It's only one weekend into the season and already Hockey Night In Canada is getting accused of having a love-fest with the Toronto Maple Leafs. The accuser this time - a Toronto Star reporter. It must be really noticeable if reporters sequestered in the heart of darkness can now see the colours on the wall:
"... based on the Saturday night opener, it's pretty much business as usual at CBC. And that means plenty of the expected and plenty of focus on the Toronto Maple Leafs, even though CBC's favourite team appears to be the worst in the country. ...
... the show's first feature was, you guessed it, a look at Leafs coach Ron Wilson.
Yes, Wilson is new to Toronto, but the Ottawa Senators have a new coach, too.
But at the CBC, the mantra has always been: If it's blue, it will do.
The same-old, same-old continued in the first intermission when the team's No.1 fan, Don Cherry, went into his trademark paranoid-old-man act and knocked the Leafs for favouring Europeans over Ontario boys."
- Toronto Star
The only disagreement I have is that the reporter goes on to rip Al Strachan. Come on, Strach is a beauty! No journalist outside of Larry Brooks is capable of emitting so much sarcasm, loathing and pure disgust into one segment like Strach can.
Gets me to thinking: Who's Strach's complete opposite?
Gotta be Darren Pang. That guy is incapable of saying anything bad about anyone. Hence, he's not exactly fun to watch.
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As predicted, the players, the media and the majority of fans are rallying around Martin Gerber. But is owner Eugene Melnyk? In today's Ottawa Sun, Bruce Garrioch reports that "Eugene Melnyk was seen talking with goaltending coach Eli Wilson in the loading dock immediately after the game. "
Presumably they weren't talking about how great Gerbs played.
And people complained about Ray Emery being a distraction.
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Ottawa isn't the only team with goalie problems. Peter Budaj in Colorado is taking similar heat to Gerber for letting in bad goals at bad times, allowing "tie-breaking goals within the final three minutes of each loss."
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Seeing the Edmonton Oilers in their great vintage jersey's last night really brought back the memories. And I'm talking MEMORIES.
Who can forget this classic music video that appeared in the Oilers 1987 documentary "Boys On The Bus".
And that just gives us an excuse to go over some classic Youngblood clips from the same era. Yes.
And if we're playing videos here, this soon to be classic deserves another play. Def Leppard changes the way we think about the Stanley Cup in one moronic stroke. Upside down? It's a revolution in thinking, like when the apple fell on Newton's head. This is how the Cup should be presented from now on. Instead of drinking from the Cup, the players can now serve hot pizza on it's flat bottom.
2 comments:
Bruce Garrioch is a fucking CLOWN. Real responsible reporting there, tough guy... Hey, I heard Murray was seen talking to Jason Spezza at this morning's skate! What can we make of THAT??
Yes, HNIC continues is brutal coverage of anything not Leafs related. The CBC website said it was covering the Ottawa game Saturday. It turns out "covering" the game means that they showed a couple random, very quick highlights and barely acknowledged them. One highlight actually cut out completely, much to my frustration. I'm also fairly certain they didn't even bother to show the Sens score on the intermissions, which were dominated by Leaf talk. The leafs are a bad team as usual, and yet that's all they seem to care about. Meanwhile Ottawa seems to have a pretty good team, and Montreal looks fantastic. They cover the CDN games out west alright, but only because they're on after the Leafs. I'm not even going to mention Don Cherry's stupidity. Brutal all round. Shame on you CBC. Unless Rogers Sportsnet starts covering Sens games outside the Ottawa area, it looks like I'm stuck with the occasional game on TSN. Brutal.
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