Jeff: #$%^& @&#^!!?!?!?!?

That kind of sums up my feelings on Team Canada being knocked out of the Olympics in the quarterfinals. My therapist has said it's best for me to write this out, and apparently it's a much more theraputic and healthy way to deal with anger than punching somebody in the back of the head and driving them face first into the ice. Who would have thunk it, eh? So here's my basic assessment of what went wrong for Team Canada at the Olympics. If you don't care about Canadian hockey, I'll gladly cross-check you face-first into the ice...oh wait, I'm not supposed to do that anymore.

GOALTENDING: Martin Brodeur is the best in the world, and proved it. His backup, Bobby Luongo, was sensational in his 2 appearances.
Grade: A++
DEFENSE: Scott Niedermeyer was certainly missed, as was big Ed Jovanoski. However, other than taxi-squad replacement Bryan McCabe, Canada's D men played well. In their 6 games, Canada gave up only 11 goals, 2nd best in the tourney. The speed and size of rookie Dion Phanuef of the Calgary Flames would have been a welcome addition too.
Grade: B
OFFENSE: Hmmmm so 3 goals in the last 4 games, 2 of which were flukes, and Gretzky decided to leave 7 of the NHL's top 25 scorers at home. Anyone else see a connection there? For a team that could not score, that just might be your issue. Name a Canadian forward that played well- I dare you! Gretzky chose some guys that had gold medals and world championships, but were not having good NHL seasons before the Olympics started. Bertuzzi, Draper, St Louis, Richards, Smyth and Nash continued to play below expectations. And to make it worse, your "stars" like Sakic, Thornton, Iginla, Gagne, Heatley, and Lecavalier give you 4 GOALS TOTAL!?!?!?! Russian super rookie Alex Ovechkin (my new favorite player to watch by the way. In the Canada game, when he had the puck it looked like everyone else was in slow motion.) had more goals than all those guys COMBINED!!! And can you imagine if Yzerman and Lemieux had accepted their invites? This team would have been even older and slower!!!
grade: what's lower than an F-?

Look it's tough to criticize Gretzky because he rebuilt Canada hockey after the debacle in Nagano in '98, bringing leadership and responsibility to the team, and it resulted in the country's first gold medal in 50 years. Gretz is old school and favors experience over the best players, but that thinking is the biggest reason Canada will be watching the semi-finals today instead of playing in them. In these short tournaments, yes there's a lot of pressure and experience would help, but the keys are 1) goaltending (never a problem for Canada), and 2) chemistry. Logic would tell you that guys who are playing well in the NHL when the Olympics start are going to have a much better chance of continuing to play well than guys who weren't.

Ok, that feels better, although only a little bit.

A couple of quick non-hockey thoughts:
* yes the Knicks are insane for bringing in Stevie Franchise-Killer. I thought that Isiah might swing Marbury to the Wolves, but it looks like he's going to try an idea that nobody, including himself, thinks will work. When asked about pairing the two me-first players in the same backcourt, Isiah's response was "it's crazy enough that it might work." Boy there's a shot of confidence. So glad I'm not a Knicks fan.
* also, the Knicks are able to make trades like this because they make obscene amounts of money. The Knicks themselves are the most profitable team in the NBA, and the company that owns them, Cablevision, has literally millions of cable subscribers a month paying their bills. Money is not an issue at MSG- competence certainly is.
* Strib this morning says that Daunte doesn't want to be traded, and the Vikings never shopped him after all. That's funny because today's Miami Herald tells a much different story.

* Finally, you heard it here first: Miami Dolphins for Super Bowl XXI. ESPN's John Clayton is reporting the Dolphins will throw obscene amounts of money at QB Drew Brees, and that San Diego will not match. Forget Bill Belichek, Nick Saban is the best coach/decision maker in football right now. In 2 seasons he'll have turned that team from doormat to Super Bowl contender. Miami won 9 games without a decent QB last year, and now they're going to get one of the 6 best in the league. This also means the Chargers are almost as crazy as the Knicks. I don't care how good you THINK Philip Rivers can be, you KNOW Brees is a Pro Bowl QB. Just plain dumb.