Tendo City

Here's the link: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbi...areas.html

Quote:Olympic security officials have rolled out plans to create so-called free speech areas during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, similar to the protest zones used in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

What does this even say about a democracy when the right to free speech is only guaranteed within certain designated areas? Assistant RCMP Commissioner weighed in on it, saying "anywhere you participate in lawful protest is legal and lawful in Canada. It doesn’t have to be in a free speech area." Then why even create "Free Speech Areas"? Is it because any protest taking place outside FSAs won't be considered "legal" and "lawful" for the duration of the Olympics?

Quote:The Integrated Security Unit will also monitor potential threats, using more than 900 closed-circuit cameras, which Mercer promised would be removed when the Olympics are over.

Potential threats convienently contained in the FSAs? Also, whether or not they'll actually be removed... we'll see about that.

Quote:Vancouver police will also monitor the movements of the city's homeless, some of whom will have to be moved in the interest of safety, said deputy chief Steve Sweeney.

"We currently have a few homeless that are residing within very close proximity to some of the venues. And those people, we will assist them in relocating elsewhere," said Sweeney.

Oh Jesus. All to create the illusion to the rest of the world that Vancouver is a clean and perfect city, free from poverty, homelessness, and danger. I hope that none of the tourists who visit during the Games don't accidentally find themselves in East Hastings, one of the worst and most notorious drug-markets in North America (think West Baltimore in The Wire), as well as being the first location in North America to start a needle-exchange program and the first place in North America to create a government-sanctioned, legally supervised area for narcotic injections (the wonderfully aptly named Insite). That'll shatter the illusion pretty damn quickly.

I love the Olympics. Every two years I'm glued to the TV whenever they're on. But I could do without all the bullshit that accompanies them. "Free speech area" my ass. I shouldn't have to be told where I'm allowed to excercise my Charter-guaranteed rights. And a memo to Vancouver: the alarming homeless rate will still exist in your city during the two weeks where you try to convince the world that it doesn't.

Seeing as how I'll be in Vancouver all next week at the Olympics I retract everything I said above. Wooo, Olympic Fever! I might visit a few Free Speech Areas, maybe, but I don't really care to protest. Also, I'll be staying as far away as possible from East Hastings and I know I'll be content with limiting my stay to the Comfortable, Presentable, World-Friendly Fake Vancouver.

A nice article I just read on Salon about the Olympics in Canada, punctuated by the typical Canadian modesty the author talks about, as well as the smug assertion that Canada is not America, also important to Canadian national identity:

Quote:As a Canadian living in New York for the last four years, I know full well what most people think of my country's showmanship skills. During my first week here, one of my graduate school classmates approached me after class.

"Can I ask you a question about Canada?" he asked.

Sure, I replied, expecting something about healthcare or Anne Murray. Nope.

"Why are all you Canadians so terribly boring?"

Canadian national identity has always been a curious mixture of American populism and British propriety, a fact that, along with our climate, geographical size and complicated relationship with our neighbor to the south, has led us to be suspicious of acting too impulsively or dramatically. Some people might call that boring; we call that prudent. We’re the only country in the Americas to have gained our independence from Europe without violence -- choosing, instead, to pursue it through a series of incremental accords. As Pierre Berton, Canada’s best-known historian, put it, "If this lack of revolutionary passion has given us a reasonably tranquil history, it has also, no doubt, contributed to our well-known lack of daring."

Friday night, when the Vancouver Olympics kick off their opening ceremonies, it will be Canada’s turn to put on a global show, and it’s fair to say nobody’s expecting a rerun of Beijing 2008: Estimated to cost over $100 million, that affair offered a spectacular mix of highbrow artistry and technical razzle-dazzle, with approximately 14,000 performers, a 16-ton globe that emerged from the stadium floor, footprint-shaped fireworks marching across the sky, and a jaw-dropping floating torchbearer. So how does a country built on self-effacement celebrate itself in front of the entire world?

Sure, we’ve had our moments of national pageantry, most notably the successful 1967 World's Fair in Montreal, which was timed to coincide with the centennial anniversary of Canada's birth. But the World’s Fair was more about celebrating utopianism than Canada itself. The 1976 Olympics in Montreal were marred by financial difficulties, and their most noteworthy piece of pageantry was a leaning Olympic stadium that has since become a symbol of poor planning and excess. (It wasn't finished in time for the games, and in 1986 a part of its tower fell into the playing field.)

When the Calgary Olympics debuted in 1988, the opening ceremonies were conspicuously low on patriotism, and high on pioneer nostalgia and '80s kitsch. The ceremony included purple-clad square dancers, the Calgary Stampede show band, stagecoaches and, of course, people in dinosaur costumes dancing on a float (presumably to celebrate the region’s proud history of paleontological discovery). As (Canada-born) Peter Jennings said during the newscast, "Have you ever seen a more spontaneous opening ceremonies?"

Unfortunately, Canadian history is rather difficult to turn into a three-hour pageant for worldwide consumption. Take, for example, Canada’s founding moment: the British North America Act, the 1867 agreement signed by Queen Victoria that united the British colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (but not the areas now know as Manitoba, British Columbia or Alberta, among others), created the Canadian parliament, and gave us control over our domestic agenda (but not our foreign policy or our courts).

Try turning that gem into a rousing dance number. Sure, you can dress up Shania Twain as a Father of Confederation, create a 10-foot fire-breathing animatronic Queen Victoria that floats down from the stadium ceiling, and throw in some lasers for extra flash, but, in the end, people would still just be sitting around signing things and you’d need a PowerPoint presentation to explain to the world what exactly happened. And then, of course, you’d have to repeat it again, in 1931, with the signing of the Statute of Westminster, and in 1982, when Queen Elizabeth II signed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But the modesty of our history and national iconography is a big part of what makes Canada so wonderful. (As any Canadian schoolchild can tell you, one of our proudest accomplishments is the fact that we built the mechanical arm on the American space shuttle.) You could probably reenact Canadian Frederick Banting's co-discovery of insulin by rolling in a glittery pancreas and dressing up dancers as sugar. (This could be a great cameo for Ontario-born Avril Lavigne.) Or celebrate the founding of our nationalized healthcare system by having a few hundred people ceremoniously dance around in crutches and arm-slings to a Rush song. But not only would that be awkward, it would be downright un-Canadian.

At times, our penchant toward quietness has gotten us in trouble. During the 1992 World Series, the Toronto Blue Jays had to beg fans to make more noise, not less. When the 2001 World Championships in Athletics were held in Edmonton, my hometown, the British press nicknamed the city Deadmonton (though clearly they hadn't seen the world's largest sausage). Most recently, Billy Bob Thornton railed against the quietness of Canadian fans by comparing them to "mashed potatoes without the gravy" during his radio outburst.

So what can we expect to see when the ceremonies begin on Friday night? John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Organizing Committee, has said that the opening ceremonies will "tell the story of a contemporary Canada that will inspire the world." Naturally, they’ll be produced by an Australian -- David Atkins, the same man who created the opening and closing ceremonies for the Sydney Olympics. It has been announced that neither Cirque du Soleil, the French-Canadian circus group, nor the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra will be participating. None of which suggests that Beijing has anything to worry about.

Vancouver’s Opening Ceremonies, like all Olympic openers, will have to pander to a worldwide audience -- which means nothing shocking or edgy. If it goes down the cliché route, its central character will be a child on a voyage of discovery. The ceremony will likely pay tribute to the region’s native population (the Games' controversial official logo is an inukshuk, a small pile of rocks used as markers by Canada's northern Inuit) along with Vancouver’s Chinese immigrant community. It’s likely that hometown hero Bryan Adams will be making an appearance, and if there’s anything life has taught me, you can never predict when Celine Dion will do something baffling in a ridiculous costume.

But here's one prediction: It’s likely that the ceremonies will neither blow viewers away nor leave them disappointed. And in some ways, that’s the point. The things about "contemporary Canada" that are worth celebrating couldn't (and probably shouldn't) be represented on a float anyway. We may not have built many epic monuments, or dazzled the world with our conquests, but over the course of the last century and a half we’ve built a successful model for a liberal, progressive multicultural democracy. So much so that, these days, the American dream is more feasible in Canada than it is in America.

Canada has higher class mobility than the United States. It has low crime rates, universal healthcare and a widely praised refugee system. Its banking system has been touted as a model for the United States. Gay marriage has been legal for the better half of a decade. As researcher Michael Adams recently argued in "Fire and Ice," his book about Canadian values, polls show that Canadians' attachment to social liberalism and "postmodern postmaterial multiculturalism" (try spelling that out on the floor of a stadium) continues to grow, even as American values move in the opposite direction.

Does that mean that we’ll be wowing the world Friday night? Probably not. But does it make Canada a pretty great country to host the Olympic Games? Most definitely. If anything, it’ll ensure that, for once, the focus of the event will be on the athletes, not on our rain-preventing technology, computer-generated fireworks, or how we kicked a young child out of our ceremony for not being pretty enough. Sorry, Beijing. Props to you, but that’s just not our style.

http://www.salon.com/life/winter_olympic...ing_canada

DEFEAT THE WORLD!

Olympics are awesome. I always watch many hours of them... :)

I don't usually watch sports all that much (aside from occasional but not that frequent anymore Red Sox games), but I do watch the Olympics on NBC, and enjoy a lot of it.

Now if only I still had full cable and could watch the stuff on NBC's cable channels too... oh well.

NBC would be good if it wasn't for this guy:



It's Bob Costas! He stinks and he's all over the place! He does coverage for everything on NBC including the NHL, to which he does a major disservice. NBC needs more sports guys, and in a big way.

I don't know, it wouldn't be the Olympics without Bob Costas... I don't watch much sports as I said so I don't see much of him otherwise, but when I think of watching the Olympics I definitely think of him.

Just a reminder, Canada plays USA (hockey) at 7:45 EST. It's a HUGE game and it's for first place in the pool, which gives the winning team an automatic bye into the next round. The crowd in Vancouver is going to be pretty crazy and it's not something that you'll want to miss. Check it out - it'll be the most exciting moment of the entire Olympics up to this point, I guarantee it.

For hockey fans maybe, I guess...

Or maybe this is exciting for sports fans or fans of the Olympics in general. You say you watch hours of Olympics and that you enjoy them - is this because you're a fan of alpine skiing or the biathalon or the skeleton? Anyways, the game sucked balls.

Or maybe it just sucked balls for Canadians.

:D

Yeah, it does. Now we'll have to play Russia in the quarterfinals (assuming we get buy Germany, wow, we better get by Germany) instead of the Finals which was really the matchup that most people were looking forward to. THAT game is not going to be easy and it's a really, really tough draw. Anyways Canada outshot USA 45-23 and appeared to dominate for the most part, but they did continually make stupid and costly errors and our veterans on defense, especially Niedermeyer, were simply getting outworked. Some questionable coaching moves on Canada's part may have also contributed, but really, Ryan Miller wasn't letting anything past him. Christ, the Americans could ride the Miller train pretty far and do some serious damage in this tournament.

I just meant that I hadn't even heard about this game before today, and I have watched many hours of Olympics. NBC wasn't exactly going out of their way to promote it. Today they mentioned it as the "event of the games", but were kind of saying that that's only because the Canadians thought so... and given that they hadn't mentioned it much at all before, on NBC at least... (I'm sure it was mentioned plenty on the cable channel carrying most of their hockey coverage, though. But I don't really have cable anymore.)

NBC did actually play a hockey game in the afternoon, but it was Russia v. Czech Republic; it was the only hockey game they've broadcast on NBC so far, I believe. I'm sure that they'd never use primetime for a hockey game on their broadcast network during the Olympics, maybe unless it was a medal game, I think. They take up a lot of time, you can't play much advertising during them, and most Americans don't care THAT much about hockey... this area does, because New England likes hockey, but most of the rest of the country, not so much.

Remember, NBC uses the 8-11 or 12pm block for the highlight events of the day, mostly running on tape delay. They don't play many things live. It's frustrating, but it's how they've always worked at the Olympics and they aren't about to change now.

Their other main things on the broadcast channel are a 1-6pm on weekends/3-5pm weekdays block, and 12-1 or 2 am latenight one. All vary depending on what they're covering of course. It's a lot less hours than a summer games, I think, but that's probably because there are fewer events to cover...

I imagine the game was broadcast on one of their cable channels, but I don't get those so I'm not sure.


I've watched some Canadian TV olympic coverage before, though not this year, and I think it's almost certainly better than NBC's... NBC's always has issues, between the tape delays and how much they love those "heartwarming achievement stories", "sad stories of the athletes' backgrounds", etc. NBC always focuses very heavily on American athletes, of course. From what I remember, Canadian TV just does better...

How can NBC not promote Olympic hockey considering how meaningful and important the 1980 Miracle on Ice was? Ryan Kesler, whose father was on that team, is on the USA team now, and last night's game took place the day before the 30th anniversary of the game! Cold War and all that, defeated Communism and yadda yaddda yadda. Brought the country together and gave them something to rally around against the mighty Soviets and blah blah blah, I mean COME ON! It's promotion gold! NBC has gotta continually beat their audience over the head with footage and stories of that game just like we do in Canada with the '72 Summit Series. Nothing gets people more excited than reminders of the Cold War I'll tell you that much, yah huh. The United States is one sports-crazy country, and perhaps the most famous moment in the history of American sports took place on a hockey rink - why can't more Americans get behind hockey????

Hmm, interesting about NBC coverage - the Olympics up here is running basically nonstop and showing every single event, sport, and finding the time to interview virtually every Canadian athlete on three separate channels, and showing everything live. That could very well have to do with the increased national interest with the Olympics being in Canada, though. But that does seem like a pretty awful schedule NBC's running, and that's not in comparision to the non-stop live coverage up here, but just in general. Tape-delay, seriously? To make matters worse I can't even watch The Office. Damn NBC.

well, after the Russia v. Czech Republic game they did have a Miracle on Ice retrospective; they certainly should have, given that Al Michaels, who announced that game in 1980, is their 1-6pm/3-5pm host... it was with him, three people who were on the team, and footage of the game.

I remember them promoting that yesterday, so that they were advertising. But they didn't promote the USA v. Canada game; they haven't promoted much that they put on the cable channels on NBC, actually, for some reason. It does seem like a lost opportunity to get more people to watch them... they did a little earlier on in the games, but I don't think I've seen anything for a while now.

Quote:The United States is one sports-crazy country, and perhaps the most famous moment in the history of American sports took place on a hockey rink - why can't more Americans get behind hockey????

It's that lame sport Canadians like... well, that and that in a lot of the country there isn't ice long enough to make people actually think of skating, so why should a winter sport be natural for them? That's why ice hockey is popular in New England, Michigan, etc, there's snow and ice in the northern US. But the southern and southwestern US, where a lot of people live, not so much. That's the best answer I think. Makes sense too, for sure. Yeah, now we can make indoor stadiums, and there are NHL teams in the southern US, but without much snow and ice outside there's naturally a lot less interest in winter sports.

Quote: why can't more Americans get behind hockey????

How many Americans actually play in the NHL?

To elucidate: Hockey will never have a following like basketball/baseball/football in the United States because there's such little fertile ground with which to grow our own players. Unlike the three sports named above, hockey has practically no presence on the high-school level. In most parts of the country, expensive facilities are required for the sport to even exist. Thus, while we have a 'national' professional hockey league, much of its talent is imported from places where hockey can easily be played in a natural environment. A sport which requires an icy environment can only achieve so much success in a nation in which vast stretches never experience such an environment.

Weltall Wrote:To elucidate: Hockey will never have a following like basketball/baseball/football in the United States because there's such little fertile ground with which to grow our own players. Unlike the three sports named above, hockey has practically no presence on the high-school level. In most parts of the country, expensive facilities are required for the sport to even exist. Thus, while we have a 'national' professional hockey league, much of its talent is imported from places where hockey can easily be played in a natural environment. A sport which requires an icy environment can only achieve so much success in a nation in which vast stretches never experience such an environment.

Hockey's pretty popular around here, and all the New England highschools have hockey teams, and many of the colleges teams too... college football? Maybe not, within the past year several major New England colleges have dropped football (Northeastern, for example). They haven't dropped hockey, though. At the school I went to the men's hockey team was by far the most popular sports team on campus, it wasn't even close. (Though of course the most popular sports teams overall would be the Boston pro teams, that wouldn't be even close either.).

As I said though, this is because we actually have snow and ice all winter long (usually, when it's not an incredibly stupid and worthless non-snowing winter like this one has been -- I know they've got a lot of snow down in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and southern New England, but up here in Maine we've barely gotten two inches all month. It's been miserable, no cross-country skiing... :(), so there's a reason for people to be interested in winter sports.

Fittisize Wrote:Hmm, interesting about NBC coverage - the Olympics up here is running basically nonstop and showing every single event, sport, and finding the time to interview virtually every Canadian athlete on three separate channels, and showing everything live. That could very well have to do with the increased national interest with the Olympics being in Canada, though. But that does seem like a pretty awful schedule NBC's running, and that's not in comparision to the non-stop live coverage up here, but just in general. Tape-delay, seriously? To make matters worse I can't even watch The Office. Damn NBC.

Yeah, NBC has always focused heavily on tape delay and shunting any "less popular" sports to its cable channels like MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, etc, while only having the most popular stuff on the broadcast channel. Then they don't even do Olympics all day on their broadcast channel but only part of the day. Then almost everything is on tape delay and almost nothing is live, so that they can show the major events during time blocks when they expect more people to be watching.

So for instance Bode Miller didn't win the gold in the morning or afternoon or whatever he actually did, he did it in primetime.

Anyway, for the winter olympics, this means that speedskating (long and short track), alpine, cross country/biathalon (afternoon and night blocks only, not evening), luge/skeleton/bobsled, and figure skating/ice dancing stuff is on NBC, while most anything else is on cable. They'll show a game or two of hockey, maybe the finals of Curling or something (though that sport is pretty much treated like a joke I think), but the restof the stuff isn't good enough for NBC, oh no... who cares that they've got many hours of the day earlier on that they're wasting on their normal daytime programming, who'd want to watch anything that's not popular, or anything while it's actually happening instead of on a big tape delay!

Looking for video on NBC's website is no refuge -- things are on a tape delay there too. They want people to watch stuff on TV instead, where they make more money.

As you might expect, the situation is even worse in a summer Olympics, where there are so many more sports for them to ignore...

Did anyone else notice Colbert's poster in the background of that picture up there?

Awesome.

Having "Recommended public gathering zones" would be more polite I suppose, and a good idea, but yes, labelling them in a way that suggests you don't have free speech in other zones sure is stupid, and just begs for people to make a scene elsewhere.

Ah the olympics, where people remember your name for all of like 5 weeks and then never again.

Like that Jesse Owens guy.

Quote:(usually, when it's not an incredibly stupid and worthless non-snowing winter like this one has been -- I know they've got a lot of snow down in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and southern New England, but up here in Maine we've barely gotten two inches all month. It's been miserable, no cross-country skiing... )

Interesting. Down here, where we go whole years without snow, we've had several feet of the stuff this winter. The weather's been warmer in the last week or so, and I'm actually seeing grass for the first time in close to a month.

Weltall Wrote:How many Americans actually play in the NHL?

Lots, 22.2% of NHL players are American, and only Canada has more players (52.3%). Plus 24 of the teams, including 4 of the Original 6 = plenty of Americanization of hockey.

I guess Team USA has players on it from several different states, not just Michigan and Minnesota as per usual, including Orpik from California, which some credit to expansion to non-traditional hockey markets. So that's definitely a start. I understand that hockey will never surpass baseball or football in popularity in America, but I'd at least like to see it do better than basketball, that awful sport. Someday maybe.

Wow holy shit, five posts I didn't see while I responding to Weltall's. Apparently 3 AM is peak hours for Tendo City.

And that was Colbert DJ, I was at the show that'll air on 22nd. Check it out!

Did you get shot or something? Otherwise I'm sure I won't be making out your cheers above anyone else's :D.

Fittisize Wrote:Lots, 22.2% of NHL players are American, and only Canada has more players (52.3%). Plus 24 of the teams, including 4 of the Original 6 = plenty of Americanization of hockey.

That's kind of my point, actually. We have a league in which 80% of the teams are in the United States, but only 22% of the players are actually American.

If the NFL or the NBA imported most of its talent from abroad, it would kill a considerable amount of interest. As it stands, both leagues draw primarily from a huge college program, and many NFL/NBA stars were already famous and established talent before they turned pro. Unfortunately for American hockey, such a system is untenable in the United States, short of an acute Ice Age.

Weltall Wrote:That's kind of my point, actually. We have a league in which 80% of the teams are in the United States, but only 22% of the players are actually American.

If the NFL or the NBA imported most of its talent from abroad, it would kill a considerable amount of interest. As it stands, both leagues draw primarily from a huge college program, and many NFL/NBA stars were already famous and established talent before they turned pro. Unfortunately for American hockey, such a system is untenable in the United States, short of an acute Ice Age.

Yeah, as I said several times in the thread already, places without long-term winter ice and snow just are never going to be seriously interested in hockey. Too much of the country doesn't get enough snow.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Did you get shot or something? Otherwise I'm sure I won't be making out your cheers above anyone else's :D.

I might have! I was right behind the jib and at the very end of the broadcast I think the camera was shot right at me. Here's a spoiler: Bob Costas rides the moose, and Michael Buble and Colbert sing O Canada to the tune of The Star Spangled Banner.

Alright, 8-2 vs. the Germans last night, and now 7-3 against Russia, a game the whole hockey world thought would be played for the Gold Medal instead of in the Quarterfinals, and it was a fucking route. Wow, does Team Canada ever look inspired. More of this to come, believe me - based on the play of their last two games, they're gonna roll over the rest of the competition.

Those silly Germans...

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Everything sounds more evil in German. And holy Nazism - the hyenas are goosestepping!

I swear I heard him say "Hyena Reicht" at several points.

Wow, that does make it sound more imposing doesn't it...

Dark Jaguar Wrote:I swear I heard him say "Hyena Reicht" at several points.

Maybe! "Reicht" apparently means something along the lines of "that's enough", which sounds like a reasonable translation of the song.

Fittisize Wrote:Alright, 8-2 vs. the Germans last night, and now 7-3 against Russia, a game the whole hockey world thought would be played for the Gold Medal instead of in the Quarterfinals, and it was a fucking route. Wow, does Team Canada ever look inspired. More of this to come, believe me - based on the play of their last two games, they're gonna roll over the rest of the competition.

The good ole USA may have something to say about that. See you in the gold medal game.

DMiller Wrote:The good ole USA may have something to say about that. See you in the gold medal game.

I definitely cannot wait for Sunday. Neither can the rest of this entire damn country. People were describing Wednesday's game against the Russians as "the most important game in the history of Canadian
hockey" (apparently not remembering the '72 series vs. the Soviets or the 2002 gold medal game vs. USA) and now the importance of the gold medal game has manifest tenfold. It's really impossible to describe the expectations and the level of excitement up here - all I can say is good luck. This game is a re-match of the 2002 Gold Medal game, and in that game, on American soil, the Canadians walked all over the Americans. I can't imagine how Canada is going to come out of the gate for Sunday's game on home turf. Also, Canada now has 10 gold medals (should be 11, but Cheryl Bernard missed easy shots in the 10th and 11th ends which would have won another Gold for Canada today), which is more Golds than any other country. I don't believe Canada has ever come close to such a strong record at the Olympics before. We can thank the women for that, as most of our medals are being won by female athletes. Also, and perhaps most importantly, the three goal scorers for Canada tonight were Getzlaf, Marleau, and Morrow, who are the only players from my home province of Saskatchewan on the team. Fuck Yeah.

Bah, in speedskating (the men's 500 meters) that Canadian guy touched the Korean guy just like Apolo Ohno touched the other Canadian guy, but only Ohno gets disqualified when both of the touched people fall, and not the Canadian guy? With a Candian judge deciding? Apolo was probably right when he said that the judge didn't decide that fairly... either disqualify neither (probably better, considering that they were very light touches) or disqualify both (because both did touch the other person just before they fell). One and not the other isn't right.

Game over! Man, these Olympics were a huge success. What a way to finish them! Holy Christ, WHAT A GAME. That was one of the most intense, dramatic, and emotional games that I've ever seen in any sport, ever. Crosby's goal is already cemented as one of the biggest in the history of Canadian hockey. Poor Americans, good god did they ever look devestated, especially Ryan Miller. Parise too. Oh well!

Fittisize Wrote:Game over! Man, these Olympics were a huge success. What a way to finish them! Holy Christ, WHAT A GAME. That was one of the most intense, dramatic, and emotional games that I've ever seen in any sport, ever. Crosby's goal is already cemented as one of the biggest in the history of Canadian hockey. Poor Americans, good god did they ever look devestated, especially Ryan Miller. Parise too. Oh well!

Yea, Yea... Savor your victory, for tonight we steal all your women...

It was pretty good for a hockey game I guess, but I'll never care about other sports as much as I do baseball... :)

Still, too bad we lost of course. I did watch the game, since NBC showed it.

It was a great game...aside from the outcome. I guess it's nice that Canada won on their home turf, but damn is it tough to lose close games like that.

That was absolutely amazing. I just gave a shit about hockey for almost 8 full minutes!

Weltall Wrote:That was absolutely amazing. I just gave a shit about hockey for almost 8 full minutes!

Really!!! That's so weird, me also.. It's like some mysterious force made me ever so slightly give a fuck...

Quote:That was absolutely amazing. I just gave a shit about hockey for almost 8 full minutes!

Quote:Really!!! That's so weird, me also.. It's like some mysterious force made me ever so slightly give a fuck...

Awesome! Hopefully lots of other people who didn't care about hockey before start to care a bit more now. A game like today's definitely has that power, I think. Maybe now more Americans will realize just how good of a sport hockey is and how many good players they have. Most people I know will be hard-pressed to name a player who was better than Patrick Kane today, for example. He was a threat every single time he touched the puck and definitely caused an ungodly amount of stress among Canadians today. Maybe more Americans will want to get behind him now! And Parise, who's one of the best players in the NHL. And Miller, who's probably the best goalie in the entire league. This guy from Deadspin agrees that ultimately, the biggest winner today was hockey itself, in a nice little article:

Quote:Well, shit. How are you feeling? Gut punched? Broken? Just wanting to go to sleep and never wake up? Embrace it. It's a wonderful thing.

Just a brutal loss for the United States. The team that dramatically ties it up with 25 seconds left is supposed to have all the momentum. It's not supposed to end this way, you say. But it was.

It was always supposed to end like this. Canada were the favorites going in, and, despite hiccups against the US and Switzerland, were clearly the best team in every game they played.

Let go of your patriotism for a second. This is the perfect way to close Vancouver 2010. The home nation, topping off its most successful games ever with a gold medal in the biggest sport at at Olympics — and it happens to be their national sport, to boot. The fact that their golden boy scored the winning goal, against their biggest rivals? It's a storybook ending.

To be such a dramatic win, it had to be a heartbreaking loss for someone. And boy, it hurts right now. But you're not alone.

And that's the beauty of it. There are millions of Americans walking around like zombies right now. You're all going to be depressed for a while, and you'll spend the rest of your life thinking about what might have been.

It hurts because you care. And maybe you're already a huge hockey fan, and you understood every nuance of the game. But there are a ton of people out there who are only hurt because they supported their country by tuning in. They just happened to see one of the most exciting hockey games ever. Before Vancouver, maybe they never saw a hockey game. Now, hockey made them care.

Someone made the decision to watch their NHL team's next game. Some kid just made the choice to play hockey. Someone just learned the names Crosby, Miller, Luongo for the first time. Hockey has some new fans.

People are going to be talking about hockey tomorrow. So while Canada takes home the gold medal — and all due congratulations to them — it's hockey as a whole that wins.

Honestly I'm still reeling from how amazing that game was.

Oh God do I ever wish I was back in Vancouver. Whenever a Canadian would win a Gold Medal when I was down there, people would react as if their team just won the Stanley Cup. People high-fiving each other on the street and breaking out into renditions of O Canada just because they're happy to be there. It was hilarious. The first night I was down there, our skiier won a Gold Medal and became the first Canadian to ever win Gold on home turf. People were celebrating that until 5AM. I can only imagine how they're celebarating in Vancouver now.

What makes me even happier about the game was the number of Blackhawks participating and making a big difference. Kane and Toews looked great and I'm hoping the Blackhawks keep up their outstanding play once the break is over.

Oh yeah, wasn't the way NBC handled the closing ceremony just awesome?

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouv...oly,224859

I mean, the opening and closing ceremonies aren't THAT interesting for me, and this didn't surprise me at all considering the kinds of ridiculous stuff I described earlier in the thread. Still, it's really stupid, and it's yet another mark against them on the long list of reasons why NBC's Olympic coverage is consistently poor.