Moment of Truth-Russians Refuse to Show and Pick up Bronze Men's Hockey Medal

National Post of Canada ^ | February 25, 2002 | Roy MacGregor

[Alberta's Child]

I have to say, I watch my share of hockey and no one looks like Jevon Kearse.

I have watched my share of hockey, too, and in the last 15 years I've never seen a fat slob like Tony Siragusa or Nate Newton masquerading on the ice as an "athlete."

The difference between football and hockey is that almost any good athlete can become a football player (if you don't believe me, do some research and see how many NFL players -- like Eric Dickerson -- never even played football until they were 16 or 17 years old), while very few can play hockey. If you ain't a hockey player by the age of 8, you'll probably never be one.

[bduet]

I have watched my share of hockey, too, and in the last 15 years I've never seen a fat slob like Tony Siragusa or Nate Newton masquerading on the ice as an "athlete."

Now that would be a sight I would pay to see. Too funny. I think hockey has grown leaps and bounds in the last 5 years or so. With teams in Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas, and Pheonix, maybe more kids will start playing Hockey all across the US. You guys deserve to win. Had we won, it would have just been another gold medal and added to the list of sports we dominate. By no means do I think what Gretzky said will go away with American hockey fans. Seems like now, more than ever, we are less tolerant of people who use this country only to kick it in the teeth when it is convient. You guys don't celebrate to hard and enjoy the victory, the world is getting better at your game.

[Alberta's Child]

No need for any "you guys" comments here. I am an American, not a Canadian!

No question about the U.S. "catching up" to Canada, but the U.S. still has a long way to go. Trust me -- I've played organized hockey on both sides of the border, and the one thing that really stood out was that a "recreational" player in Canada was a far better player even if he only played a few games a year on an informal basis.

In other words, the U.S. is like the NFL in that you have exceptional players (Super Bowl champs), good players (playoff teams), marginal players, and bad ones. Canada is like an NFL in which the top ten teams are all Super Bowl caliber, the next 15 are all playoff caliber, and the last couple are still very good teams. At the very top there is not much difference between the two countries, but when you go down the ranks the difference is very stark.

Consider the city of Saskatoon, the largest city in the prairie province of Saskatchewan. There are almost as many hockey rinks in the Saskatoon area (population of about 200,000 or so) as there are in the entire New York metropolitan area (population of about 25 million). The major difference between the two countries is that people in the U.S. consider hockey a sport, while Canadians consider it part of their culture.

Having said that, the U.S. has historically had a slight advantage over Canada in Olympic hockey in that the NCAA rules are almost the same as Olympic rules, while the major junior leagues in Canada play by NHL rules. What has made Canada more competitive on the Olympic stage is that more and more of their younger players are starting to play collegiate hockey in the U.S. instead of junior hockey in Canada (Ed Belfour and Paul Kariya, for example).