Thursday, September 5, 2013

Grantland: What are Canadian hockey fans panicking about now?

Canada is generally a fairly calm nation. As long as our beer is cold, our bacon is crisp, and somebody doesn’t try to order a breakfast sandwich in the Tim Hortons drive-through and make the entire neighborhood 45 minutes late for work, we’re a pretty laid-back people.

But there’s one glaring exception to that rule: hockey. We can occasionally get a little intense about that. And that’s especially true when the Olympics are involved, since there are only two possible outcomes for Team Canada — a gold medal, or a crushing, humiliating failure that ends with all the players being herded onto an ice floe in the Bay of Fundy.

Last week, Team Canada held its initial orientation camp, in which 47 potential Olympians were invited to get together in Calgary. Because of insurance issues, there were no actual on-ice workouts. The event consisted entirely of a friendly few days of team-building, walkthroughs, and photo ops. Needless to say, this plunged Canadian hockey fans into chaos.

And so, in what may need to become a regular feature around here between now and February, here’s a look at some of the Olympic-related topics that your neighbors to the north are currently in a state of abject panic about.

>> Read the full post on Grantland




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