Archive for the ‘Canada Cup’ Category

I just gave away the ending. Sorry.

You can find Game 1 and Game 2 here and here, respectively.

So, I was at a bar last night and one of the TVs had Sportscenter on. As one does when one has TVADD (the phenomenon that requires one to constantly glance at TVs scattered around the bar, regardless of the content of the current conversation) I was catching a little bit of the show here and a little bit of the show there. At one point, I saw something familiar. Game 2. I quickly realized it was familiar because I had just watched it a couple hours beforehand. As we’ve established in these last couple days, I am somewhat slow on the uptake. Anyway, they weren’t just replaying game 2; they were showing a highlight pack. Yeah, like the game was actually played. At first I thought it was just a commercial for the fact that TSN was showing these games (and, to be fair, at the end of the highlights they did throw up an ad saying game 3 was on tonight) but, nope, tried and true highlights. Someone really needs to tell those guys that this isn’t live. I’m seriously starting to worry about them. I know you can make it through this, Mike Johnson. I believe in you.

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Hey, this picture's actually from this game. Journalism!

And we’re back. Everyone rested? Feeling good? Hope so, it takes a lot of energy to deal with the intensity of knowing what’s going to happen. Or something.

Before we get started, something I found odd that maybe someone smarter than me has the answer to. I know that this is the 25^th anniversary of the 1987 series so showing it on TV this week makes a certain amount of sense but isn’t it also the 40^th anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series? Isn’t that a monumentally more important hockey event? Or is this like that Patton Oswalt bit about how you only get 20 birthdays? Even though, in said theory, you’d still get to celebrate your 40^th. Maybe this comparison doesn’t work. I don’t know. Just seems kind of odd to me that there’s all this kerfuffle about the ’87 series and I haven’t heard mention one about ’72. Or perhaps I just needed something to obsess over that’s even more pointless than usual. I should have brought the bourbon.

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1969 – man walks on the moon. 1971 – man walks on the moon…again. Then for a long time nothing happened. Until 1987.

So, here we are, it’s the second week of September 2012 and we have yet to see a game of hockey which makes this year pretty much exactly the same as every other year. That being said, it’s been a little while since we’ve had an actual game to talk about here on Backhand Shelf so we’re firing up our flux capacitors (televisions) and going back in time (turning on the television) to 1987 for game 1 of the Canada Cup. We may still listen to Huey Lewis. I may still listen to Huey Lewis.

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