The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

I'm going to come across as anti-Canadian to some, but this past year's World Juniors in which Team Canada won the gold wasn't terribly exciting for me. First, it's still a fantastic accomplishment for the players and they had to work hard to get the gold medal. But if they lost, it probably wouldn't have bothered me all that much.

Well, that's not entirely true. Because the medal-round games were on during the work day, I missed all of them and got updates from the web or co-workers. Despite knowing the outcome of the Canada-USA semifinal, I watched the third period, OT and shootout during a TSN replay and it was great hockey. The multiple rounds of the shootout made for some great drama and action.

This was probably the only time when a Canada loss was actually possible. The USA played just as well as Canada but came out on the short end of the stick. But for every other game...was there any doubt?

Canada was up 4-0 against Russia and looked like it would be a blowout. It wasn't, the Russians managed to score a pair of goals to make it somewhat interesting but was there really any tension in that game? It just seemed like the inevitable was coming: Canada winning gold.

I probably feel this way because Canada wins most of the important hockey tournaments all the time. Canada losing in the 2006 Olympics was in some ways perhaps a good thing, as this will provide for more drama when the team tries to recapture gold on home turf in Vancouver in 2010. Yesterday's win against the Russians made it eighteen straight World Junior victories over the last three years.

The outcome of the 2006 Olympics gives Canadian fans a little drama when 2010 comes around: Canada just might end up losing.