So Long Sochi Sports Chowdah Update- Finn-ishing Strong, Sweden Shut Out By Team Canada as Suomi Bests USA for Bronze; Derek Jeter to Call it a Career

WINTER OLYMPICS- The 2014 Winter Olympiad at Sochi has come to an end, and despite the torrid start, Team USA's men's hockey team had no medal to show for it.

The much anticipated USA-Canada hockey game ended with Canada advancing to face Sweden in the gold medal game thanks to a goal from winger Jamie Benn. Despite Jonathan Quick turning aside 36 shots, Team Canada would go on to shut out the USA 1-0. This set up a USA vs Finland matchup in the bronze medal consolation game....which actually went much worse for the USA than the semifinal against Canada.

Tukka Rask turned aside all 27 shots he faced while veteran NHLer and Olympian Teemu Selanne had two goals in what was his final Olympic game as Finland cruised to the bronze medal with a 5-0 shutout of the USA. After beating the Czech Republic and Russia, the USA men's hockey team limped into a disappointing 4th place finish, losing their final two games by a combined 6-0.

Canada, on the other hand, hardly missed a beat and picked up where they left off against Sweden in the gold medal game. Canada got on the board thanks to a Johnathan Toews tally before Sweden netminder Hendrik Lunqvist gave up a one-on-one breakaway shot from Canada's Sidney Crosby to make it a 2-0 game. Team Canada's Chris Kunitz would score in the 3rd to make it a 3-0 game and put things out of reach for the Swedes.

Not only does the win over Sweden give Canada their second consecutive hockey gold medal for the second consecutive Olympiad, Team Canada swept the hockey gold with the women's come-from-behind OT win against Team USA in the gold medal game.

As the game concluded, both the NHL and IOC will deliberate over whether or not the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea will use players for the NHL. Once again, with the Winter Olympiad taking place a hemisphere away, the NHL would need to once again suspend its schedule for several weeks to accommodate players from the league to represent their respective nations in the Olympics. Prior to the Sochi Olympics, there had been talk circulating that this could be the final Olympics to feature professional hockey players.

OTHER OLYMPICS NEWS- South Korean figure skater Kim Yu Na announced that the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics would be the end of her competitive career.

Yu Na, who gained notoriety with a James Bond-inspired routine during the 2010 Vancouver garnered a gold medal for her performance. South Korean Olympic officials were hoping that Yu Na would continue skating and compete in the 2018 Winter Olympiad in Pyeongchang, essentially becoming the face of the host nation- plus she could automatically qualify as a representative of the host country in 2018.

In Sochi, Yu Na finished second to Russian skater Adelina Sotnikova, garnering the silver medal while Italy's Carolina Kostner won the bronze.

OLYMPIC MEDAL COUNT- Host nation Russia won the overall medal count- altho Gateway Pundit helpfully points out that US and South Korean 'ringers' in snowboarding and short track speed skating accounted for five of Russia's thirteen gold medals. The Russians also had 11 silver and nine bronze medals for Sochi. Like the men's hockey team, the USA came in a disappointing 4th place with nine gold medals, seven silver and a dozen bronze medals- finishing behind Norway and Canada.

MLB- After nineteen seasons with the Bronx Bombers, New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter announced that the 2014 season would be his final MLB season. The Yankees captain made the announcement via Facebook on February 12th. In November, Jeter and the Yankees had agreed to a 1-year, $12 million contract. During the 2013 season, Jeter played in less than 20 games and had a batting average of less than .200.

Heading into Spring training of his final season, Jeter has a career .312 batting average with 256 homers and 1,261 runs batted in. In addition to five World Series titles, the Yankees shortstop and thirteen time All Star was also named MVP of the 2000 World Series and awarded five golden gloves. In 2009, Jeter surpassed Lou Gerhig's club record for all-time hits. Two years later, Jeter recorded career hit #3000- a home run off of Tampa Bay starter David Price in July 2011.

Heading into the 2014 season, Jeter is the last remaining Yankee player from the team's glory days of the late 1990s. Catcher Jorge Posada retired after the 2011 season while closer Mariano Rivera called it a career after the 2013 season.

RED SOX- The Red Sox and free agent Chris Capuano have agreed to terms on a one year, $2.25 million contract.

The former Dodger and W. Srpingfield, MA native went 4-7 and had an ERA of 4.26 with the Los Angeles Dodgers last season. The signing was made shortly starter Ryan Dempster announced to Red Sox management that he would not be playing during the 2014 season.

Happy Canada Day from Not Another New England Sports Blog!

While our independence day is right around the corner, today marks Canada Day (formerly Confederation Day) for our neighbors up north. Sure- we may think of Canada as a safe haven for draft-dodging hippies back during the Vietnam era, but there's more to the Great White North than geriatric hippies and lengthy wait times to see a doctor under their healthcare system.

[Nose Art on WWII-era RCAF Lancaster]

Don't let the decades of Trudeau-esque nanny statism fool you, either- Canada's rugged individualism has been out there for all to see over the last few years [I could even make the case that it was there all along, just not noticed until fairly recently- NANESB!].

You want badass? How about driving 18 wheelers over frozen lakes? You want even more badass? Try being the first one to drive heavy vehicles across the frozen waters in the wilderness: that sounds like ex-soldier, ex-Mountie John Denison ,who began supplying remote mining camps in the Northwest Territories at first with 'Cat trains'- a bulldozer pulling several sleds loaded down with supplies and lashed together- and then with a secondhand Army truck in the 1950s. Today there is a fairly well co-ordinated system overseeing operations of the seasonal ice roads in the Northwest Territories; that's not to say it's no longer dangerous, but imagine heading out into the wilderness in not much more than a secondhand two and a half ton truck. Denison was considered the original architect of the ice roads and was awarded the Order of Canada in 1998. John Denison passed away in Kelowna, BC in 2001 at the age of 84.

Not badass enough? Try one of the longest confirmed sniper kills on record! Then-Master corporal Rob Furlong of Princess Pat's Light Infantry set a world record in 2002 with the longest confirmed kill during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan's Shah-i-Kot valley, when he dropped a machine gun toting Al Qaeda fighter from a distance of more than 2600 yards (or just over a mile and a half). Having said that, Furlong's record was recently surpassed by a British sniper- also in Afghanistan.

Keep in mind that Canada entered WWII two years ahead of the USA. James Doohan- the actor who played Scotty on Star Trek- was with the Canadian Army when they stormed Juno beach on D-Day. He was hit by gunfire and lost his finger that day but would survive. Later on in his acting career, cameramen would ty and avoid filming his hand that was missing the finger.

Let's not forget ice-hockey, hardly a pursuit for the faint of heart. Sure, it's been awhile since a Canadian team brought home the Stanley Cup, but Canada provides a good deal of the manpower for those championship teams.

One possible upside of the 'Fairness Doctrine' being imposed on American broadcaster is that USA viewers could be treated to a 76 year old Don Cherry reducing Keith Olberman to a snivelling, incoherent shell of a human being with just one glance...well....I guess an even more incoherent snivelling shell of a human being during NBC's Football Night in America (a name NBC 'borrowed' from CBC's long-running Hockey Night in Canada). Hell, Cherry would probably make Olberman's awkward, gangly stepson Rachel Maddow hold his technicolor dream coat while he effortlessly sapped the MSNBC 'personality' of his will to live.
And let us not forget the First Canadians (an Anglo Canadian neolingism for 'Native Americans')such as the Baker Twins- Shannon and Shauna- from the Stellat'en First Nations Reservation in Northwestern British Columbia. OK....to be honest, since I don't watch Smallville, I only found out about them like 20 minutes ago. Apparently Shannon's appearance on Smallville was supposed to be a one-time deal that got extended when the producers found out she had a real-life identical twin.

[Image: CMT]

There's also a good number of country musicians that hail from Canada. In the interest of full disclosure, I hardly ever listen to country music but have to acknowledge that a disproportionate number of attractive women seem to gravitate towards that medium as performers. Montreal-born and Medicine Hat, Alberta-raised Terri Clark (shown above) has been in the business for the last 15 years.

Image: Rocky Mountain Rail Society

Let us not forget the iron horses that- just as in our history- played a pivotal role in the development and expansion of Canada. One could make the argument that Canada as a nation would not have survived were it not for the completion of the Canadian Pacific line between Ontario and the then-obscure pacific coast port of Vancouver. In fact, completion of the line was a condition for British Columbia's 1871 entry into the Confederation of Canada. Canadian Pacific's line was completed in November 1885, followed by Canadian Northern's transcontinental line (which would become Canadian National). Like their American counterparts, Canadians have also taken steps to preserve equipment and structures from that era- such as former Canadian National streamlined U-1-f 4-8-2 Mountain class built by the Montreal Locomotive works. #6060 (shown above) is such an example and is maintained by the Rocky Mountain Rail Society and frequently operated over the Alberta Prairie railroad in Stettler, AB (the Alberta Prairie has a smaller ex-US Army Steam engine of its own it will operate on a more regular basis).

This video from TLC also gives viewers an idea of what it's like to operate a train over the Canadian Rockies in more modern times (it starts about 40 seconds in):


So Happy Canada Day, our neighbors to the north! I'm not sure if you traditionally set off fireworks like we do on independence day, but raise a frosty pint of Alexander Keith's or Okanagan Spring to your underrated nation on this first of July!

Sports Chowdah Olympic Finale/Feb 28th: USA's Golden Opportunity Fades in OT; Russian To Conclusions; Those Medal-ing Kids

(Getty Images)

Men's Hockey: OK...congratulations Canada- gotta admit, you were scared there for awhile. Now what were the terms of our wager again? Loser has to have Stephen Harper as their head of state for the next 3 years?

In case you missed it, the USA/Canada matchup was one of those rare confluences of sporting events that lived up to the hype coupled with the fact that they take place once every four years, tops. Even rarer considering that there's virtually no guarantee that the USA and Canada would meet in the gold medal game. The last time the two nations met was the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City (which actually isn't that long ago in terms of Olympic-ness). The two teams met earlier in the tournament to close out round-robin play with USA downing Canada 5-3.

With Canada's Prime Minister and actors Michael J Fox and William Shatner in attendance, both goalies Ryan Miller and Roberto Luongo were looking sharp early, although Johnathan Toews was able to get the first goal of the game for Canada at the 12:50 mark of the first period. Corey Perry would add to that 7 minutes and 13 seconds into the second, although Ryan Kessler would get one past Luongo to put the USA on the board.

Still down 2-1 in the 3rd, Team USA pulled Ryan Miller for an extra attacker with about a minute and a half remaining in regulation. More often than not, the team that's down by one goal and pulls the goaltender for an extra attacker will ultimately end up losing by two goals. Hell- Canada tried this against Team USA last week and all it did was seal Canada's only loss of the tournament. Only this time it was one of those 'Holy crap! It worked!' deals when Zach Parise got one past Roberto Luongo to tie the game up at 2-2 with 25 seconds remaining. One could almost feel the air sucked out of Canada Hockey Place as the home team was so close to sealing the deal, only to have the contest head for overtime.

And it was in overtime that the little-known and obscure hockey player named Sidney Crosby was finally able to figure out USA netminder Ryan Miller. 7 minutes and 40 seconds into overtime, the underhyped 'Sid the Kid', who isn't very well known outside of Pittsburgh PA or his native Nova Scotia, took a pass from Jerome Iginla and slipped it in under the pads of Miller for the 3-2 win, the gold and no doubt all sorts of beaver (hey- it is Canada's national critter, y'know). Crosby's only other goal of the tournament was a shootout goal against the Swiss in the preliminaries. Canada outshot the USA 39 to 36, although it was a much closer margin than last week when the host nation outshot the USA 45 to 23.

Overall, great game....Canada just outlasted USA, although they had to be nervous heading into an overtime that was 25 seconds away from never taking place. In a way, this is a sort of reversal of the World Jr. Championships final back in January- USA blowing the late lead on what seemed like a back-breaker, only to win in OT...only Team USA wasn't playing in front of the home crowd in either instance. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Ryan Miller [Ruh-roh! A Bruins fan thanking the Buffalo goaltender!? What is this world coming to!? -NANESB!] for his outstanding performance throughout the tournament. I honestly don't think the USA would've gotten within sniffing distance of a medal if it wasn't for his efforts. One could almost hear the ebullient Rick Jeanneret enthusiastically bellowing 'WHAT A SAVE BY MILLER!' from the broadcast booth.....

So Canada gets the gold, USA gets the silver and Finland won the bronze Saturday in the match against the Slovaks. Although the Slovaks didn't get a medal, their 4th place finish is their best in hockey since splitting apart from the Czech Republic.

And as much as the '98 Games in Nagano or '06 Games in Torino were an argument against having NHL players in the Olympics, the Vancouver games were a ringing endorsement of their presence. Granted the performance by the heavily favored Russians and Czechs were a letdowns, but the efforts turned in by the USA, Canada, Slovaks and Finns made for some very dynamic and entertaining matches. Reportedly NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was deciding against NHL players participating in the 2014 games at Sochi, Russia before the Olympics, although he may rethink his stance after the output from NHL players in the winter games this year.

Medal Count: And the winner is......
-----Gold--------Silver------Bronze
USA: 9 ----------15----------13
Germany: 10------3----------7
Canada: 14--------7----------5
Norway: 9---------8---------6
Austria: 4----------6---------6
Russia: 3----------5----------7
S. Korea: 6--------6----------2
PRC China: 5------2----------4
Sweden: 5---------2----------4
France: 2----------3----------6

Russian Olympic Federation: The polls are now closed, and I see that nobody selected Russia to finish tops in the medal count. Wise move, since the Russkies finished with only 15 medals- a disappointing 6th place overall with 11 fewer medals than host country Canada and 22 less than the USA. This has not gone unnoticed by Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, who has called for Russian Olympic officials to resign en masse in the wake of Russia's worst showing in the winter games since the Tsars were in power. Two events the Russian's traditionally dominate include figure skating and men's hockey; no Russian athlete won a gold in figure skating for the first time in over 50 years and the Russian hockey team's aspirations to leave Vancouver with a medal were crushed in a 7-3 spanking at the hands of host nation Canada in the semifinals. Russia basically has four years to get their shit together before hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi....which is only some 50 miles from that mountainous little republic of Georgia that they decided to invade back in 2008 in time for the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Summer Olympics.

NBC Coverage: In a nutshell, it sucked. OK, I thought having Al Michaels on hand for the gold medal game between USA and Canada was a nice touch, but the hockey coverage leading up to it was atrocious- most of it being shunted off to networks that hardly anybody watches and not everybody got with their cable or satellite subscription plan, or weren't available in HD on top of showing some Team USA matches on tape delay. I'm convinced the only reason NBC didn't pre-empt the gold medal match between the USA and Canada to show curling or ice-prancing is because those events were over and done with. Over time, I was more amused than bothered by the MSNBC ads depicting Ed Schultz and Keith Olberman's gangly stepson Rachel Maddow as some sort of rational, unbiased moderates when it's becoming more and more apparent MSNBC is where Air America hosts go to die. Or at least their careers do.

President Obama Offers Unconditional Apology to Prime Minister of Canada for 'Arrogant' USA Men's Hockey Victory

In a letter dated Sunday and delivered to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, President Barack Obama apologized for USA Men's Hockey 5-3 win over host country Canada.

According to sources, Obama said Team USA had "shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" toward opponents in the tournament.

"In stopping 45 of 48 shots on goal, I believe that USA Goaltender Bode Miller acted stupidly towards the host nation and should return his ill-gotten gold medal without any further delay..." read one particularly scathing portion of the letter that Harper's office released to the public. "In this misguided and unilateral action, which is clearly a result of the failed policies of the last 8 years, Team USA has singlehandedly undone the 13 months of goodwill I have personally established with our neighbors to the north. Some of these players have shown an antipathy towards teams that are not their own, and they'll bitterly cling to their sticks or a two-goal lead."

When questioned about the letter, USA netminder Ryan Miller told NANESB! sources "Wow- really? He said that, huh? First of all, my name is Ryan. Last time I checked Bode Miller was a skier. Second- we haven't won anything yet. Tonight's game was still in the preliminaries."

The White House has reportedly been in contact with IOC officials to lobby for a belated forefit of tonight's game.

"C'mon! We got guys wearing these f*cking retarded 'Support the Troops' or Uncle Sam masks in what's supposed to be an international tournament" Rahm Emmanuel said in a conference earlier. "They can't get disqualified for that? Are you sh*tting me?"

Alpine skier Bode Miller was busy posing for pictures of him sinking his teeth into his gold medal and unavailable for comment.