney Ice Dogs and a couple of victories would go a long way to our continued coverage. In preparation, I have gone over their roster and have selected a few players for us to keep an eye on. One is a Canadian (of course) and the other played for my old hometown team, the Saskatoon Blades. I was surprised to see this, and it makes me pleased we picked the Gold Coast Blue Tongues.
The Canadian, Matt Amado, is the teams leading scorer with 29 goals and 16 assists in 16 games. He hails from Langley, BC and played junior in Penticton, BC and 4 years with Notre Dame University in NCAA hockey. He kicked around some minor leagues in North America before heading to Europe where he played in France and Italy before ending up in Australia. He had played for Gold Coast in 2007 for 1 season and set an all time scoring record with 39 goals in 20 games. A force to be reckoned with.
Our second player is an Australian who played in Canada, Adam Geric. In fairness, he was born and raised in Canada, but he does have Australian citizenship, making him a local and he does not count against the league’s import limit. He played his junior in Nanaimo for a year before moving on to the Saskatoon Blades for 2 seasons. he played one season there with NHL star Devin Setoguchi. He has played only 3 games so far this season with 1 assist. Not a star,yet!
An interesting side note, a player on Sydney, Brook Robson, played his junior hockey in Manitoba, the Charleswood Hawks in Winnipeg. I have seen a few Hawks game when I lived in the Charleswood area of Winnipeg.
I look forward to tonight’s games, which is actually Saturday night because it is already tomorrow morning there.
There was no video of The Stanley Cup in Whitefish, Montana when I posted yesterday, but there is now. There is an intro that you may or may not want to watch, and the footage of it’s night in the Great Northern Bar in Whitefish with assistant coach Doug Houda starts at the 57 second mark.
Where has the Stanley Cup been for the last few days. The answer is Montana and California.. As the grand tour began, Jeremy Jacobs, the owner of the Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins, fittingly, had the first go at it and took it to Yosemite National Park in California over the weekend. From there, it went to Whitefish, Montana on Tuesday with Assistant Coach, Doug Houda. More than 1000 people lined up in Whitefish to view the cup.
The Winnipeg Jets re-signed their captain today. Andrew Ladd signed a 5 year, 22 million dollar contract to stay put. Good on Andrew, but a little pricey based on what he has done so far. It could turn out to be a great move though if he continues to develop. The team really needed to sign him on so many levels. One big knock on Winnipeg was that no one wanted to play there, let alone stay. This signing represents that the opposite may in fact be the truth.
In other news, the Jets also signed forwards Aaron Gagnon and Rick Rypien as free agents. These would be considered as additional depth moves.
My other team made a few moves today as well. The Boston Bruins have had some addition and subtraction happenings over the past few days. Tomas Kaberle has left, signing a deal with the Carolina Hurricanes. This was expected and not entirely a bad thing for the team. To partially compensate they have signed Joe Corvo in a trade with Carolina. Michael Ryder has also left, signing a deal with the Dallas Stars.
