Daily Archives: February 18, 2010

Puck Daddy Rocks

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I missed this Mike Milbury discussion on Alex Ovechkin vs. Sid the kid. Way to go Jeremy and what is the deal Mike? Let us all give Mike Milbury a big and warm DC welcome next time he is in town! Crapitals? Who is your daddy? He is playing like a dog? Who talks like that besides Mad Mike? :-) .

Alex is most likely now the 3 time defending MVP in the NHL. If Mike was our GM he probably would have traded Alex for some picks :-) .

I too wish NBC embraced hockey at the Games a bit more. In Canada at least hockey is the number 1 subject on everyone’s mind. And the two leading jerseys of course are Ovechkin’s Caps number 8 and Crosby’s Canada red jersey number 87.

A Few Notes about Hockey at the Olympics

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The hockey games provide a bulk of the programming to the Olympics. There are more than 30 games scheduled and about 100 hours of programming for the networks and for the organizing committees. Twenty thousand people per game attend the games. Hence more than 600,000 tickets are sold. And the league shuts down the arena that is being used for the games which is the home of the Vancouver Canucks. It has been reconfigured for the Olympics too. You should see what the staff has done to seating to handle the world’s media.

Each team is stocked full of NHL players. The Swedish team is awesome. I think 90 percent NHL laden. Nick Backstom had a strong game yesterday, by the way. Great faceoff winning percentage and a wonderful play and assist on Sweden’s second goal. We will attend three games today highlighted by the US team, the Canadian team and the team from Russia. All day. All hockey.

The merchandising sales are through the roof here. I bought some USA hats at $35 each. Wow! And replica jerseys were selling for more than $300. We bought some USA jerseys for our kids and some from Sweden, too.

The NHL has provided more than $2 BILLION of committed contracts in terms of players to the Olympics. The Capitals have provided in our six players more than $200 million worth of talent as well, I believe. And in payment back we received two free tickets to each game per team :-) . Seems like a fair exchange, huh?

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In Defense of the Olympic Games

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The city of Vancouver is a magnificent host for the people who have attended the games. The scenery here is breath taking and the city is clean and easy to get around.

The people are so incredibly friendly and the volunteers are very helpful. The lines have been manageable. The security while strict, has been efficient and non intrusive.

The venues have been top notch. The dining experiences have been great and the hotel is perfect. The cabs are running on time and are plentiful. The buses are all on time and safe.

The traffic has been manageable. The buzz in town is fun, friendly, welcoming and authentic to the Games. The weather now is perfect with no humidity. It isn’t dry either. It is in the 50′s and sunny and crisp.

Most of our travel has been by walking and you tend to walk with people from all walks of life and from all over the world. It is easy to feel the Olympic spirit everywhere.

Most of the issues have centered on some questionable decisions like fencing the Olympic flame. We went to see it and had to laugh. We couldn’t see it and thought “Are they concerned that someone is going to steal the Olympic flame?”. Good news. They just made the viewing of the flame more transparent. They listened to complaints and made the situation better.

The mountain oriented sports were tough to handle. They are either 60 minutes away or 2.5 hours away. The security and bus transfers were tough to handle and the mountain had very little snow in Whistler. There were many people that became inconvenienced. Our events were canceled and rescheduled and we were out of luck. We saw quite a few people get very upset to see their Olympic dream attendance at an event go away.

Of course the games got off to such a sad start with the death of an athlete. That pall has continued to shroud the games, as well.

But the Olympic spirit is real. The Canadian hosts have been so nice and Vancouver has been a great place to visit and to hold these games.

Most of the people that opine on the web about the Olympics aren’t even here. A fun time is being had in the aggregate and everyone is grateful to share in this collectively positive experience.