In an all World Cup edition of the Friday Grab Bag:
- Thoughts on the whole Tortorella anthem controversy
- The NHL gets something right with the overtime format
- Somebody's getting hurt soon, and we need to deal with it
- An obscure World Cup hero
- And a YouTube breakdown that reminds us that sometimes, those flashy offensive defensemen can play some defense too
>> Read the full post at Vice Sports
The World Cup of Hockey has finally arrived, with camps open and pre-tournament games under way as of Thursday.
This will be the first true best-on-best international tournament since the 2014 Olympic Games and, depending on whether the NHL decides to go to South Korea in 2018, quite possibly the last for a while.
Whether it’s the World Cup or the Olympics or the old Canada Cup, these big international tournaments are always fun. You never know quite how things will play out, with upsets, injuries and breakout performances combining with a compressed scheduled to create a sense that nothing can be taken for granted.
And yet, there’s a certain familiarity to be found. Once you’ve been around long enough to live through a few of these things, you start to realize that there are some recurring characters that seem to show up each and every time.
So today, let’s look at 15 of those people – players, fans, coaches and beyond – that you can count on crossing paths with at every major international hockey tournament.
When it comes to international hockey, country comes first—even if only temporarily. You might have this guy’s jersey hanging in your closet, but for now, he’s the enemy.
But that raises a host of ethical questions. Are you still allowed to want him to do well? As long as he’s not playing against your country that night, then it should still be OK, right? After all, you don’t want him to come back to the NHL in the middle of a prolonged slump.
Then again, if he heats up he could end up knocking your country’s team out of the playoff round, so maybe not. Besides, maybe a bad tournament would give him something to prove for the season. Well, unless it wrecked his confidence…
It’s confusing. In the end, you’ll usually settle for just hoping he doesn’t get hurt. Ideally, he’ll stay healthy but not play especially well, which you can then blame on the coaching staff not using him properly.
But this isn’t the NHL. This is international hockey, and national pride comes first. So for just a few weeks, you’ll put the past aside and cheer this guy on. Maybe not all that loudly, but you’ll do it.
It might leave a bad taste in your mouth, but that’s just the kind of sacrifice you’re willing to make for your country. Not all heroes wear capes.
Look, you love your country, and would do almost anything to support it. But there is a line, there has to be a line, and that line must be drawn right here.
(An entire nation is looking in your direction right now, Brad Marchand.)
Everyone knows the NHL and Blades of Steel series, but here are five hockey titles that you may or may not remember from the old days of arcade, computer and console action.
This is a big week on the hockey calendar. Camps haven't opened and nobody's played a game yet, but for many fans the new season has officially arrived. That's because it's now less than a week before NHL 17 hits store shelves.
The latest NHL video game is always a big deal, because the series has essentially taken over as the only show in town when it comes to hockey games. But it wasn't always this way. There was a time when a hockey fan looking to get in some joystick-based action had plenty of options to choose from. Some of those titles are still well-known to fans today: Blades of Steel in the arcade, Ice Hockey on the old Nintendo, and even NHL spinoff Mutant League Hockey still bring back memories for a generation of fans.
But today, let's go a little more obscure. Here are five hockey titles that you may or may not remember from the old days of arcade, computer and console action.
The selling point: It was hockey that you could play in an arcade. In the mid-80s, that was pretty much all we could ask for.
The minor flaw: Well, "hockey" might be stretching it a bit. Hat Trick's version of the game was one-on-one. Two-on-two if you counted the limbless torsos that were apparently supposed to be the goaltenders.
Overall experience: Strangely addictive. The two players chased the puck around a tiny rink (which was tricky because it ricocheted like a ping pong ball), occasionally slamming into each other, the boards, and the torso-goalies. Speaking of which, you had to control the goalie yourself, even though you were also controlling the skater. If that sounds impossible, you're starting to get a feel for the whole experience.
Still, the game was undeniably fun for its time, and we all thought it was super cool that the players left little skate marks wherever they went. Today, it doesn't look all that impressive. But if it was 1985 and your dad had given you a fistful of quarters to spend while you waited for your pizza to arrive at The Organ Grinder, you could do a lot worse.
Lingering question: Why did one of the tanks from Firepower come out after each period to clean the ice?
The selling point: This computer game was reasonably competent, combining decent graphics and gameplay with an impossibly catchy theme song. But the really cool feature was one that didn't even have a name yet. Like other games in the SportTime series, Superstar Ice Hockey allowed you to set up a team, and then guide it through multiple seasons, improving the roster via trades and developing new players. Decades before games like Eastside Hockey Manager and the NHL series itself made the concept famous, Superstar Ice Hockey's rudimentary dynasty mode was one of the first to give gamers a taste of what the future would hold.
The minor flaw: That damn theme song would still be stuck in your head almost thirty years later. Trust me on this one.
Overall experience: Not bad. While the gameplay wasn't the most realistic, it was all sorts of fun to build an expansion team of plodding castoffs from last place also-rans to Cup contender status. And even if you couldn't win a game in year one, you could always amuse yourself by choosing weird uniform colors and then hacking your opponents' ankles until they did flips. Are you listening, George McPhee?
Lingering question: Who was "Norm", and why was he the default strategic setting?
>> Read the full post at The Hockey News
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- What we need to do with that horrible World Cup trophy
- Don Cherry has thoughts on Colin Kaepernick
- The three comedy stars of August
- An obscure player who stole his name from an Austin Powers movie
- And when you need the national anthems done right, you turn to one man: Burton Cummings
As we finally say goodbye to hockey’s least interesting month, fans are turning their attention toward next month’s World Cup. We’re just a few weeks away from players hitting the ice for a rare best-on-best international tournament (kind of). It’s going to be lots of fun.
The World Cup, of course, is a direct descendent of the Canada Cup, a tournament that started in 1976 and ran every three-to-five years until being rebranded in 1996. The last tournament to carry the Canada Cup name came in 1991 – and it kicked off with the opening of the round robin games 25 years ago Wednesday.
The 1991 Canada Cup had an almost impossible act to follow, coming four years after the 1987 edition that many consider the greatest international tournament ever played. So maybe it’s not surprising that 1991, while entertaining, never really resonated with hockey fans in the same way that previous versions had. We all remember Gretzky-to-Lemieux, but 1991 sort of blends into the background with other tournaments.
So today, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the opening games, let’s refresh our memories by looking back at five of the biggest stories from the 1991 Canada Cup.
We might as well cut through the suspense and begin at the end. This edition of the Canada Cup ended the way almost all of them did: with Canada taking home the title. The home team swept Team USA in a two-game final to win the tournament for the third straight time and fourth out of five overall (the Soviets won in 1981).
That win wasn’t exactly an upset, given the strength of the Canadian roster. They were missing some big names, with Mario Lemieux out with a back injury, Steve Yzerman cut by Mike Keenan yet again, and Joe Sakic, Patrick Roy, Ray Bourque and Cam Neely also absent. But the roster was still stacked, featuring in-their-prime stars like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Scott Stevens.
Canada got off to a slow start, managing just a 2-2 tie against Finland in the opening game. But they heated up from there, finishing the round robin undefeated and then knocking off Sweden in the semi-final to set up a showdown with the Americans. More on that in a second.
Given how much talent was packed onto Team Canada, it seems odd to say that the roster’s biggest attraction may have been a teenager who’d never played an NHL game. But when you’re talking about Eric Lindros in 1991, all the usual rules kind of go out the window.
Lindros was fresh off of being taken by the Nordiques with the first overall pick in the draft. He refused to sign with the team, and was adamant that he’d never do so. There was still some skepticism lingering over whether he’d actually follow through on that threat, but it’s fair to say that he was already a controversial figure by the time the tournament rolled around.
That didn’t stop Keenan from putting him on the team, and the hockey world got their first look at Lindros against NHL-caliber talent. He didn’t disappoint, making an impact early on – literally. He crushed Swedish defenseman Ulf Samuelsson and Czechoslovakian winger Martin Rucinsky with clean hits, knocking both out of the tournament.
Lindros finished the tournament with three goals and five points in eight games, before heading back to junior to make good on his promise to never play for Quebec.
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