Colin's Blog » Hockey

My Thoughts on the Vancouver Riots

Colin Carmichael — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:59:33 +0000

photo credit: Mark Donovan

Last night the inevitable happened. My Vancouver Canucks (of whom I’ve been a fan for over 15 years) lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. I say inevitable because a storybook ending to a storybook season would have been too good to be true. When the Canucks finally win a Cup, it will be in a year that they finish seventh or eighth in the Western Conference.

Something else inevitable happened last night. Riots. I’ll get to why the rioting was inevitable in a second, but first I want to address the reporting. The headlines seem to universally use some variation of “Canuck fans riot in downtown Vancouver.” I must say that I object to the use of the term fan here. I have a hard time believing that most of those folks in the streets last night could have named more than four Vancouver players before the second round of the playoffs.

It was not the hockey fans who were rioting last night. The true hockey fans recognized that the Sedins, et al, were quite simply out-played last night and, really, throughout the series. The true hockey fans, in the Rogers Arena and elsewhere, gave Tim Thomas, the brilliant Boston Bruins goalie, a standing ovation as he accepted the Conn Smythe trophy as playoff MVP. The true hockey fans also quite appropriately drowned out NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman with boos as he tried to sound like a hockey person.

I said earlier that the riots were inevitable and they were. Anytime a large group of people are gathered in city streets with alcohol and you give them three hours of bad news, things will go poorly. It happened in Vancouver in 1994 and Montreal in 1993. More recently it happened in Edmonton in 2006 and again in Montreal in 2008 and 2010. What happened last night should have come as no surprise to anyone.

Is it just “part of hockey”? No, and it shouldn’t be. In my opinion, these things happen when hockey hysteria crosses from the actual fans to the crowd “looking for an excuse to be stupid.” The City of Vancouver takes some responsibility for not being better prepared – especially after 1994.

Beyond the actual hooligans, I lay most of the blame at whoever had the brilliant idea to setup the big screens downtown. We invented sports bars for a reason – they keep people nicely contained in relatively small groups and they keep suburbanites watching the game from the suburbs. Encouraging 100,000 people (most of whom probably hadn’t even watched an entire hockey game before May) to descend on the downtown to receive what had a 50/50 chance of being bad news is just stupid.

What Happened In Buffalo Yesterday?

Colin Carmichael — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 23:46:59 +0000

A lot of Canadians spent the day today saying to themselves (and anyone else): What happened in Buffalo yesterday? How could things go so wrong? What are we going to do about it?

Well, here’s just a sampling of what happened in Buffalo yesterday:

How could things go so wrong and what are we going to do about it?

No related posts.

shop.NHL.com hates Canadians

Colin Carmichael — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:47:17 +0000

Here’s the story…

GOAL:

Purchase a $50 (US) Gift Card at shop.nhl.com for a relative in Michigan.

Steps Taken:

Go to shop.nhl.com
click on big ‘Gift Cards’ link in the header
Select $50 gift card
Create account (username/password)
Enter billing info… here’s where things get weird… there’s no Canada in the list of countries
Call Customer Service
“Go back to the main page, click on the little Canadian flag in the corner and start over…”
Great, Ok.
Click on flag… Big ‘Gift Cards’ link disappears
Search ‘Canadian’ site for gift cards… no dice.
Call Customer Service
Them: “Go back to the main page, click on the little Canadian flag in the corner and start over…”
Me: “But then I can’t find any gift cards.”
Them: “Really? Oh, you’re right!”
Me: “Soooo, can I buy a gift card or not?”
Them: “Do you have a credit card with a non-Canadian billing address?”
Me: Dumfounded silence. “No.”
Them: “I guess you’re out of luck, sorry.”

Just to be clear, if I lived in Singapore or the Phillapines or Pakistan or just about anywhere BUT Canada, I could have billed my purchase anywhere and had it shipped within the US… but us poor Canadians are just special enough to get the shaft.

I just failed Networking 101

Random Thoughts in Philly

Colin Carmichael — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 03:37:15 +0000

(Details on these to follow)

People are walking around in short sleeves — in Philly — in November!

McGillins Pub is awesome – but you’d never find it if you didn’t know it was there.

I learned something about hockey in America – which led me to realize something about newspapers and local search. No really.

Quality beats volume EVERY TIME.

I love my job. ;)

BlackBerry News This Week

Colin Carmichael — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:57:54 +0000

There were two announcements this week regarding the founders of RIM, makers fo the BlackBerry. First, it was announced on October 3rd that Jim Laziridus would become an Officer of the Order of Canada. Second, it was announced last night that Jim Balsillie has purchased the Pittsburgh Penguins.

As both a political junkie and hockey fan, I’m not sure which is cooler. Um, wait. Yep, the hockey team is definately cooler. :)

EDIT: The Penguins site appears to be crumbling under the weight of the attention imposed by all us CrackBerry addicts – it’s currently ‘unavailable’.

First Double-Header

Colin Carmichael — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 04:33:02 +0000

So last night (Monday) was my first hockey double-header. Every monday for the winter hockey season I’ll be playing at 6:30 in the office pickup game and then again at either 10:00 or 10:30 in my new favourite rec league, Warren Hockey.

I had anticipated the the office game would be pretty slow and low-intensity since many of the players hadn’t played in several years. Wow, did I underestimate these guys. John, in particular, impressed me – this was a guy who needed coaching in the dressing room to get his equipment on right, yet once on the ice made smart play after smart play. The play overall was a little disjointed as far as positional play goes, but, hey, we’re just out there to have fun – which I did.

Game 2 was phenomenal! It was easily the best game of my rec ‘career’. Playing D on a team that has so many skill players is just simply a ton of fun. Especially when the opposing team is so cocky that they think they can skate into the zone without consequences. My defensive partner and I broke up play after play – I think I was grinning the whole time. In the end, it was a draw at 2, but the chances were clearly in our favour. This game brings our season record to 1-1-1 (apparently we won a game while I was in LA last week), which is nice, since I’ve never actually been on a team where the L column is not the highest number.

My goal next week is to take less injuries during the warm-ups – 1 elbow to the jaw and 1 puck to the head this week alone!