Team Canada World Junior Team is Pretty Good

Team Canada just defeated Team Slovakia by a score 8-2. They are now 3-0 in the tournament. They have scored thirty goals. They have surrendered two goals. They hit, they score, and most importantly they win.

The tournament is not over. They still must face the Americans on New Year's Eve. It will probably be the toughest challenge they face. Sweden is pretty good too, so we will see.

If this tournament is any indication, and it probably is the best indicator out there, hockey development in Canada is very strong. The young players that are being produced are manhandling the rest of the world on the hockey rink. They look like they belong at another level.

All this is good for the Canadian program. You should never apologize for being good at something. I don't know how good this is for hockey as a sport throughout the world. The rest of the world needs to pull up their socks. It really isn't all that fun to be the best at something that no one else cares about.

I know they have not faced the Americans or the Swedes or even the Russians yet. These will be the true tests. These will be the games that will show if Canadian development is really head and shoulders above the rest. If you look at the facts it will take a lot for any of these teams to slow down this Canadian team. I don't think they can be stopped, they look just that good.

This Team Canada World Junior Team is pretty good.

The Colts

As I write this the Indianapolis Colts are undefeated. They are the only team who have not lost this year. Today they play the New York Jets in a late game. They should win. They may not. That's why they play the games, right.

To date they have won 14 games. To win 14 games in an NFL season is very difficult to do. To win those 14 games in a row is even a bit harder. To win the 14 games from the start of the season, is even a bit harder.

Next week they play the Buffalo Bills. They don't have a record as good as the Jets, so you could say that they have a real chance to go 16-0 in the regular season.

That would be impressive, very impressive but, we already know that. There are other things that make this really impressive. They have been in the national spotlight for the whole season. Peyton Manning is a bona fide star in the NFL and people watch him. They have a new head coach. They have been a good team for a long time but have remained very good longer than many players careers. They find guys to replace the old guard before its too late.

This is a class organization. When they drafted Payton Manning, oh so long ago now, they decided that they would become a winning franchise, and they have. They have stayed that way.

The Indianapolis Colts are probably going to go 15-0 by the end of the day today, and if they do that they will probably go 16-0 in the regular season. Measured with any device, you will come up with very impressive.

The End of an Era .... Again

On December 17, 2009 the Winnipeg Blue Bombers relieved Mike Kelly of his duties as head coach. It was quite the year both on and off the field. I'm not sure how the players feel about this. There has been some reaction in the media. There has been a lot of commentary in the media.

Here's what I know.

When Mike Kelly took over my beloved Bombers about a year ago it had an eerily similar feeling to when Jeff Reinbold took over the Bombers back in the 90's. There was a lot of talk early about how the team is going to be great. It wasn't.

As the season did not go as planned Mike Kelly became more and more confrontational with everyone outside the team and even swore at CJOB Sports Director and Hall of Fame Broadcaster Bob Irving.

It wasn't a good fit.

Maybe he is not meant to be a head coach. There are a lot of people who are really good in the #2 or #3 position but when you make them the boss they do not perform how everyone expected them to. That's part of being human.

So it appears that the Blue Bombers are accepting that they made a mistake. That is definitely a good first step, but now they have to get it together and find a guy that will make positive difference as a head coach.

I can say I was there when, ...., but I wish I couldn't

Welcome to Bomberland, Instability Ahead

So I as I was driving to work this morning I was thinking to myself, "I need to write on the sports blog, but I don't have too much to say on anything until some more football is played tonight." Then the Winnipeg Blue Bombers came to my rescue. That's right my home town and favourite team. The team that causes my sister's birth to be delayed a day so my parents could go to a game.

In one day, they gave us a lot to think about.

First, you know there is a lot if you start with first, CEO Lyle Bauer resigned from the club.

Then, Coach Mike Kelly was arrested in Pennsylvania.

I'm going out on a limb here, but things are going to look a bit different at Canad Inns Stadium come June.

Lyle Bauer did a good job. The football club was is pretty rough shape when he took over. He put the house in order and even has a rainy day fund. We will here in the coming days why he left. The story will come out, it always does.

As for the coach, this does not bode well for him. He is already heavily criticized by the fans and the media. He seems to have rubbed both groups the wrong way. A lot of people say he is a good guy but if he is guilty (I am not saying he is, these things can be very different than they initially look) he will lose some good guy points with the people who do support him. In pro sports winning cures nearly everything that ails you, well, I don't think he has done enough winning yet to let this slide.

In time the truth will come out about all that has gone on today. I don't know if this is good for the organization or if it is another setback in the quest for the former glory this team is trying to rekindle.

We will be watching Bomberland over the days, weeks, and months to come, but there could be a lot of turbulence on this trip.

OK Tiger

Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world. He is head and shoulders above the rest. When he plays the questions is Tiger or the field. He plays so well out of bad lies, maybe that is one of the things that makes him so appealing. If he is playing out of a good lie his approach shot will land just inside yours so he can watch the line when you putt. He can handle the pressure of being a one man machine. No teammates, no coach, just him. Yes he has his caddy and yes a caddy is important, but no one ever says that was a caddy error. He wears all the mistakes on his own and takes all the glory on his own.

It's starting to look like golf is all he is good at.

There is a rather long list of women that he has been unfaithful to his (super hot) wife with. So being a good husband is not on his list of things that he has been very good at.

Once this list became public, he has not managed the situation very well. I realize that he has people that deal with this for him, but they are not doing a very good job and he should have noticed and put them on the right course.

He is not doing a very good job at fixing the problem. Changing everything at once is rarely successful and becoming a recluse will only to serve to keep this story alive a lot longer.

So what should he be doing?

If he wasn't ready to settle down he probably shouldn't have but we all make mistakes and truly you are measured on how you handle your mistakes. So he got married and was having a whole lot on the side. Apparently this was not in the deal when he got married. I'm not going to belabour this point.

So what should he be doing?

He should be making a public statement, in person, in front of camera and reporters. Postings on his website are cold and impersonal. It could be written by anyone, and probably was. He should spill the facts in a straight up manner. He should clear the air.

He also should be playing golf. The world we live in is a lot of 'what have you done for me lately.' Well, lately Tiger, you have been cheating. We need to see him golfing. We need to see him winning. That is familiar to us. It will feel right to us. We will fall back into that groove very quickly. Yes there will be a lot said about him on is comeback. Yes the commentators on TV will talk way too much about it. Yes all eyes will be on him, but this is what he is good at.

Many athletes have problems staying faithful. It's no secret these days. As long as they win we seem to forgive, or at least look the other way. We will be the same with Tiger. You may think it will be different but it won't. We may not look at him as squeaky clean again. He may seem a bit more human. We now know he is not perfect. That may change the mystique but if he wins we will invite him back into our hero basket and that is what he really needs.

OK Tiger, its your shot, you're deep in the rough, put in on the green near the pin like you so often do.

Canadian Hockey

It's and exciting year in hockey. With the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in February, Canada has an opportunity to shine on the international stage. One of the brightest jewels in the crown will be hockey.

I hope Team Canada wins every tournament it enters including the World Juniors, the Olympics, and the World Championships. I hope we do not lose a game, a period, a shift, or a battle in any of these tournaments. I am a proud Canadian and a big hockey fan.

I also hope the rest of the world gets better at hockey. That may sound a bit strange but I do not want to live in a country that is the best in the world in a three or four horse race. On the women's side that may even be a stretch.

I want Canadian hockey to continue to get better but it doesn't matter if no one else cares. It's a bit like being the tallest midget in the world. You are the top of the class but it is not relevant to most of the people out there.

Soccer's World Cup is a really big deal, arguably bigger than the Olympics. It is because nearly everyone in the world cares. Hockey is important in Canada, a few parts of the USA, Scandinavia, and Russia. It has a lesser following in several other countries. Being the best at hockey is being the best at something that doesn't matter to 9 out of 10 people on the planet. Is it truly relevant on the world stage. Do we want it to be?

In some ways being the best at hockey is very Canadian. We don't like to ruffle too many feathers. We are polite and apologize for being great. So, if we are great at something that doesn't matter to too many, then we won't upset the apple cart.

I want hockey to be more important. I want it to be a real struggle to win at it internationally. If it is not a sure thing then the reward is so much better when you do get it.

My Curling Woes

I play the fine old game of curling. It gives me something to do and work at through the winter. I enjoy playing it. A good curling game can be really exciting to be part of. I do admit I am not a big fan of watching it.

I'm pretty good. Not perfect by any means but I can make some pretty good shots, just not all the time.

That's the problem.

I seem to be making one really bad shot per game. I mean really bad. On Sunday I made a triple take-out. Yup, I managed to knock all three of our rocks out of the house with a single shot. We didn't win the game. Today, I missed my last shot horribly in one end, leaving them lying 5. The real problem was they still had a rock left, so they managed to pick up 6. Really bad if you ask me. We were not able to recover from that one.

I know I am never going to win a world championship or go to the Olympics and curl. The one bad shot I seem to make every game will definitely take care of it, but I usually have quite a bit of fun most of the time and that is probably what keeps me coming back.

Head Shots

Two major North American professional leagues are having a bit of a crisis with head injuries. Both the NFL and the NHL seem to be struggling with what to do about the apparent increase in concussions their players are suffering.

Here's what I have noticed so far.

Hockey players who, because they are on skates, are travelling twice as fast as football players and are wearing half the helmet of football players.

The worst hits in football are the helmet on helmet.

The worst hits in hockey are shoulder to helmet.

Fighter pilots can eject out of a supersonic aircraft that is coming apart and not suffer any head trauma.

Interesting.

I don't think the powers that be in either league will change the rules to influence how players play to better protect them. Honestly, I don't think I want them to but, maybe we can leverage some technology to increase the chance of a head shot not causing permanent neurological damage.

We need to explore covering more of a hockey players head. We need to make the exterior of hockey shoulder pads softer. We need to look at making the exterior of helmets in both sports softer so they absorb some energy and not transfer it to the skull and eventually the brain. If the shell of the helmet can absorb and dissipate some of the energy, and the padding inside can absorb the rest, both these sports will be much safer in the long run.

I think we can accept our professional athletes having arthritis from playing but we do not want them to lose their faculties and becoming drooling, incoherent blobs just to entertain and inspire us.

The answer is in technology, if the leagues will not embrace it the players must force the issue, or change will never come.