The Winnipeg Jets fired their coach on Sunday and fans are happy, but I looked at the standings on Sunday night and I had a hard time trying to find a team that was higher than the Jets who maybe shouldn't be. Don't you fire your coach when the team is under achieving? Nashville and Minnesota are debateable, I suppose, but the Preds have Shea Weber on the blueline and the Wild have Josh Harding (best goalie in the NHL this year) and Zach Parise on their roster. The Jets have no such superstar. Jacob Trouba looks like he could be, someday, a top 10 defenseman in the NHL but that's it. Spoiled brats like Dustin Byfuglien and Evander Kane further erode a sensitive dressing room. That's not the coach's fault. I'd say it's the manager's fault for not giving the coach a good enough roster with which to work. And, ridding the team of Byfuglien and/or Kane is addition through subtraction in my mind. You also need to have a good goaltender and I'm not sure who is responsible for telling the Jets and their fans that Ondrej Pavelec is such a netminder. He's never ever proven that.
Politics was alive and well when Canada named its Olympic hockey team last week. Rick Nash, who has done nothing since his solid performance in 2010 in Vancouver, gets to go while Martin St. Louis does not. I picked out 6-7 players that I'd swap out for others, but the selection committee has made it no secret that they are not about choosing an all-star team. They are, simply, putting together a group that can play certain roles in hopes of winning. I don't get it. Why not put together an all-star team? When you have such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to talent, surely you can be innovative at coming up with a club that is chalk full of talent that none of the other countries can compete with. Instead, you have about six countries that mirror each other with two scoring lines, a checking line, and an energy line. I guess there is only one way to play hockey. The Americans really don't get it. I look at that team and I am betting they don't win a single game against other bonafide hockey super powers.
I think this Canadian team is good enough to win, but don't tell me that if they lose and get 24 shots on goal (like at the World Juniors) that there is simply not enough scoring talent in Canada. There is plenty. The evaluators have just decided to leave them all home because they aren't as good at face-offs as Patrice Bergeron. You should need no further proof that hockey evaluators in Canada are the worst in the world when you consider Edmonton's Kevin Lowe got to have a say on who made this team. Lowe's Oilers have been at the bottom of the league for years despite really high draft picks. He can't seem to organize a one-car parade. But, he can help choose Canada's Olympic Hockey Team? Politics.
A Montreal woman is suing the Trudeau Airport for her own incompetent parenting as a result of her curious two year-old jumping on the luggage belt while she was checking her bags back in 2011. Apparently, the lady (just like you would see in a Looney Tunes cartoon) jumped on the belt too in order to retrieve the lad and the two of them were whisked away on a rubber highway full of interchanges and the whole nine yards. She says she sustained some long term injuries and now she'd like the airport to pay up. Only in Canada could this be considered reasonable.
