Tag Archives: 2010 Olympics

Counting Down to Hawks-Flyers?

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I understand the Hawks part. For months it’s been clear that the hockey team Dale Tallon built has had the necessary speed, skill and grit to reach the Stanley Cup finals. Must admit, I didn’t think they had the goaltending, but Antti Niemi has proven smarter people than me to be wrong.

Of course, it hasn’t hurt the Hawks that they’ve won a record seven straight road games in the playoffs and now lead the San Jose Sharks 2-0 heading back to Chicago. The Western Conference final could be a lot shorter than anyone would have guessed.

The part that remains confusing for me is the Philadelphia Flyers part. I was at the Flyers-Rangers game, the final game of the regular season, when Philadelphia was lucky to dispose of New York and grab that final available playoff spot (the seventh seed in the East). I had no clue from that Sunday afternoon that Philadelphia would be able to take out both New Jersey and Boston and not only be around for the Eastern Final, but leading 2-0 in the series.

And the two wins have not been flukes. Philly massacred Montreal 6-0 in the opener and then whupped the Habs 3-0 in Game 2. A Montreal team that had been scoring at will during the playoffs had just been shut out in back-to-back games while their “unbeatable” goaltender now had an embarrassing 4.50 GAA in just 120 minutes of Eastern championship series play.

Over in Chicago, Jonathan Toews, the Winnipeg kid who went to UND, has been the clear choice as Conn Smythe Trophy winner this year. He leads the playoffs in scoring and tallied the winner in a 4-2 victory over San Jose on Tuesday night. It’s amazing to think that for most of the lead-up to the 2010 Olympics, the Eastern pundits didn’t think Toews should be on Canada’s Olympic team. After proving he was the best player in that tournament, he’s proving now that he’s the best player in the world. Playing on a line with big Dustin Byfuglien and little Patrick Kane, he’s made the Hawks an offensive force. And this, starting with a guy who claims he doesn’t even worry about scoring goals.

“I don’t even really think about scoring,” he told reporters after his team’s Game 1 victory. “I want to kill penalties and I want to play with as much energy as I can and then create as much as I can in the offensive zone when that’s my role. I’ve gone into these games focused on working hard. A lot of offense has just happened as a result of hard work.”

Two hard-working teams have the upper hand heading into Games 3 of the Eastern and Western championships. One suspects the Sharks are done and if the Habs don’t snap out of it at home on Thursday, the Stanley Cup final could probably start this weekend.

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Posted in 2010 NHL playoffs, Blog

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Vancouver Olympics Coming to an End. Will This Be the Last Big Media Olympics in North America?

Posted on February 27, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

One big hockey game to go. And, yes, despite Pavol Demitra being only a crossbar away from a potential Canadian collapse and a Slovakia-USA gold medal game, I still believe Canada will bounce back, beat the Americans and get a chance to party like they’re female hockey players.

Someone asked me on Saturday if enjoyed the Olympics. Well, that’s a tough question. I loved the hockey. Period. I enjoyed some of the sports with the mute button on. Others? If the Olympic gold medal was on the line in a judged sport (figure skating, aerials, moguls, short-track — which shouldn’t be a judged sport but from what we saw in Vancouver, it is — etc.) and they decided to hold it in my backyard, I wouldn’t open the drapes to watch it. Judging at every possible level of sport is so frustratingly phoney, it’s just impossible to watch without laughing out loud.

Other than that, I did enjoy the Games. Especially ski cross, snowboard cross and long-track speedskating. I also enjoyed all of them with no sound on the TV. Frankly, if CTV and TSN had just one announcer  per sport — one of the professional play-by-play guys like Rod Black or Rod Smith (especially Rod Smith) — the Games would have been quite enjoyable. But when Catriona LeMay Doan or one of the other fawning, bullshit artists opened their mouths, I wanted to gag. Thank the lord for the mute button.

As my pal Mike Richards said on the Fan 960 in Calgary last week, “Here was a typical comment by one of the CTV analysts: ‘Yes, Rod, what a wonderful athlete who has worked so hard all her life for this special moment because you know Rod, winning is better than losing. That’s right Rod, winning is good. Losing isn’t good. We like winning, Rod. All Canadians like winning. She likes winning. Winning is better than losing.’”

Click.

After all that phoney pre-Olympic hype, the I-Believe-Own-the-Podium hogwash, the Games were a nice diversion. But will this be it for big, popular Winter Games?

These Vancouver Games were huge. It was in North America, in a great city, and the North American media was all over it. But with newspapers struggling mightily, with TV networks (in Canada, at least) cutting to the bone and losing big money and with all those shoestring internet operations trying to save every penny to pay for content, the people who travelled to Vancouver aren’t going to go to Sochi, Russia in four years. Especially for a Games that will be held with a nine-hour time difference (to CST).

Meanwhile, only three cities in the world have shown any interest at all in 2018.

It was fun to celebrate Canada’s performance in Vancouver. After all, it was an Olympics held in prime time. But do you remember what happened in Turin? Did you watch much of that at all hours of the night? Will you stay up to 3 a.m., 4 a.m. to watch in Sochi? And if the NHL chooses not to participate, will you even bother with hockey?

A lot can happen by 2014, but right now, I’d say this Vancouver Winter Olympics was the last great North American party for a long, long time.

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Posted in 2010 Winter Olympics, Blog

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Uh, Oh. The Hype is Catching Up

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Vancouver, we have a problem.

Earlier this week, CTV’s/TSH’s James Duthie hinted that “We shouldn’t blame the athletes for failing to win medals at these Games. It’s not all about medals.”

Oh, really?

Thursday night, David Pelletier and Elizabeth Manley nearly wept when Canadian figure skater Patrick Chan fell on his behind. The excuses for Chan’s missed opportunity were vomit-inducing.

We talked about this before the Olympics began. The Canadian government started it all with the silly “Own the Podium” program. Then CTV and TSN created that absolutely ridiculous I Believe campaign, suggesting Canada could win the Medal Count (all we had to do was believe) and choosing a group of Canadian athletes that were “destined” to be medal winners.

Many weren’t. Others were.

Regardless, Canada has done very well at the Games. Granted, Canada’s athletes have not owned the podium, but fourth place for a country of 30 million is pretty decent. However, what the national media promised Canadians has not come to pass. Now, the national media is starting to rev up the excuse machine.

No wonder I’ve been watching most of these Games with the mute button on.

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Posted in 2010 Winter Olympics, Blog

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Team Canada Selected. It’s Hard to Argue, but It Had Better Win.

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Here’s the list of players selected by Hockey Canada as members of the 2010 Canadian Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey Team:

GOALIES

Martin Brodeur

Roberto Luongo

Marc-Andre Fleury

DEFENCEMEN

Scott Niedermayer (C)

Drew Doughty

Brent Seabrook

Chris Pronger

Shea Weber

Dan Boyle

Duncan Keith

FORWARDS

Sidney Crosby (A)

Jarome Iginla (A)

Jonathan Toews

Mike Richards

Rick Nash

Brenden Morrow

Eric Staal

Patrick Marleau

Joe Thornton

Patrice Bergeron

Corey Perry

Ryan Getzlaff

Dany Heatley

It’s impossible to argue with Hockey Canada’s selections. By all indications, this team should win gold.

Certainly, there will be critics in Calgary who will wonder out loud how Dan Boyle, Drew Doughty and Brent Seabrook are better defencemen than Jay Bouwmeester, Dion Phaneuf and Robyn Regehr and it’s really hard to believe how the team’s No. 1 power-play punch from the point, the NHL’s top-scoring defenceman Mike Green didn’t make the team.

Scott Niedermayer, who is not having a very good year, is the captain. Whatever.

Up front, Dany Heatley’s presence will always worry me. After the way he treated the NHL, the Ottawa Senators and Edmonton Oilers with his trade demands last summer still reeks of a guy who is thinking me first. As Roberto Luongo said yesterday, “We have to check our egos and work hard as a team representing our country.” He’s right.

Is Patrice Bergeron, Corey Perry, Brenden Morrow or Patrick Marleau better than Marty St. Louis, Steven Stamkos, Dustin Penner or Brad Richards? I certainly don’t know, but the NHL statistics would suggest maybe, at best.

On first blush, this team does not have a legitimate fourth line like it did in Salt Lake City. Let’s hope head coach Mike Babcock makes it clear who will get the eight minutes of ice time per game as opposed to the guys who will get the 19 minutes.

Again, this team should win gold. After all, it was the only team that was announced live on television in its home country. It’s extremely difficult to suggest that any other team will come close.

But the real question is this: What happens if it doesn’t win gold? Then what?

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Babcock a Great Choice as Canada’s Olympic Coach

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

FULL DISCLOSURE: If you know me, you know I’m a fan of both Barry Trotz and Andy Murray.

I believe what Trotz has done with almost no money in Nashville has been remarkable and while I’ve always liked Murray (both personally and professionally), I believe what he did with the St. Louis Blues in the second half of the 2008-09 National Hockey League season was coach of the year worthy.

Both men are tremendous coaches, but more importantly, they are tremendous people and I have been on a personal crusade to get both of them named to the coaching staff of Team Canada.

Having said that, I would have no problem if they were both assistants, along with Boston’s Claude Julien.

That’s because I truly believe Mike Babcock would be an outstanding choice as head coach.

Babcock’s name has been floating around for awhile, but yesterday, it became clear that he was now the front-runner for the job. Today, it became apparent that the head coach of the Detroit Red Wings was going to be officially named the head coach of Team Canada at a news conference later this week.

Genius choice.

Babcock has all the skills, mainly because he’s become a successful NHL coach handling good hockey teams. He knows stars and can deal with egos. And despite the fact he’ll demand that all egos be checked at the locker room door, he’ll still have to deal with some of the biggest egos in Canadian hockey. It’s a pretty good guess to think he already knows that.

Babcock has a career NHL coaching record of 282-139-71 and has won 58 postseason games. He has coached Detroit to four consecutive seasons of 50-plus victories, won a Stanley Cup and reached a final, guided Canada to the 2004 world championship and won the 1997 world junior title. He’s perfect.

Word is Ken Hitchcock will be one of the assistants. I still like Trotz, Murray and Julien, but it will be up to Babcock to choose his own guys and make this thing work.

Canada should win gold in men’s ice hockey at the 2010 Games. After all, we’re at home.

Babcock’s hiring is just the first step toward making that happen.

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We called another one: TSN’s collective brain WAS bigger than a walnut.

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Some things you just know are going to happen. Between France’s 0-0 snoozer with Romania and the Netherlands’ 3-0 blistering of the undermanned Italians in the European Soccer Championship came the news that you will now hear the Hockey Night in Canada theme, Canada’s second national anthem, on all NHL games and Olympic hockey games televised on TSN from now on.

From TSN’s standpoint that’s not a surprise. Even if you had just a little, tiny, squirrel brain, you could have said to yourself, “If those morons at CBC actually do dump the theme, we’ll pay what we need to pay in order to get the rights.”

In fact, in our Friday blog entitled, “CBC to drop Canada’s “second national anthem” along with Bob Cole. Sad,” we wrote the following: “At first, I lamented CBC’s decision to dump the theme and then I thought, “Well if TSN has a collective brain bigger than a walnut, those folks will start sending cheques to the composer, Dolores Claman, and start using the theme themselves.” TSN’s broadcast crew is already better than CBC’s, they might just as well take the theme music — the best there is and, without argument, Canada’s second national anthem. 

Yesterday, the news story arrived…

TORONTO (CP) — CTV has acquired the rights to the song that’s been CBC’s “Hockey Night in Canada” theme for the past 40 years.

CTV and Copyright Music and Visuals, the company that controls use of the classic song composed by Dolores Claman, announced Monday afternoon that CTV acquired all rights to the song in perpetuity.

The network says it will use the song on NHL broadcasts on TSN, RDS and during the broadcaster’s coverage of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

CTV says it made an agreement in principle Friday with Copyright Music and Visuals after CBC announced a contest to find a new theme song.

The contest announcement followed months of negotiations that failed to result in a new licensing agreement between CBC and the agent. 

CBC lost the rights to the tune because it made a giant error in judgment that will now haunt it forever. 

The press release read as follows:

“The song has a long and storied history in Canadian sports and has become ingrained in the hearts and minds of hockey fans across the country. It is an iconic tune, embraced by Canadians everywhere, and we felt it was imperative to save it. We know we will be in hockey forever, so there’s no doubt this acquisition will create value for us,” said Rick Brace, President, Revenue, Business Planning and Sports, CTV Inc. “It’s an honour and a privilege to own such a cherished piece of Canadiana.

 

“I am very moved by how so many Canadians have taken the hockey theme to heart. We are so pleased the song has found a new home,” said Claman. “Throughout our negotiations, CTV displayed a tremendous amount of respect for my family and the song. ‘The Hockey Theme’ means so much to Canadians, and we know it’s in good hands with CTV.”

 

Poor old CBC. They actually hired sports lawyer Gord Kirke on Monday morning to negotiate a new deal. By 3 p.m. on Monday, they’d lost the song forever.

 

Obviously, the people who run the CBC do not have brains as big as walnuts. Or squirrels. 

 

However, we must ask: “…and that’s the kind of leadership that our $975 million a year worth of tax money is buying?” 

 

Sorry. Now, I really have to wonder who has the tiny, little brain.

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Posted in 2008 NHL Playoffs, Blog, general sports

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