That’s Five Canada
January 6, 2009
Total Pro Sports - Team Canada captured its fifth straight gold medal at last night's World Junior Hockey Championship against the said to be and experts pick to win it all, The Swedes. Canada won 5-1 in a convincing victory in front of a record crowd on Monday night.
The city of Ottawa generated $51 million during the World Junior Hockey Championship. This is not surprising considering tickets were selling for $700 a pop last night. There was 20,380 tickets sold, a single game record for the WJHC, we'll let you do the math.
World Junior’s: Canada Prepares for Battle
January 5, 2009
Total Pro Sports - Canadian world juniors prepare for battle tonight against the mighty Swedes. Canada looks to win their 5th straight World Junior Gold Medal. Canada and Sweden played in last years championship with Canada pulling out a 3-2 victory in overtime.
This year, the Swedes were considered pre tournament favourites by many hockey experts. These same experts expected Canada to finish second to Sweden.
NHL Struggling With Attendance
November 10, 2008
NHL Attendance From Previous Games
Buffalo @ New Jersey - 10,567
Columbus Blue @ New York – 10,184
Florida @ Atlanta – 10,584
Dallas @ Boston (On a Saturday) – 14,576
Chicago at Columbus (On a Saturday) – 14,680
Ottawa @ Florida – 13,567
Vancouver @ Los Angeles – 13,652
Anaheim @ Columbus – 10,494
Calgary @ Nashville – 12,042
Minnesota @ Florida – 12,106
Total Pro Sports - These are just a handful of games that have happened over the past couple weeks. As you will notice none of the home teams listed are from Canada. Canadians love the game of hockey so regardless of their teams record they sell out every game.
Looking at these numbers it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that the NHL is struggling not only in a sinking economy but in markets that should not have an NHL team.
Is anybody tired of hearing Gary Bettman tell us all the NHL is fine and is not struggling to gain attendance, new fans and money? If he didn’t want us to know how bad of a state hockey is in the U.S maybe he shouldn’t publish attendance records on his site.
Over the past 6 weeks the Canadian dollar has been sinking, only making a recent surge. This has hurt Canadian teams, as they earn revenue in Canadian dollars and pay out player salaries, in US greenbacks.
What a donkey play!
June 22, 2008
The craziest thing happened the other night; we were at the office playing a $20 freeze out between a bunch of the guys after work. I ended up getting busted by "DanD" a fellow associate and blogger of Total Pro Sports. So I decided to deal for the guys to help the game go by faster. I ended up dealing a hand between "Ron Canada" (TPS Blogger) and our Vice President "RobG". Ron was first to act and raised to 12 chips pre flop, RobG was in middle position and flat called, everyone else folded. The flop came Qc/9s/8c, Ron led the betting of 14 chips and RobG once again flat called. The turn card was an 8h, Ron for some reason bet less this time making a bet of 10 chips, RobG again flat called. The river paired the board bringing the 9h, Ron Canada now checked, RobG not knowing where he stood being really confused at how the betting went down also checked. Ron asked Rob "What do you have?" RobG said “look at what I called you with”, which was a pair of tens. Ron Canada glanced back at his cards and mucked saying "I thought I had a queen, you win".
I grabbed Ron Canada's cards and looked at them, King of Diamonds and the Jack of Diamonds. It quickly hit me that Ron flopped and straight and mucked his hand. I looked at Ron and said to him "You are an idiot"; he looked confused with that stupid smile and said "why?" "You had a straight Ron and you folded", I said. I turned over the 5 community cards and showed him the evidence, he looked confused. He couldn’t believe that he folded, "So who wins" he said “RobG wins, you mucked your cards” I said. After this an outbreak of chirping and laughing took over the room and needless to say he was done playing for the night.
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Hockey Night In Canada a Retirement Home?
June 3, 2008
Now I understand that the maple leafs are the highlight team of CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, but does that mean that they have to run their broadcasting crew in the same way as the inept leafs have been running their team for so long? And in case you are wondering what i mean by this, its the persistence to continously keep on aging veterans who have clearly seen better days. now before some of you traditionalists fire off at me and tell me that i must be out of my mind for blasting some fo the great tv personalities in hockey history, consider this for a second: CBC has some several great younger broadcasters, color commentators and analysts but they still insist on sticking with Bob Cole and Don Cheery.
I know what you are thinking at this point. How can this guy insult the greatest voice to ever commentate a hockey game? Well my answer is that although his voice sounds great, a true hockey fan should be more concerned with hearing the real facts of what is happening on the ice rather than caring about what the guy sounds like. While he might have established his voice as one of the greatest, he has seen better days. When you repeatedly mistake an offside for a penealty, a penealty for a goal and a goal for an icing, maybe it should be time to hang up the mic. Many time you may also find him taking those long delays and preaching the obvious, like "they are battling hard to score the next goal (pause for about 8 seconds) both these teams out there". I think we could do without some of those lines. I think the man has done great things but his time is over. Lets give some of the younger guys like chris cuthbert and jim houghson a shot. These are two guys capable of doing what Cole was once capable of doing.
As for Don Cheery, i think his time came to an end when he started claiming that Domi should be on the powerplay for the leafs. If that is ever the case for any team, then that team should probabely consider folding not only their NHL team, but also their AHL and ECHL teams as well as anything else associated with the organization (in the MLSE's case i guess that would include the raptors and some condos). The man also seems to have a crush on Gary Roberts. While i admire the grit Roberts play with (although i would consider him over the boarderline dirty many times) how can you claim he and his 4 playoffs points should be out there on a 5 on 3 powerplay when you have players like crosby, malkin (although i think i might rather have domi out there over him right now), hossa, gonchar, sykora, whitney, malone and staal. Well Don thinks so and this is the hick attitude that has fans either loving him or hating him. He preaches grit and dump and chase hockey, but i thik the red wings are disproving all of that as he speaks, and they are also showing him that a team doesnt need to be 95% canadian to win in the playoffs. Sorry Don, while, but while the league has grown and changed, it doesnt look like you have. I think its time for a changing of the guard at the CBC's Hockey Night In Canada. �
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