HV71 took home the Swedish championship last night.
It would take a leap of faith and a lot of courage to call Johan Davidsson’s playoff beard and moustache cool. Yes, that style was cool in the 1620s when d’Artagnan and Arhos, Portos, and Aremis were involved in the English-French intrigues, but maybe now is not the time to bring it back.
Yes, the World Championship tournament begins in 14 days.
And don’t forget, every May, the World Championship gives thousands of hockey fans a nice excuse to travel around the world, mostly in Europe, see some great hockey, paint their faces in their national colors, and enjoy life.
Click the image to get my take on the tournament in this week’s Hockey News.
And another nod to William Goldman:
In two weeks, I’ll be in Quebec City, getting ready for the World Championships, and I’ll turn this blog into a World Championship blog for about three weeks.
Ovechkin fever is raging in Russia. I spoke with a couple of Russian fans today.
“I’ve been an NHL fan since 1994 and I try to follow it every possible way. I read NHL.com, TSN and ESPN, I even followed the Ducks run to the Cup in 2003, but back then, it was impossible to watch the games at home, and the only place to see them was a fancy sports casino,” Shelestenko says.
Here’s something to give us hope:
Watts figures, if you rewound the world to 1982, Madonna would likely remain a total unknown–and someone else would have slipped into her steel-tipped corset. “You cannot predict in advance whether a band gets this huge cascade of popularity, because the social network is liable to throw up almost any result,” he marvels.
So, keep your head down, your underwear on top of your clothes, and work hard. Maybe the word-of-mouth will make you a star.
Here’s something a little special. Audio.
A few weeks ago, I met with Doug Shedden, the Canadian head coach of Team Finland, for a story I wrote to a magazine that’s going to be out soon. Since the story is going to be in Finnish, and I only used parts of the interview, I thought it’d be a) OK and b) interesting for you to hear some of that interview now.
Here it is. In case you want to throw the file in your iPod and listen to it on the bus, in the car, at the rink, here’s the file. This was recorded after a practice so the sounds you hear in the beginning are some goofy hockey players, obviously exhausted after a practice. Enjoy!
Joe Pelletier, a Canadian hockey historian, the engine behind Hockey Book Reviews, Greatest Hockey Legends, and 1972SummitSeries.com and author of Legends of Team Canada and The World Cup Of Hockey recently reviewed Off The Post.
Each online posting is by itself, an experience to be enjoyed in the immediate moment. But when you pick out the best and put it into a book, Pakarinen’s contributions become an entertaining and thoughtful archive of the past couple of years. But it also offers so much more.
Read the entire review here, then check out the Off The Post site here. Get yours today!
Three years ago, Kenny Jönsson came to Sweden to play during the lockout. Last night, his Rogle took the step back to the Swedish Elite League. Here’s what Jönsson had to say about things in 2005, when his NHL comrades had returned to North America and he stayed with the small club, one step below the Elite League.
Does everybody love the underdogs?