Intro and Olympic hockey

I had a number of posts up here before, but I hated all of them and they dwelt a little too much on the past. Which I'm finally ready to move on from. So I decided that I wanted to keep writing and what better to write about than hockey??? (Don't answer that. Because I'm pretty sure many people would say there are much better things to write about.) So I'll warn you now, I'm a hugely unapologetic Penguins fan and my favorite player is Jordan Staal. I live in Michigan (surprise!) so I've learned to deal with dead Penguin jokes.

Right now, I'm getting real excited about the USA v. Canada game tomorrow! (Go USA!)

It took me a long time to finally decide to root for the US and there's still that little nook in my heart that is crying "Go Canada!" Shh, don't tell. However, since Canada made the mistake of not naming Staalsy boy to Team Canada, it is much easier for me to root for my home country.

Now, I haven't gotten to watch a US game yet. I had to work during the first two games and believe me I was UPSET. To say the least. But I did get to watch the majority of the two Canadian games and I watched all of the two Russia games. The second period of the Canada/Switzerland game...karma for not picking JStaal (I know, I know...how many nicknames can I possibly have for him?...). I was highly unimpressed with the seeming lack of chemistry on the Canadian forward lines. With the exception of the Sharks line, the passing was just looking like they were still adjusting to each other in the second and third periods of the second game. They need to step it up and get their heads in the game before medal rounds if they want to have a shot, against Russia especially.

Sidenote: I also decided during this Canadian game against Switzerland that I intensely dislike Switzerland.  For no other reason than that someone high-sticked Sidney and game him a bloody nose.  Not cool.  Not cool at ALL.

Now Russia... I watched their first game and I was like pretty much peeing my pants in terror of their offense. I hate Ovechkin (please don't sue me) but I know and respect that he's a great player. I just...mmm... As a Pens fan, it's REALLY hard to like him. And this season and last season the hits he's made. Some of those are just too questionable to really sit well with me. However, he kicked some ass and I'm willing to admit that. And hell yes to Captain Morosov.

Mm mm good. The Russians just pushed and pushed and played a really high tempo game. They got a lot of their chemistry going early and it showed. And then came their second game. To say that loss surprised me is an understatement. I don't know what was going on there. Slovakia had some really good players, but I was still expecting more in the way of offense from the Russians. And definitely more in the way of defense. They sat back too much and didn't get involved in the offense like they should have.

Tomorrow comes the game I'm most excited for in the round robin, with US/Canada. Of COURSE I get NBC, USA, and CNBC and NOT MSNBC. And what channel is it on? MSNBC. Retarded. So I expect to either invade a friend's house and make them watch hockey or go to a sports bar with drunk people. Whoo! So long as they don't interfere with my hockey watching.