No need to frown, Olympic hockey is coming to town

Well, the Super Bowl is over.

And what a horrible time to be a sports fan right?

Well,… Well, the Super Bowl is over.

And what a horrible time to be a sports fan right?

Well, this winter, not so fast.

Usually, around the end of January and the beginning of February the “wide world of sports” seems to hibernate for the rest of winter and doesn’t awaken again until the new life of spring that is March Madness and pitchers and catchers reporting.

Every winter, after the excitement of pro football finally comes to an end and college football has long been over, it seems the NHL and NBA are just playing too many regular-season games that don’t mean anything, and there really aren’t any exciting sports stories.

Sure, there will be some great college basketball conference play, but it only really gets exciting once “championship week” starts, which leads to “Selection Sunday,” and then the greatest tournament ever.

And yeah, there will be an attention-catching NBA game or two (like when Kobe scores a million and LeBron becomes the youngest to do anything), and there might even be an NHL game worth watching (although they are few and far between in the ‘Burgh recently), but both of those leagues don’t get really exciting until the playoffs start, and that’s not until May.

It just seems that for a die-hard sports fan, nothing is quite like an NFL Sunday, where you know you can wake up and watch ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown right up until kickoff of the 1 p.m. games, then watch the 4 p.m., then watch the night game and then go to bed watching SportsCenter recapping what you just saw for an hour or two (maybe my friends, family and girlfriend are right-I watch too much ESPN).

Normally, the winter just seems to get twice as cold once the Super Bowl’s over, regardless of who wins or loses. As a sports fan, you might as well take a month-long nap.

But every four years, something special happens. You might want to hold off on that nap.

That’s right, this Friday, the opening ceremonies will take place in Torino, Italy, to kick off the winter Olympics.

And you still might be upset, because the Unites States doesn’t totally dominate these games like we do the summer ones, and who really cares about figure skating and curling anyway?

But in 2002, when we hosted the games in Salt Lake City, the Americans only finished second to Germany in the medal count and nearly doubled our northern neighbor, Canada. I’d say that’s pretty dominant.

Other than the fact that NBC’s nearly 24-hour coverage of the games will entice you to skip whatever class you might have, I have a real reason to watch these games.

There no is better brand of ice hockey than in the winter Olympics. Not even the Stanley Cup finals compare to what you’ll see in the next couple of weeks.

Why do I feel that way? Well, it’s pretty simple. And no, it’s not because Olympic hockey is where America got the morale boost it needed to win the Cold War (see 1980, Lake Placid, N.Y. – you know the rest), or because my personal hero led his team to Canada’s first gold medal in 58 years and forced me to cheer against the United States for just those 60 minutes (see Mario Lemieux in 2002).

The reason Olympic hockey pales in comparison to any other form of the game is just 13.5 feet. Yep, it’s just 162 inches and a little over four yards, and it makes all the difference in the world.

That is how much wider the Olympic ice surface is than the standard NHL ice rink. To someone not familiar with the game, it seems trivial, but that little bit of room allows for so much creativity by such skilled players.

Now that NHL players are allowed to participate in the Olympics, this 12-team tournament has become an amazing showcase for the most talented athletes in the world.

If the stubborn NHL had expanded its ice to these wider dimensions, there would have never been a lockout, never any of the obstruction penalties and clutching and grabbing, nor the neutral zone trap that kills the flow of the game.

There are no goons at the Olympic hockey tournament; it is hockey in its purest form.

If you catch any of the Olympics these next couple of weeks, make sure you see some hockey action. You’ll be amazed how it differs so much from the NHL even though it’s the exact same players playing what seems to be the exact same game.

And even if you don’t like hockey, remember, you could be watching pointless NBA games or even a golf tournament or two.

So I say, enjoy the Olympics or hibernate. You know what I’ll be doing.

Dave Thomas is a senior staff writer for The Pitt News and swears he only cheered against the United States for Mario, and that he wouldn’t even do it for Levon Kendall. He loves America. Let him know what you think about all that at dthomas7224@yahoo.com.