Weekend update

Well, the long weekend had me busier than I expected, so I didn't write anything, but I can tell you what happened.

-TSN showed way too many highlights of Taylor Hall throughout the entire Memorial Cup. I noticed that they upped their coverage of the event considerably this year, possibly as a means of promoting Hall. Now TSN is actually showing the NHL draft combine Friday in Primetime. This begs the question...

1) Who the fuck wants to watch a draft combine?

2) When the fuck is TSN's amping up of young prospects going to catch up with us? The World Juniors are almost unbearable to watch on 'The Network' now that every single Canadian player is talked about to the point of delusion. I can understand being interested in prospects, but now TSN is using events such as the World Juniors and the draft to promote their own programming. Ever notice how Pierre McGuire always seems to slide in the NHL team of a player at the WJHC at every possible moment? The Network is more prevalent in the playoffs this year, they have more games on per week, they have two national networks and they want fans of teams that stink to watch for the young players they've hyped. Brilliant cross-marketing, but it's making half the country hate Team Canada at the Juniors.

-Ron MacLean sat in a rocking chair and taped up a stick as Philly took to the ice in Game 5 against Montreal. It figures that the Eastern Conference Champions are a team that made the playoffs on the final day of the year by beating New York in a frigging shootout. Elsewhere, Rangers fans are kicking their own shins with their heels and devising ways to jump off a skybridge.

-Chicago... this is hard to admit as a Canucks fan, but the fact that the Blackhawks are in the Stanley Cup finals makes me upset that the Fratellis broke up:







I can't get enough of that goal song.

This Stanley Cup Finals series has all kinds of implications for a Canadian team. For one, as has been pointed out by everybody, everywhere, a Chicago win means that Toronto would become the only franchise to not win a Stanley Cup since the Original Six era, and also give them the longest Cup drought.

-http://twitter.com/walsha/status/14665009796 There are many, many Montreal fans who are happy at what Jaroslav Halak accomplished this season, but his biggest fan is agent Allan Walsh and his family. A restricted free agent after a playoff run that saw Halak single-handedly beat arguably four of the top five forwards in the game, Halak (and by extension, Walsh) are going to see a fat paycheque likely before July 1st. For some reason, the Philadelphia series won't apply.

-Steve Nash broke his nose and had it surgically repaired after practice during an off-day. This comes a day after he dropped 17 points and 15 dimes (behind Amare Stoudemire's 42) in a 118-109 Game 3 win. Game 4 is tonight. Set your TiVo's accordingly, because this series has a lot of potential to go the distance.

-In other basketball news, the Celtics, up 3-0 in their series against Orlando, lost in overtime 96-92 and are now up 3-1. It's the curse of Milan Lucic.

-The man who owns 25% of the Canadian Football League is headed to the Senate. David Braley, who owns the BC Lions and the Toronto Argonauts, forced writers across the country to use stupid football terms to describe politics. This is a good fit for Braley, since the relevance of the Canadian Senate is about as relevant as the Toronto Argonauts, and both are not really well-liked West of Ontario.

-Argentina beat Canada 5-0 in soccer. The Canadian Press recap sounds like something that your local university's sports information officer would write:

El Monumental was a sea of noise an hour before kickoff. As the Canadian players came out for warm-ups, the host crowd whistled loudly and that was just a taste of what was to come.

Cliché'd.

Injuries and club commitments forced Canada to field a mix of youth and experience, with the main goal to get some experience as a group against one of the top sides in the world.

WTF'd

This week, hopefully we'll have some fall-out from Montreal, including riot videos, and full recaps of this week's Suns and Canadian Soccer Cup series.