Some Canadians may care about the cost of health care, our country's crumbling infrastructure and whether Justin Bieber will ever even approach normal, but for the vast majority, it's time to cut to the chase and concentrate on the really important stuff: Canada's roster for the 2014 Olympic Games hockey tournament.
It's only September and the Sochi, Russia sporting festival is still five months away, but to Canadians, it matters not whether the temperature outside is 30 below or 30 above, it's hockey season. We're either playing it, watching it, analyzing it, thinking about it, talking about it or trying to figure out why the Leafs can't win a Cup. (It was Canada's Centennial year, 1967, by the way, when the Leafs last captured Lord Stanley's mug. Some people wouldn't be surprised if their next success happens in our bicentennial year of 2067. But we digress.)
In late August, Hockey Canada officials gathered 47 of the NHL's elite in Calgary for a variety of exercises, none of which involved skating because of hefty insurance costs. The players apparently 'bonded' - which will be a great benefit only until one of them tries some facial surgery on another using a wooden stick in an early October game. But it made for a good media splash and got Canadians thinking about the Olympics, as if we needed a reminder.
In the end, coach Mike Babcock, executive director Steve Yzerman and the rest of the 22-member administrative group will choose a 25-man roster to try to bring Olympic gold back to Canada. You don't have to be a genius to know that Sidney Crosby, who scored the 'golden goal' for Canada in 2010 when the Games were played in Vancouver, will be one of those 25, but the identities of the other 24 will be heavily, passionately and enthusiastically debated from Gander, N.L. to Parksville, B.C., until the roster is submitted on Dec. 31.
A couple of weeks from now, we'll take a stab at picking the 25-man roster, an exercise akin to choosing the winning 649 lottery numbers.
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Blogger TC Chong, from Texas A&M's latest football injury report: "QB Johnny Manziel, questionable (writer's cramp)."
British golf commentator Peter Alliss, in a John Huggan column in GolfWorld: "One good thing about rain in Scotland - most of it ends up as scotch."
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Bill Littlejohn, on a razor company offering Brian Wilson of the Los Angeles Dodgers $1 million to shave his beard: "Shouldn't that offer have come from a lawnmower company?"
