LIVE AT THE HOSERDOME: CANADA, F--K YEAH; HERE COME THE CAPS

by Neate Sager, Out Of Left Field

Canada closes the gap on the U.S. in using unpaid amateur athletes as a vehicle for jingoism and profit; thoughts on the outdoor game; and don't laugh but the Washington Capitals could actually make the playoffs.

Finally. No more shuffling along in shame, wondering why the homeland is lacking in a big sports spectacular that is big business mostly because the players aren't paid for their sweat and toil. Why can't we have some expression of the purity of sport, like the Bowl Championship Series with its noble student-athletes who come together to play a New Year's Day bowl game on January 8, or your Little League World Series, where none of the players have ever been found to be more than 12 years old. Why?

Well, the wait is over. The recently concluded World Junior Hockey Championship, which "our boys" won for the fourth straight year by beating Sweden 3-2 in overtime in Saturday's final, fills the void quite well.

Granted, it's hard to gloat about kicking ass on a global scale when you have to explain what the event is first. The only people in the States who seem aware of the World Junior are bloggers, NHL beat writers and possibly the parents of the players on Team USA. The NHL Network, in its infinite wisdom, didn't make the webcast of Friday's Canada-U.S. semi-final -- which was played between 2 and 4:30 p.m. on a workday --- available to Americans, so that didn't help, either.

Officially, the World Junior is the under-20 championship, which is played over the Christmas holidays every year. It usually features many many future NHL stars, such as Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. In Canada, it's covered with the seriousness of a terrorist attack; everywhere else, not so much. (This is the same country where Canada beating Team USA at the 2006 World Baseball Classic didn't even make the lead item on most sportscasts.)

Unofficially, the tournament exists -- or at least it's become big -- so Canadians can pretend, for a week to 10 days that we are globally significant (since that ain't happening militarily or politically). Normally, we just do this by pointing out which actors in the Hollywood movies or TV shows of the moment are Canadian.

We also get to pretend we're the plucky underdog. Hey, it's not as if Canada has half the registered hockey players in the world (only 40 per cent, thanks). Plus, there is no better example of grit, passion and pride helping a group of underdogs overcome an unbeatable foe than an insufferably rich northern country of 33 million people beating another insufferably rich wealthy northern country of nine million at a team sport played on ice.

Exalting "our boys" as the bestest young people our country has to offer also serves a purpose. It gets the point across that everyone who ever aspired to be something other than a monosyllabic hockey player -- especially nebbishy types who topped out as a slow-moving right wing for a peewee team -- are a bunch of little girls. It's great that way.

Thank god for Team USA, too, for doing its part to feed the hoser hero machinery. Each year TSN (Canada's carbon copy of ESPN, with the the "r" and "e" in SportsCenter reversed) makes sure to talk up Team USA as a gold medal favourite. Inevitably, Team USA and their sure-fire future NHL superstars and a bland technocrat of a coach spit the bit when they have a shot at taking down Canada. This time, they did it in the semi-final, bowing out 4-0. Then the Americans lost to Russia in the bronze medal game and went home empty-handed.

They don't have our (insert buzzword here) ... character, fire, drive, blah blah blah.

That's the World Junior Hockey Championship in a nutshell. The World Under-17 Challenge, which takes place at the same time in Canada, is also becoming a big moneymaker. (Canada, which actually sends five teams to the event, won that too, with Ontario beating Team USA in the final.)

Hopefully the NHL will figure out that it might be a good idea to give as many Americans as possible a way to watch next year's event (which is in Ottawa, hometown of Tom Green), seeing as 24 of the league's 30 teams are based in the U.S.

Quick summary: Canada won, we're awesome. America will just have to be content with being good at baseball, basketball, football and providing much of the world with their pop culture. By the way, did you know three of the six main characters in Superbad were played by Canadians?

OK, the other big news:

1. The outdoor game in Buffalo: How come anyone didn't think to make the ice surface bigger than the regulation 200-by-85 feet, considering there was a football field to build one on? Even under normal circumstances, the ice surface is too small for today's players. With snow two inches deep everywhere, it was even worse. Stupid.
   
   The worst part of it was listening to people rave about "the play" the NHL got in the States for the outdoor game. The outdoor game got mentioned on a newscast in Alabama? Great. But in this election year, it's all about tending to your base, which by the way, is still really ticked off that Gary Bettman did everything in his power to keep the Nashville Predators from moving to Ontario last summer.


2. Here come the Capitals, kind of: Almost the worst and almost in first. Washington is only seven points behind Carolina for the Southeast Division lead and has two games in hand. They're also 14th in the weak Eastern Conference. The Capitals are the most-blogged-upon team in the NHL, so really, people should get on their bandwagon now.
   
3. The Maxim jinx? You saw that Mischa Barton (not Canadian, but in her pre-O.C. days she starred in a Canadian movie called Lost & Delirious that is highly recommended, if only for the girl-girl scenes with Jessica Pare and Piper Perabo) was nailed for a DUI right around the new issue of Maxim with her on the cover was on newstands.
   
   Oddly enough, New York Islanders tough guy Chris Simon, who was profiled in the same issue, was recently slapped with a record 30-game suspension for stomping on Pittsburgh's Jarko Ruutu with his skate.
   
   Marissa Cooper would have approved.
4. Still a better name than "the Wild": A Colorado paper has a blurb about a women's hockey team called Aspen Mother Pucker IIs. Seriously.
   
5. Goodbye, Columbus: First the Buckeyes went tits-up in the BCS and now those early-season hopes that the Blue Jackets might make the playoffs for the first time in team history have faded. (Columbus is in the Western Conference, in case you needed a reminder.) The Blue Jackets have a road-heavy second-half schedule. If they were in the East, they'd be in the playoffs easy.
   
6. Downie syndrome: It takes a lot for Don Cherry to call a Canadian player a "back stabber deluxe." Philadelphia Flyers rookie Steve Downie is making a career of picking on pacifistic players. His latest dick move was punching a defenceless Jason Blake in the eye while the Toronto forward was being restrained by an official. It's always good to know that in turbulent times, the Flyers can be trusted to carry on like a bunch of meatheads.