LET'S FOCUS ON THE REAL STARS

Like most Canadians I am a hockey nut. Partly because our live of the game leaves our neighbors to the south shaking their heads as they anxiously await the next Superbowl, and mostly because it is our sport. Not our national sport, which is a far superior game known as lacrosse (for those of you that don't know what it is, check it out whenever you get the chance), but definitely the sport that we as a nation love.

Every Olympics we look forward to rooting for the best Canada has to offer delivering a strong game and bringing home a medal, the preferred coloring of which is obviously gold. This Olympics has come and the games have been rolling on. Our team came out of the gate strong but here they are flopping around like a fish on the shoreline. While the media and the public at large all wonder what went wrong and how we can fix it, I can't help but think that maybe if the Olympics would pull rank and not allow professional players in the Olympics then the team would be able to play together more than just once in a while. Why is it hat in all other sports but hockey, the athletes can have no professional income from their sport , but in hockey we are allowed to send multimillion dollar per year players to fight against one another?

And a more accurate question is how come we are all moaning and wailing about our men's team when the poor womens' team go relatively unmentioned, despite an undefeated performance with only a single goal scored against them? At the last Olympics they won the gold and the whole country basically went "Oh that's nice, but when do the men play?" Let's focus on the women's team, who don't make millions of dollars a year in professional leagues, who are truly producing the results. They are truly a product of our national hockey program and deserve the attention that their performance should be earning them. While our women go on to battle for the gold this afternoon, the country will still likely be too busy moaning about mens' failing to notice. Good thing the news will mention it or they would go unnoticed.