Monday Headlines

SUPER LETDOWN

Hey - how about that Canada-Russia series? Now that was some excitement. In case you didn't know (and who could blame you if you didn't) the best junior hockey players from Canada and Russia just finished an 8 game "Super Series" to "commemorate" the 35 anniversary of the original Summit Series. Less interested in this, I could not have been. I think this series was competitive for the first period of the first game and that was it. Canada took the series 7-0-1 (yes, that's a tie) and outscored the Russians 39-13. Super. If organizers really wanted to spark some rivalry they should have sent Bobby Clarke to break Alex Cherepanov's ankle. Phil Esposito could have challenged Ilya Kablukov to a fight. And Harry Sinden could have stood on the Canadian bench throwing F-bombs at the Russian fans after every Canadian victory. Now that would have been Super.

THE LEADER-POST DOES IT AGAIN

Do you know how many stories in today's Leader-Post sports section pertained to the NFL - the most popular sport in North America? You guessed it...zero. Not one. And it might not be a big deal because any NFL stories would just have been from the wire services anyway. Clearly if a sporting event doesn't happen within a 300km radius of this city, it's not worth anybody at the LP's time. Although I guess I should clarify - there was a 4 line blurb about Jon Ryan being the holder on Green Bay's winning field goal. Riveting. But if the LP did pay attention to anything outside of this province I might be out of a job - so keep up the good work guys.

SEND YOUR THANK YOU'S TO THE GOOD PEOPLE AT SASKPOWER

In an effort to spare the people of southwestern Regina from having to suffer through the Roughrider game on Sunday, SaskPower decided to shut down the power to that part of the city for an extended period of time. Obviously SaskPower did not do this on purpose - but I'm sure they had a lot of phone calls from a lot of irate Rider fans. Luckily I was unaffected by the power outage and could have watched the Rider game if I had wanted but I was taking in NFL refugees from across the southwest. Even if the San Diego/Chicago game was a little slow - we still made a good decision.

...AND SPEAKING OF THAT GOOD DECISION...

How 'bout them Riders? Now I don't want to say I'm glad they lost but I think this will help keep everything in perspective a little bit - both for the team and for fans. A fan I was talking to yesterday said, "They played like they were reading their press clippings all the way to Winnipeg."