For whatever reason, there are a lot of apologists for Team Canada's hockey performance at the Olympics.
People are somehow finding it in their good Canadian hearts to forgive the management, coaching staff and players for the complete abomination that took place this week.
There will be no such warm feelings here.
Team Canada's performance was embarrassing and completely unacceptable.
They stunk to high heaven.
They couldn't make a pass or get a clean shot on net, let alone score a goal. They plodded while the other teams dazzled, dumped and chased while other teams got creative, treated the puck like a hand grenade while other teams turned handling it into an art form.
They had the wrong players, they got out-coached in almost every game, and they personally caused the national stress level to go through the roof with their pathetic inability to generate offence.
Canada has always rewarded players for previous international service when it picks Olympic teams.
That has got to stop.
Of the top 30 scorers in the NHL, 15 are Canadian and 11 of them weren't in Turin.
Instead of loading up on sizzling scorers like Eric Staal, Marc Savard, Alex Tanguay, Sidney Crosby, Patrick Marleau, Paul Kariya and Jason Spezza, Canada chose to take a team of guys having off years.
Todd Bertuzzi is 42nd in the NHL in scoring, Vincent Lecavalier is 56th, Ryan Smyth 60th, Jarome Iginla 67th, Martin St. Louis 77th, Shane Doan 91st, Rick Nash 182nd and Kris Draper 360th.
Of course, some of those players would have been on the team no matter what, and rightly so, but none of them are on top of their game coming off the lockout season. Canada needed the energy and skill of some of the country's up-and-comers. Staal, Spezza, Crosby and defenceman Dion Phaneuf should have been locks.
Someone has to pay the price for this colossal failure.
For 2010 it has to be a wholesale change.
New management, new coaches, new players, new everything.
HOW SWEDE IT ISN'T: It's disgusting to see Sweden going for gold in hockey, when they essentially threw a game to get a favourable quarter-final matchup. Their decision was so unethical, they don't deserve to hear their own anthem ... The playoff format for men's hockey has to change. There's no need for eight teams to make the medal round. Slovakia lost only one game in the tournament and was knocked out by an underachieving Czech team. They should have had a bye into the semifinals for finishing in first place. Same goes for Finland. Second and third-place teams should play quarter-finals, and everybody else should be out. They need to make the round robin worth something ... Pat Quinn should never coach another international game. When Canada starts searching for a coach for 2010, it should start and end with Manitoba's own Andy Murray, who has plenty of international experience ... If your name is Chris Pronger, it must be tough to sleep at night. Canada would have been better off with Sean Pronger ... Jim Hughson is, bar none, the best hockey broadcaster on the planet. Kudos to CBC for bringing him on board. Now it's time for him to take over from Bob Cole as the No. 1 voice of hockey on the network.
WELCOME TO GUSHUELAND: Brad Gushue won the gold medal in men's curling, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy from a better place. Oh, to be on George Street this weekend. Party on, Newfoundland ... We ripped Gushue's third Mark Nichols last week, but he came through big time in the end. His 97% performance in the gold-medal game was ridiculously good ... While Keith Stokes certainly had his moments with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, there are people in the know who aren't all that unhappy to see him go. The biggest beef was that he had a propensity to run toward his own goal-line on kick returns and sometimes seemed to have an IQ to match his jersey number ... Cindy Klassen is all class and in a class by herself. She made an awful lot of people proud to be Winnipeggers.
