NAGANO, Japan -- Oh yeah? Well, our gas is cheaper.And our taxes are lower. And our money is worth more. And our radio stations don't have to play Gordon Lightfoot once an hour ...Keep telling yourself all the advantages America has over Canada, and pretty soon you won't even mind that when it comes to Olympic hockey, The Great White North owns The Little Black Puck.
MINNEAPOLIS -- It was a summer afternoon better suited to a barbecue, which might explain why the Lions played their season opener the way a kid roasts a marshmallow, toying with it, sticking it closer to the fire, closer to the fire -- oops, it's in the fire.What a gooey mess.See if this sounds familiar: The Lions go on the road to open the season, they mess around, make mistakes and blow a game they should have won in the final seconds. Bingo! It's last year all over. And you thought hamburgers and hot dogs were the only constants of Labor Day weekend.
LIKE I'VE BEEN saying for years, once the Lions dump that Sanders guy, they can win a few football games.Well. You got a better explanation? This is no longer the team you knew and loathed, Lions fans. That was clear at the start of the fourth quarter Sunday, in Game 2 of The Year of Living Barrylessly. The Lions (now known as "The Silver and Who?") lined up for a punt near their end zone. Everything went fine until the snapper actually snapped the ball, which subsequently flew over John Jett's head and landed somewhere in downtown Pontiac.
If home is where the heart is, then Brendan Shanahan once left his heart in St. Louis. He played there for four happy seasons, made friends, had good times, hosted a radio show, even purchased his first house. It's a big moment when you first sign a mortgage, it makes you feel rooted, grown-up. So the dismal day he was traded to Hartford, the Siberia of the NHL, Shanahan made a vow. He would not give up his house. They could take away his uniform, pluck him like a weed.But they couldn't take his roots.
AWORD here to Barry Sanders, and I choose it carefully, thoughtfully and after much consideration:SPEAK!Enough already with the silence thing. Barry is pushing goodwill to the edge of the cliff. He is making fools out of people who defend him. And his trademark love of quiet is starting to look more and more like a negotiating ploy.
Darren McCarty will never pay for a meal in this town again. In two explosive moments that embody all that is right with hockey and all that is wrong with it, McCarty made an unforgettable impression on this Detroit Red Wings season. In the first moment, he bloodied the game. In the second, he won it.Let us begin with the first, late in the opening period Wednesday night, when he spun away from a linesman and coldcocked Colorado's Claude Lemieux in the face.
They lined the streets in a hellish heat, on the darkest day in this city's recent history. And they were smiling.They couldn't wait to hand their money over.They sweated. They sat on the curb. They passed hour after hour in boring humidity, staring at a building, waiting for its doors to open.They couldn't wait to hand their money over.They weren't shopping. They weren't buying anything. They would not go home with a car, a new dress or even a bag of groceries. Most would go home with nothing more than emptier pockets. Still, they stayed.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
