My dear friend Ben sarcastically quips that “this site has no special interest in hockey.”

Okay, look, here’s the deal: The name of the blog is more whimsy than anything. I figure those who read it (Ben, WackyMommy, maybe even Tony) don’t care about hockey nearly as much as me. (As a teenager I played in a band called the Sloppy Drunk Blues Band. We did get sloppy drunk, but we didn’t play the blues. Later, I played in a band called Totem Soul. We weren’t Indians, and we didn’t play soul.)

So maybe I should rename the blog…. Or maybe I should discuss hockey!

Ben’s right, the Olympics is a fantastic tournament, especially the women’s. (The men’s tourney is great, too, but it’s dominated by NHLers who I get to see play all the time anyway.)

Now the problem is this: NBC is showing a grand total of five games, four men’s and one women’s. They’re showing more on their cable affiliates, but we don’t get those. Man, does that suck. I would love to be seeing some of these women’s games.

I caught a few minutes of the US men playing Kazakhstan on the tube at the rink yesterday. While watching, I talked with “Swede”, A local Junior B coach who drives the Zamboni there (talk about a character), and he was complaining about the Swedish team this year. He is “disgusted” with their coaching and team selection. (He skated with the Swedish National team some years back.) Anyway, his prognosis for the men’s gold is that it could be anybody. US, Canada and Russia are all strong. Finnland and Czech Republic are looking good, and anybody that makes the final four could take gold. That’s Swede’s take, anyway. He’s got nothing to do but sit around at the rink watching cable between cutting the ice.

Before my noon-time pick up hockey session, there’s a public session and there are always a handful of figure skaters and ice dancers stretching and taking off their skates in the lobby. Yesterday, as I changed in the locker room, this big fat obnoxious guy who plays hockey pretty regularly came in and started to loudly complain about NBC showing men’s figure skating instead of hockey.

“The only way I’m gonna watch men’s figure skating is if they make ‘degree of homosexuality’ part of the score,” he proclaimed. “Where is it that people want to watch that instead of hockey? It’s not anywhere I know!” And I’m thinking, where is it that people are so stinkin’ homophobic that they can’t bear to watch men in spangles and spandex prancing around on the ice? That’s not the world I live in. Hey, I agree, more hockey would be nice. But the reality is that figure skating brings in vastly higher ratings.

Anyway, this bozo went on and on, while this nice ice dancing man in the lobby surely overheard. (Is he gay? I don’t know or care. He’s a nice guy.)

We watched some of the men’s long program last night. Yep, I’d rather watch hockey, but it’s still pretty cool to see these guys. Triple axels and quad toe loops, oh my. But I can’t wait to see the women’s gold medal game, which is expected to be US vs. Canada.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 17th, 2006 at 10:07 am and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.