I turned on the World Junior Championship final game last night and watched overtime and the shootout, which had me on the edge of my seat. The USA managed to pull it out in the end, with Tyler Parsons stopping all 5 shots in the shootout, and Troy Terry was the hero again with the lone shootout score. Can’t wait for this tournament to come back to Buffalo next year!
Tag: Team Canada
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Unthinkable
I freely admit I dozed off last night, when Canada was up 3-0 and looked to be in complete control. I stirred for a few minutes, saw them still leading 3-2, and went back to sleep. My wife came home from work and changed the channel to Top Chef (BARF) so imagine my surprise when I check twitter later and see that Russia kept right on scoring and WON. Was it a comeback or a chokejob? Probably depends on your allegiance, really, how you look at it. After winning 5 straight golds, that’s two straight silvers for Team Canada, and as I stated before, it’s great for the tournament. Congratulations to the Russian team (who apparently got so schnockered they got kicked off the plane home), my condolences to Zack Kassian, Marcus Foligno and the rest of Team Canada, and see you in Calgary next year.
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Canada Needs Us
Pondering the Team USA loss to Canada in the World Junior Championships last night (4-1 and it wasn’t that close really, thanks Jack Campbell!) and the split mindset the Canada fans have. On the one hand, they WERE the ones chanting “We Want USA!” while winning their quarterfinal game. On the other hand, they dismiss the USA, saying that we aren’t a rival. Which is it? Here’s the truth:
THEY need US.
Canada desperately needs the US to care about this tournament. While Sweden and Finland will always be in the mix, and Russia is OK but not where they were 30 years ago for international competition, but how fun is it to play them? Hard to chirp fans when most don’t speak your language. No, they need Americans to care about the competition. If you’ve been reading any of the Twitter or blog coverage from our neighbor to the north, they’ve been doing everything they can to try and pull us in, whether it’s jabbing at our patriotism, insulting our cities (thanks for helping them with that, Etem), or bringing up the Olympic tournament as if the grown-up game matters when thinking about this. It must drive Canadians crazy that we can shrug off the loss so easily, when they’ve been thinking about last year constantly, sharpening their skates and taping their sticks, listening to Bryan Adams and watching Brendan Fraser’s Dudley Do-Right. American coverage of the tournament (beyond a few die-hards) is basically teams tweeting about good performances of their prospects. Heck, once I got the NHL Network, that’s why I started watching the Junior games (Memorial Cup along with WJC), to get a glimpse of Tyler Myers, among other prospects. It’s neat to have that inside knowledge of a guy before he gets to the show. It’s fun to get all patriotic and cheer our kids. We’re taking our medicine on Twitter, but by tonight, we’ll be back to worrying about the Sabres forwards or mocking the Devils about Kovy’s contract.
And it will drive Canadians NUTS.
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Shootouts, Showdowns, and Angry Eyebrows
Some random thoughts from someone who’s sports-watching was limited over the holidays…
1. So I guess Drew ‘Angry Eyebrows’ Stafford sure does love playing the Bruins, eh? Another hat trick, this time in a wild 7-6 shootout victory. Stafford’s third goal tied the game with 30 seconds to go, and he added a shootout ‘goal’ too. Tyler Ennis made some moves for the shootout winner on a night that wasn’t exactly goaltender friendly.
2. Canada-USA goes down at the Arena tonight, in the semifinal round of the World Junior Championship. Patriotic fervor is in full effect, even with the limited number of Americans who are aware of/care about the tournament. All you need to know is that you can cheer for USA to beat Canada in hockey, and we won the last one too. Let’s do it.
3. Tomorrow’s Sabres game is at 9pm, which isn’t terrible, but the one after that is 10:30pm. For someone that works at 6am, that sucks.