Canada is Golden once again!

Forgive the title, but I'm quite excited about the win. Please don't throw anything at me.

As excited as I am, I'm still rather irritated that Crosby had to get the goal, and subsequently be shown every two seconds just to remind us that he exists. As Elise pointed out, many other players (Toews, Miller, Keith, Parise, Nash, Iginla, etc) had much better tournaments, but of course Crosby can do no wrong. He may be great for the game and all, but it'd be nice to see some new faces being promoted and talk about the team efforts as well.

The Canadian goalies did not impress me terribly much, and in my opinion Scott Niedermayer was pretty good at the beginning of the tourney, but made some key mistakes later on. I was also very unimpressed with Patrick Kane. I didn't see any of his usual smoothness on the ice.

It was fun following all the tweets from Vancouver, and I think Brendan Shanahan is doing a good job as an ambassador for the league.

The game was insane, and it was great to see how excited the fans were. I love going to tourneys with Canadian fans, the passion they bring to the game is unrivaled.

It was nice to see Nash spread his wings a little bit, and in the words of Pierre McGuire, he was a monster.

GM Steve Yzerman did a great job picking players who know each other, as well as players with starpower. For the most part the combination worked really well, and Canada was a force to reckon with (minus the ending of the Slovakian game) for the last four games they needed to win.

Oh yeah and the NHL resumes tomorrow with the Red Wings playing the Avalanche. Don't forget to set your fantasy rosters...

Go get messy, Vancouver, and enjoy the win! I don't envy the city workers...

OLYMPICS!!!

If you couldn't tell by the title, I'm pretty excited about the Olympics. (To clarify, the Olympic Games. My internship advisor is a forester and thought I meant the coastal mountain range in Washington state, but those mountains/rainforest are full of banana slugs and non-stop rain in the winter, so no.)

I have to admit, I've spent a lot more time doing homework and studying for midterms than I have watching the Olympics, but I've made time to watch all of the men's Canadian hockey games, and some of the others as time allows. By far the best hockey day was Sunday, or as my friends back home called it, "hate day". In Oregon we can't use words like that, so I called it "rivalry day" while explaining the finer points/major points of hockey to the revolving door of people who watched with me.

Stream of consciousness:

-I really enjoyed the U.S./Canada game...even if I did not enjoy the outcome.

-Thus far I have managed to get my roommate on the path to addiction to hockey, and have gotten the majority of my good friends out here to stop making fun of me for liking hockey

-I'm a little disappointed that it's pretty much a three team competition.

-Less than excited for the Russia/Canada match today, mostly because I have to write at least 5 pages during it

-Ski jumping seems like a really bad idea on so many levels

-People who do not come from a wintery place do not appreciate just how little there can be to do in the wintertime outside. They are not very kind to the more obscure winter sports

-The biathlon is really cool

-Sidney Crosby needs to stop looking like a petulant child every time the camera is on him.

-Professors do not accept the Olympics as a reason to extend deadlines.

-The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, however; does accept the Olympics as a legitimate reason to move a deadline.

-Google Calendar and iCal are friends, and this is extremely useful.

-It still freaks me out when there are flowers and trees blooming before Valentine's Day.

-Canadians do not seem to judge what medals they get, as long as they win. Case in point: my Canadian friends were all quite excited that the Canadian pair won gold for ice dancing.

-Caribou Coffee still REALLY needs to have a location west of Denver. Preferably in Salem.

-Canada should focus less on curbstomping teams they know they can beat, and more on beating Russia and the U.S.

Hope everyone is enjoying the Olympics and watching something new and interesting. Soon I'll probably write something pertaining to an actual Minnesota team. At this point, the Twins as well as the Wild are fair game, because BASEBALL SEASON IS STARTING SOON!

After a long, long hiatus...

I might be back. At least for a little while, if for no other reason then to profess my great love for the Winter Olympics.

I took an unintentional break from blogging to write most of my senior thesis, take some hard classes, be a good Greek, apply for summer internships, start applying to schools for a B.S. in environmental science, have many surgeries, and just generally get my life together. Fortunately my life is coming together just in time for me to have small amounts of free time to watch the Winter Olympics which are currently practically in my backyard up in Vancouver, B.C.

The only events I've been able to watch thus far are a couple of short program pairs figure skating performances, two speed skating races, and a mogul skiing race, but thus far it's all been excellent. I heard the Great One does not appear to like the rain, the Opening Ceremonies were highly Vancouveresque (AKA you have to be on drugs to fully appreciate them), and the torch malfunctioned. I also hear from reports on the ground that it has been pouring rain pretty much the whole time. Oh well, still excited. My thesis draft is due at 2:15 PM on Tuesday, and after that I fully intend to sit on the couch and watch until 9ish.

I also hear that the new management wants me to be nearly as angry with them as the old management. Johnsson? Really? When you could have gotten rid of Zidlicky? At least Barker had the decency to score a goal in his debut or I would have been even more upset. Now we just have to work on getting Patrick Sharp and teaching Shep that he should stop trying to fight.

As a side note, I'm really digging the new, streamlined Team Canada hockey jerseys and the awesome red mittens. No wonder my housemates all think I'm a traitor.

As a second side note, there is a really cool, free iPhone app that tells you what events are on TV that day and what channel. It pops up right away in the app store on the iPhone...