22,000 Edmonton Oiler Fans: Canadian

“Star Spangled Banner & O’Canada”;
Game Four, Western Conference Finals (2006)

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Ten Minutes After The Ducks Fried The Wings…

last night, questions were being raised aboot who, in their right mind, would ever want to watch the Ottawa Somethings play the Anaheim… what the fuck are they called again? Every year it’s the same frigging thing… the Stanley Cup Finals start, and are instantly dismissed by a pack of “sports” reporters (I’m not going to say “American” because there are a few Canadian reporters asking the same question… although most of them work for the Toronto Star).

Every year it’s the same declaration made by the same ESPN, Fox Sports, Toronto-based robots: no American wants to watch the Carolina Hurricanes play the Edmonton Somethings in the Finals, or no Canadian will watch two American teams play so, therefore, the NHL is a failure.

Well fuck that. Yeah, sure it’s true. But so freaking what? Why is this a surprise? No American outside of Utah and San Antonio is watching the NBA Western Conference Finals either, you jackasses. The Finals, the Stanley Cup Finals, are for the City Fans, not the national ones.

The Stanley Cup Finals are consistently dismissed by exactly the same sneering “sports” reporters every year, but every year the Stanley Cup Finals prove themselves to be the most exciting Sports Tournament in North America, and possibly — with the exception of Afghanistans’s Buzkashi League — the entire Sporting World.

So who wants Duck? I do. The Anaheim Ducks finished the regular season with a record of 48-20-14 for 110 pts and were second overall in the Western Conference. They’re an exciting, fast and hard hitting team with a Playoff MVP goalie and Chris Pronger, and they’ve won more regular season games in the past four years than any other team.

And the Senators? Thanks to a slow start in the regular season the Ottawa Senators finished second (based on points) in the Eastern Conference, but since Christmas they’ve easily been the best team in the NHL. With a regular season record of 48-25-9 for 105 points they have the most dominant defense and the fastest forwards in the NHL. Ray Emery, their young goaltender, has proven himself over and over again to be one of the best in the League, and the top three scorers in the Playoffs to date are all Ottawa Senators.

Sixteen Wins out of a possible 28 games is what it takes to win the Stanley Cup. These have been the two best teams in the NHL all year and now they have seven games to win four… there are four more games to be won, and they are going to be exciting and a lot of fun to watch. And if you’re not in Ottawa or Anaheim, and want to watch, the games are online at CBC Sports and, I believe, TSN… it’s worth a shot, and the NHL always has great video of the games. And, seriously, if all you’re going to do is bitch and moan aboot the league somehow not doing its job by, you know, allowing the teams to decide who plays for and wins the Stanley Cup, you could always go report on Afghanistans’s Buzkashi League.

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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.

It’s Aboot Fucking Time…

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