Everyone's A Critic About Team Canada...So Why Not Me?

There are four things I learned at the final day of Team Canada's Orentation Camp Thursday night:

1. Despite his age, Brodeur is still the best goaltender still playing.


2. Even though Team White had a lot of the fire-power, Team Red was the better team all-around team.


3. Powerplays are Canada's biggest weakness since neither team were able to set up for one, and sometimes it seem like the team on the penalty kill had the man advantage.


4. Beer and popcorn don't taste great together.
   

But back to the game. It was pretty much back and forth once Team Red offense slowed down (they still put a lot of off-the-puck pressure on Team White). Besides the powerplay, Canada also needs to work on line changes. A couple times it looked like their should have been a too many men call. Overall it was a good game that ended 2-2 with Team Red owning in shots on goal (42-22). The shootout at the end was won by Team Red 6-2. The funny part about the shootout was to see Dany Heatley go from mosted hated to fan favourite after scoring.

Now that the camp is over, the fun now begins.

Olympic Camps

Tonight, I get the chance to see the final day of Canada's Olympic hockey camp.

And while on the subject of Olympic hockey camps...

Appearently some KHL teams refused to released a couple of Slovakian stars to their national team's camp (yes this is old-ish news). While I'm sure it's for insurance reasons (couldn't find an actual answer), it is a chance to say the Russia is scared of Slovakia.

Ok, that shot wasn't as good as I thought it would be.

Crosby Comes Home

Me and my brother were at Cole Harbour Place to see my favorite player Sidney Crosby. It was a hot day, and very sunny out. We had an awesome time there. There was posters you can buy for 10 dollars and you get to put your name in a ballot to have a picture with Sid and the cup. There was a lot of stuff to do there and I read the paper the next day saying there were about 75,000 people that showed up. The parade was very exciting. Sid came out on a firetruck with the cup. When the parade was over, Crosby went on the stage and said a few words about his success to the NHL and Stanley Cup victory. The mayor of Halifax came out to congrats to Sid and announce that August 7th will be Sidney Crosby Day. It was a great day for everyone in Nova Scotia. :)

Transfer Hell

Since this came back up last week, I don't feel as lazy on posting this since I meant to when it first came out.

This is somewhat old news, but IIHF.com columnist Andrew Podnieks hit the nail on the head about the transfers between the NHL and the KHL. Specifically with Jiri Hudler being signed by a KHL team and Joel Kwaitkowski signing with Atlanta while both were under contract (in Hudler's case, an arbitration hearing). Apparently the NHL honoured Kwaitkowski's contract with SKA St.Petersburg while the KHL recently said they would wait and see how the arbitration hearing between Hudler and the Red Wings work out. Now, its official that Hudler will spend next season in Russia.

Basically, the IIHF is starting (again) to take the role of mom in the NHL-KHL kid fight. It's painful to say, especially since the NHL is (a) the bigger league and (b) is not under the IIHF like the KHL is. Russia has, for years, refused to sign the NHL-IIHF transfer agreement, leaving incidents like these to happen more often.