A Post For Wonderful Surprises

I hope you did not get your hopes too high at the prospect of wonderful surprises because today's title is a misnomer, in fact you might call it an out and out lie because the focus for today is on completely unsurprising things and has very little to do with wonder and a lot more to do with depressing reality.

Where to even start. The Canadian Juniors won the gold medal today and this isn't actually depressing so much as it is unsurprising and uninspiring, especially after so many people rang the alarms so furiously after that one single loss back in the first round, the first loss for baby Team Canada since I don't know how long but we are talking years here and suddenly that's all it takes to question whether this team of maybe-one-day-future-studs can win the gold. It was pretty silly. I don't know what it is but maybe it's because I don't follow the tournament much farther than Story is Cont. on page S4, but it was easy money for me to pick Canada as the eventual winner. I don't know how many more straight golds it will take for Canadians to realize that they have the best junior system in the world and that these yearly international tournaments provide the same level of excitement and competition of your average round of mini-golf. Canadian domination of international ice hockey was fun at first, now I think it's just boring.


Surprise number two. The Toronto Maple Leafs are not a very good team. This is pretty much indisputable these days even if nobody on the company payroll wants to say it. Toronto lost to Philadelphia earlier tonight, and get this, this is the really unsurprising thing , they blew the game with two minutes to go in the third. I know! Who could have seen a finish like that!

It's not even surprising anymore when the clock hits five left in the third you just need to keep one eye behind Toronto's goalie because you know there will be some heavy action back there before the buzzer goes. So when Toronto fell behind a man to Phillie with just minutes left to play with the score tied 2-2 you could have reliably turned off your tv right then and gone off to do something more productive, confidant that your Leafs would find some special new way to lose and disappoint you.

The Leafs are 1-5 in their last six if I read the results properly. The Leafs occupy a special portion of the NHL standings reserved for only the really mediocre, the teams that can win two in a row and than just as easily peel off three straight losses and come back with a straight face and tell their fans that there is something more in the tank even though that is what they have said all season. It has been noted by those deliriously devoted to this hockey team that thanks to the particularly mediocre East Conference, the Leafs are never more than four or five points out of a playoff spot and that anything can happen, you know?

Oh but they are so hopelessly romantic. The Leafs are never far from that final eight slot but they are never really close either. To think that this team can suddenly reel off five or six straight wins and then motor on down the home stretch at some wonderful .600 clip is some bizarre dream work that completely ignores the body of work this team has put up all season long.

There is no consistency and no secondary scoring on this team. And yet we the fans must continue to listen to John Ferguson Junior and Richard Peddie tell us that it is not wise to make hasty decisions in this business. Hasty! It's like they lack any sort of perspective or sense of irony or at the very least have nothing but contempt for the fans, the only people who would deign to hold them accountable for turning this team into a mediocre halfway home for players with no where better to be. Hasty! It's like they are incapable of remembering anything farther back than five games ago. The team we have now is just as bad as it was a month ago, two months ago and it is not improving visibly. But we can't act just because the team isn't playing well right now. Right now? I can think of just one stretch of hockey this season when you could have reliably called the Leafs a good team and I think that lasted about ten games at the top.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't want Fergie to do anything. I'd rather he didn't touch the team because you can only see him making some ugly desperation act on deadline day sending more draft picks and prospects for another goalie as he, in that JFJ way, mumbles triumphantly that he has fixed the goaltending situation except he won't mention that this is the third time in his three years that the goaltending needed saving and this is all too depressing because it is all too plausible because we already know what our GM is capable when he's desperate.

I've said it before but obviously not loud enough but Toronto needs to fire Fergie, and Pettie too while we're at it and they need to install someone with experience and iron balls and the courage to trade Mats Sundin and the GM savvy to trade McCabe or Kubina or both and then he needs to start actively rebuilding for next year.

I know how tempting that four point gap looks right now and how close that this team may look on paper but if you have been following this team honestly, I don't know how you can conclude they can or should make the playoffs. I'd rather see them tank now and come back next year with something plausible than to see them continue to bundle along blindly wishing and hoping for that multi-game win streak to happen. Because it won't. And if it does, you know that the Leafs are just as capable of matching it with a losing streak of equal or greater value. This is our hockey team.

Jason

So Four French-Canadian Referees Walk into a Bar...

There's a crisis in the nation's capital these days, and at the centre of it is Shane Doan.

No, Parliament has not launched a Royal Commission to investigate how an only slightly above average hockey player who consistently puts up less than spectacular numbers is both Phoenix's franchise player, and current captain of Team Canada, but rather, certain politicians have taken issue with a two year old incident in which Doaner was alleged to have aimed an anti-French remark at a French ref, in Montreal no less. Politicians from Quebec, actually. They seem to have a problem with Doan's captaincy, despite that the allegations were never proven, the NHL did not punish him, and to quote Jeremy Roenick, Doan is "the kind of guy who says 'fudge'."

This is a non-issue. Doan's not the kind of guy who would say something like that, and frankly, I think most people had forgotten about the incident, except of course Quebec, where their freaking motto is "Je me souviens".

If you want to get angry about something Parliament, get angry about the fact that the best we could do for a captain was Shane Doan. Now that's a cause I could get behind.

"Mr. Speaker, how can we justify, in this day and age, making a player like Shane Doan, with his history, captain of Team Canada? The international community is watching, Mr Speaker. Do you know how many points he scored last season? It's embarrassing."

Jason

They Can Win A Gold Medal, But They Can't Even Buy Themselves The Champagne To Celebrate

Uh oh, it turns out we here at 64 Years and Counting are very, very bad Canadians. First, we spoke out against the prospect of a seventh Canadian hockey team joining the NHL (which, as transgressions go, would seem to be on par with a Catholic spitting on an image of the Virgin Mary). And now we have the gall to go and watch about 48 seconds of Canada's entire (and very successful) run at the World Junior Championship in Sweden.

That's grounds for revoking citizenship, if we're not mistaken.

An E12 back-page insert in most other places in the hockey playing world, the Juniors are front page news in Canada, for better or worse. We don't understand the thrill of watching twenty kids you've never heard of who still have trouble growing facial hair, let alone scoring highlight reel goals, but apparently there must be something to it, as millions of people tune in for each of Canada's games every time.

It's become a holiday "tradition", if you'll believe TSN, but the numbers don't lie. And neither does the press coverage. A lot of people seem to give a damn about this, but still, we don't get it.

Sure, maybe some of those kids will end up as future stars (that Toews kid, for example) but really, if past junior teams have taught us anything, most of those kids will end up as blue chip grunts, not marquee names.

The patriotic thrill of watching a red maple leaf dash up the ice? Now were on to something. Nothing gets people watching like a winner, and our junior teams have a funny habit of doing just that. This was our third straight actually. Woah, we don't even watch the damn thing, and we're bragging already. That's some powerful mojo.

Seriously though, we object to the Junior championships on the same grounds we object to college sports. You're putting kids on freaking pedestals and it's not right. These guys aren't ready for media scrutiny; most of them are still in school (or, old enough to be...). And these guys can't even profit off their exploits. That's quite the system. Doesn't apply so much to the the Junior tourney mind you, they wouldn't be getting paid no matter how old they were, but it really bothers us about American collegiate sports. All the media attention, all the money that rolls into it, and the players can't touch a penny of it.

But that has nothing to do with Junior Hockey. Back on topic.

It doesn't help that the Leafs farm system is always so woefully underrepresented at this thing. Excepting last year, when the gold medal game featured Leaf prospects in both nets, there never seems to be much, or any, Leaf presence. It gets a little depressing, actually.

Maybe we'll get into when we ourselves are a little older, and by a little older, we mean old enough to be able to look at the roster and not be able to say, "Hey, those guys were born the same year as I was!"

No really, true story.

Jason

We Promise We''ll Do Better This Time

It's time for our second round predictions for the NHL playoffs. We didn't do as well as we thought we did in the first round, going 4 for 8. But this time, we promise that all of our picks will be guaranteed 100%, no ifs ands or buts. Unless they turn out all wrong, in which case, you never met us, got it?

Eastern Conference

Ottawa (1) vs Buffalo (4)
This should be great match up. Both teams are young and fast, and both have unproven goalies backing them up. But once gaain, betting against the Senators is a fools game. As much as we'd like to see Ottawa go down flaming 4-0 to Buffalo, we don't see that happening. Ottawa wins in six.

Carolina (2) vs New Jersey (3)
Carolina showed that they were prone to mistakes against Montreal, while New Jersey showed that they were prone to wiping the floor with their opponent in sweeping New York. Martin Brodeur is head and shoulders above youngster Cam Ward in net, and Patrick Elias is carrying his team's offensive load. Carolina will definitely make it close, but this one can only go one way. New Jersey in six.

Western Conference

San Jose (5) vs Edmonton (8)
We bet against Edmonton in the first round, and got burned. However, that's not going to stop us from picking San Jose over the Oilers in this round. The Sharks can rely on so many players to step up, and Edmonton has to bank on Dwayne Roloson continuing his lights out perfomance. Sharks in five.

Anaheim (6) vs Colorado (7)
It's hard to chose which was the bigger upset, Colorado over Dallas, or Anaheim over Calgary. Either way, these to teams are here now, and the onus is on them to prove that their berths in the second round weren't flukes. Our gut is telling us to go with Colorado, which took care of the Stars so easily that one can't help but think that momentum is going to carry over. Colorado in six.

In other news, Team Canada played its first game in the IIHF World Hockey Championships (aka The Loser's Tournament) against Denmark 5-3. It was hardly an impressive win, Canada blew a three goal lead in the second, but still came out on top. To give you idea of the depth of Team Canada, they've fielded a team consisting of guys like Mike Comrie, Dan Hamhuis, and rookies Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, and they're still favourites to win it all. Canada's top line consists of Sidney Crosby sandwiched between Brad Boyes and Patrice Bergeron. They're back stopped by Columbus' Marc Denis (what, no Luongo?).

Hardly the finest batch of boys to wear the red and white, sure, but they're still more than enough to take down the best Europe has to offer. And besides, it's not like anybody in Canada is actually paying attention to it. In terms of hockey importance, the World Championships are a slight head above the Spengler Cup.

In other, other news, Josh Towers was his usual self last night, allowing the Red Sox to milk him for seven runs through five innings. With A.J Burnett done for at least another month, the Jays desperately need Towers to start winning ball games.

In other, other, other news, the Phoenix Suns, home of Super Canuck Steve Nash, have forced a game seven against Kobe Bryant, er... the LA Lakers. Unless Kobe can put up another 80 point game, this one is going the Suns way.

Later,

Jason