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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Olympic Women’s Hockey Edition

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84Comments

  1. 1.

    Yutsano

    Canadians win gold. Helluva game too. My Canuck co-worker is pleased with the results. I got her a cheese pizza to celebrate since that’s what she said she wanted.

  4. 4.

    RedKitten

    Oh, and just because I’m feeling gregarious, I’ll advise you that there is yet another new SamKitten video at my url. Think of it as a consolation prize.

  6. 6.

    Brian J

    Is anyone here in the Northeast sick and tired of the schizophrenia with the weather forecast? It’s been pouring buckets for days now but that could turn to snow at some point. When, exactly, that snow is supposed to reach me, I am not sure, but it is coming, or so they say. Who the hell knows what is going on at this point?

  7. 7.

    ellaesther

    Is there something wrong with me that while I don’t, personally, enjoy spectator sports, and can only barely muster enthusiasm for about 45 minutes of Olympic coverage every 4 years, I really want my daughter to notice and be excited by things like women’s hockey?

    “Look, honey!” I want to say “Women doing stuff they never would have done when I was your age! Watch and learn!”

  8. 8.

    Osprey

    You know what amazes me. Some of these women have multiple children and can still compete at an ultra-high level.

    And I really hope a lot of people are watching the ceremony, because some people NEED to see this. I’ve heard waaaayyy too many misogynistic pieces of limp-dicked shit call these women butch, beasts, lesbians…shit you name it. It steams me.

    A lot of them are mothers…and they’re all nice looking ladies, and this being after playing a 60 minute hockey game. (alright except the Canadian coach with the fucking MULLET). Maybe it’s hockey bias…

    Also, they need to friggin’ allow the women to play full contact. For anybody who has ever seen girls fight in school know…man that would really be exciting. You could see there were plenty of times they wanted to just crush each other into the boards.

  9. 9.

    Anne Laurie

    @RedKitten: That clip is gonna embarrass the hell out’ve young Sam when it’s shown during his triumphal Olympics 2026 tour, eh?

    Unless, of course, he’s switched to ice-dancing. All ice-dancers must have their embarrassment glands surgically removed as a pre-qualification, I believe.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Canadian women rock! All my Canadian colleagues will be very happy tomorrow. I’m pleased with the results, although I caught only the last couple of minutes of the game. They’re about to get their gold medals in a minute. Cool.

    Hey RK, if you haven’t done so already, could you please put up the Team Canada photo of Sam in the album? The one John front-paged a week or so ago?

    Okay, putting my red Vancouver mittens on to wear for the medals and anthem.

  11. 11.

    RedKitten

    Man…some of those U.S. ladies are looking SERIOUSLY sour. Yes, you lost, but you still got a silver medal, which all of the other teams out there wouldn’t have minded getting.

  12. 12.

    Anne Laurie

    @Brian J:

    Is anyone here in the Northeast sick and tired of the schizophrenia with the weather forecast? It’s been pouring buckets for days now but that could turn to snow at some point.

    Goddess forgive me, but I would actually prefer some snow here in the Boston area for a change. It’s been raining non-stop since Tuesday and the blasted lap-dogs (renamed Widdle, Tinkle, and Wee-Wee) aren’t afraid to go outside and get snowed on.

  15. 15.

    Brian J

    @ellaesther:

    No, not at all. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a sense of opportunity that you may not have had or supporting activities which you personally are indifferent to or never took part in. In fact, I’d say it’s a good thing, because it shows you can be open-minded.

    Perhaps it’s a stretch, but if more people had attitudes like yours, we wouldn’t so many school budgets slashed and so many art/theater/music and sports programs eliminated.

  17. 17.

    eastriver

    Did you see the Canadian men get stomped by the Yanks? Yeah?

    Enjoy yer pizza party and kitty kuddlin’.

  18. 18.

    RedKitten

    Hee hee — they just showed the Canadian men’s team, and you can practically see them sweating and pulling at their proverbial neckties.

    ‘Cause you know…no pressure or anything.

  19. 19.

    Brian J

    @Anne Laurie:

    I don’t mean to sound like a heartless prick here, but an old aunt died, and I am supposed to go to a wake in Maryland this weekend. But man, I don’t want to drive down, for a few reasons. Too much snow would be a perfect excuse not to do so.

    Anyway, the snow can be somewhat more difficult to drive in, but the rain is far more cold, for me at least, and it seems to make my house colder as well. And my dog hates it. She won’t go outside in the rain, so I have to throw a bone outside on the back deck in order to prevent her from peeing in the house. Yet she loves the snow, for some reason.

  20. 20.

    WereBear

    @mai naem: Yeah, and that’s kinda my pet peeve about most medal attitudes, you might say.

    Everyone’s dissing the silver and bronze, but geez, people, sometimes it’s one point, or 1/10th of a second, that separates the medals, and sometimes it’s because an athlete had a cold or a sprain on that particular day of all days.

    These people are still The Best In The World, okay? Just getting to go, much less getting a medal, means that.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    With glowing hearts. I’m in tears. (But it’s a *good* kind of tears.)

    Yeah, US women could stand a few lessons in sportsmanship.

    Thanks for posting the picture, cropped or un- . I’m going to have a look right now.

  22. 22.

    madmommy

    All I can think of during the medal ceremonies is “why on earth are they handing out bunches of broccoli instead of flowers?”

  23. 23.

    Carrie

    Well, now.
    That was nice.
    On a personal note, i played hockey in high school but was kicked off the team cause i refused to skate with guy skates.
    I love my front brakes.

  24. 24.

    frankdawg

    sadly, there are only two womans hockey teams in the world. The rest are just punching bags for the US & Canada. the quality is getting better and I look forward to the day when either would see the silver as second instead of last.

    I think they will let the ‘ladies’ check as soon as the quality of all teams is better. Right now it would be a bloodbath, both on the scoreboard and on the ice. The college game is getting much closer and is great to watch.

    10 years ago MN had a rule they did not beat teams by more than 10 goals. way too many games turned into passing drills. Its rare now to see any team lose by 10.

    In many ways its so much more entertaining then the mens game. Without the goonball stuff play making and goal scoring – its fast and fun.

  25. 25.

    RedKitten

    @madmommy:

    All I can think of during the medal ceremonies is “why on earth are they handing out bunches of broccoli instead of flowers?”

    That’s not broccoli. They’re bouquets of fine B.C. bud.

  26. 26.

    wmsheppa

    @WereBear: The US and Canada are really the only two competitive women’s teams though, so they both view the Silver as a participation medal. Given that, I think it’s understandable why the Fins were a lot more excited about the Bronze than the US was about the Silver. The Canadian women wouldn’t have looked any happier with a Silver.

  28. 28.

    Brian J

    Via Matt Yglesias, from The Monkey Cage, your liberal media at work:

    During the 2008 presidential election we submitted letters to the editor at 100 major U.S. newspapers as part of a field experiment to test whether interest in the letter depended on which candidate the letter supported. We find, contrary to what charges of a liberal media bias would suggest, that newspapers expressed more interest in pro-McCain letters than pro-Obama letters. Further, we find that papers were most likely to be interested in letters supporting the candidate they did not endorse, a result that is consistent with the idea that editors seem to be using their gate keeping powers to allow dissenting opinions to be heard.

    That is from a newly published paper by Daniel Butler and Emily Schofield. An ungated version is here.

    I think the only way to correct this outrageous imbalance is to hire Dana Perino, Karen Hughes, and Sean Hannity for the Op/Ed pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Maybe Frank Gaffney, too.

  29. 29.

    madmommy

    @RedKitten:

    Well that’s much better than broccoli! The Canadian team looked so happy, and having the entire crowd singing the anthem along with them must have been quite an experience. “O Canada” is a much better anthem than ours. Guess I’m not a real American after all.

    Does this mean I can get healthcare?

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    That’s not broccoli. They’re bouquets of fine B.C. bud.

    Jeez, if that’s true I could get a contact high through the screen of my Tee and Vee.

  37. 37.

    MikeTheZ

    @demkat620: I left in on for about 2 minutes. When I realized they decided that the “news” here was Obama and McCain not getting along, I turned it off and almost threw my TV out the window.

    Its times like this I wish I was an alcoholic.

  39. 39.

    WereBear

    @mike kay: One of the things I love about Canada is the casting in their commercials.

    In the US, minorities look and act like tokens. The one black couple at the party, the one Hispanic guy in the office… it never looks right. It looks calculated.

    In Canadian commercials, they’re just folks.

    And is it just me, or are there a LOT more African-Americans in the commercials lately? ‘Bout time.

  40. 40.

    Max

    @demkat620: I am watching it. It is painful.

    Chuck Todd, Savannah and Tweety.

    Chris doesn’t like that Obama called the congress critters by their first names. We are fucking doomed.

  42. 42.

    sbjules

    I think it’s completely understandable that the US team was disappointed and showed it. They’ve trained together for literally years, devoted their lives to the gold. Let them be.

    The Canadian men weren’t smiling at the end of their game with the US; perfectly understandable.

  44. 44.

    Peter J

    sadly, there are only two womans hockey teams in the world. The rest are just punching bags for the US & Canada. the quality is getting better and I look forward to the day when either would see the silver as second instead of last.

    Exactly. But I wouldn’t agree that the quality is getting better.

    Canada outscored their opponents 48-2.
    The US outscored their opponents 40-4.

    When the US lost in semifinals 2006 to Sweden, that was a major upset, and it’s unlikely it will happen again. This time, the US won against Sweden 9-1, and Canada beat Sweden 13-1. US – Finland, 6-0 and Canada – Finland 5-0.

    Two teams play for the gold and silver. Another two teams play for the bronze.

    There’s not enough competitive teams for a women’s tournament in ice hockey…

  45. 45.

    KG

    Second place is not an easy thing to accept for hyper-competitive athletes, which at this level is more or less redundent. I’ve been on teams that finished second by a goal or two and I’ve been on teams that never had a chance. Accepting the first is much more difficult, by light years. I’m sure, with some time, the Americans will recognize that they accomplished a lot in these games, but I don’t blame them for the tears right now.

    That said, I’ve been thinking that the worst possible thing would be to finish fourth in the olympics. Especially in a sport decided by less than a few seconds.

  48. 48.

    MikeTheZ

    @mr. whipple: True, but then I remember my only shot at health care thanks to these morons is not screwing up my college transcript any more than I already have and not drinking myself into a pre-existing condition…

  49. 49.

    mike kay

    Ya know Canada could have been gracious hosts and took a dive and let the Americans win. But, nooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Canada is so selfish.

  54. 54.

    RedKitten

    And is it just me, or are there a LOT more African-Americans in the commercials lately? ‘Bout time.

    No, it’s not just you.

    Funny, I had Martha Speaks (a kids’ cartoon) on for Sam today, and on the episode, Martha (a talking dog) was called in to the White House to find out what was wrong with Bo, who wasn’t eating or playing or anything. And as this cartoon Barack Obama was explaining the situation, I just thought to myself how incredibly awesome it is that all these little kids would be watching this show, and seeing that the President is African-American, and they wouldn’t find it any more noteworthy than the colour of the guy’s suit. For my kid’s generation, I really think that the idea of a black President, or a female President or a gay President will illicit no more than unconcerned shrugs. And I think that’s nifty.

  55. 55.

    Yutsano

    @RedKitten: I deserve the in your face being the current resident of the country that I am. However, I have been cheering on the ancestral homeland since the Games started and enjoying the success of the Canadian teams probably more than an American should.

  56. 56.

    SGEW

    @RedKitten:

    I just thought to myself how incredibly awesome it is that all these little kids would be watching this show, and seeing that the President is African-American, and they wouldn’t find it any more noteworthy than the colour of the guy’s suit.

    Have you seen this? (originally via ObWi, I think)

    [Six year old] Justin was given an assignment on Abraham Lincoln. As with the MLK homework, Justin was instructed to color in the president, or he would actually lose points onhis assignment. With no instruction from us we left him to color in the picture of Abraham Lincoln. [Justin colored in Abraham Lincoln brown] So we asked him why he colored in Abraham Lincoln brown. He could have said a number of things, like “he’s on a penny, and a penny is brown,” or he “looked brown in the picture.” And it’s unlikely he’s read Leroy Vaughn¹s book, Black People and Their Place In World History, which asserts that Lincoln indeed had African ancestry. So why did he do it?
    . . .
    “He was a president and the President is brown.”

  57. 57.

    Anne Laurie

    @WereBear:

    And is it just me, or are there a LOT more African-Americans in the commercials lately? ‘Bout time.

    Can’t remember who had the routine about the advertising agencies watching the Inaugural and asking each other “Black people got money? Discretionary income? Why did we never know about this until now?”

  58. 58.

    freelancer

    @RedKitten:

    You don’t say:

    “Drag away from Obamacare mtg today2cheer Red,White&Blue:USA Women’s Hockey w/AK’s own#23 Weiland play Canada for Gold.Huge contest.Go U-S-A!”

    name that Twitter account.

  59. 59.

    YellowJournalism

    @RedKitten: For some reason, Martha Speaks kind of creeps me out. That, and the Wonder Pets.

    I’ll take Yo Gabba Gabba any day, though. It probably goes down even better with one of those fancy Olympic bouquets.

  60. 60.

    ellaesther

    @Brian J: I think that I also wonder if I would be more interested if someone had bothered to point all this stuff out to me, back then. I was a very physical, adventurous — nay, insane — little kid who climbed and jumped and experimented and landed herself in the emergency room several times. But, I think because this was the late 1960s/early 1970s, no one really knew what to do with me, and it kind of withered and died. I’m adventurous in other ways, and loved rock climbing in high school, but otherwise, anything that might be considered a physical extension of the self? Meh, not so much.

  61. 61.

    madmommy

    @YellowJournalism:

    Yo Gabba Gabba is very entertaining. That lisping duck on the Wonder Pets makes me contemplate things that would cause PETA to picket my house. Nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to Lazy Town for extreme strangeness. There were some serious drugs in the room when that show was conceived.

  63. 63.

    MikeTheZ

    Chuck Todd: “I still don’t understand how the Democrats as losing the argument on reconciliation.”

    Have you WATCHED your own programming lately? *headdesk*

  64. 64.

    Ash Can

    Rats. As a retired US female hockey player myself (albeit never beyond the recreational level), I have to say that I’d rather have seen the US women win than the US men. Oh well. They lost to the Canadians; that’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of. And wmsheppa and sbjules are right. The US girls are bummed out of disappointment, not poor sportsmanship. They got this close, and fell short. The Canadian girls would have reacted the same way, because they’re competitors to the core, just like the US girls. The Finns were as happy as they were with their bronzes because they beat the Swedes to get them, and because they didn’t have a higher medal just barely slip from their grasp.

  65. 65.

    RedKitten

    @Yutsano:

    @RedKitten: I deserve the in your face being the current resident of the country that I am. However, I have been cheering on the ancestral homeland since the Games started and enjoying the success of the Canadian teams probably more than an American should.

    Actually, the In Your Face was to the room at large, not to you directly. My apologies. :)

    I’ve never seen Wonder Pets. I rarely have the TV on for Sam, but we do enjoy watching Stewart and Colbert together, as they’re on in the morning on the Comedy Network.

    Yo Gabba Gabba seems neat. It’s got that cool funk that Sesame Street had before it became watered down and Elmo-fied.

  67. 67.

    Yutsano

    @RedKitten: All is good, you (we?) have every right to be celebrating tonight. I am really looking forward to the women’s ice skating now and hoping beyond hope the skater whose mom just passed on gets at least a medal if not the gold. That one ripped my guts out, but after she did a fantastic skate.

    I’d agree with you on the Elmo hate if I didn’t know he was voiced by a 6’4″ black guy. That mere thought cracks me up every single time.

  68. 68.

    Tax Analyst

    Congratulations to the Canadian Broad’s…er, Women’s Hockey Team.

    But I’m really surprised NBC even mentioned them. Usually they just talk about the “gutty Americans”, even when they lose.

    An American gets a bronze medal in something and it’s candy & flowers and treated like a cause for a National Holiday. Meanwhile you are lucky if they mention the actual winner’s name, much less show you a picture of them.

  69. 69.

    RedKitten

    @Ash Can:

    The US girls are bummed out of disappointment, not poor sportsmanship. They got this close, and fell short. The Canadian girls would have reacted the same way, because they’re competitors to the core, just like the US girls.

    Oh heck, I wasn’t expecting them to be pleased. I know our ladies would have been damn disappointed had the shoe been on the other foot. It was just during the medals, most of the US ladies were at least able to muster a pleasant expression or a smile when getting their individual medals, but there were a few who really just looked like someone had shit in their cornflakes, and I found it a little surprising.

  70. 70.

    RedKitten

    @Yutsano:

    I’d agree with you on the Elmo hate if I didn’t know he was voiced by a 6’4” black guy. That mere thought cracks me up every single time.

    I didn’t know that! But it IS entertaining to think about, isn’t it?

  71. 71.

    Katie5

    Canada wins–foregone conclusion. I’ve been watching men’s aerials and women’s figure skating. (And, I hate to admit, broom on broom action this afternoon).

  72. 72.

    Yutsano

    @RedKitten: First time I ever saw him on camera I thought it was a joke or something. Then out comes that familiar high pitched whine and the cognitive dissonance just takes over. When I get home from work I’ll try and find a YouTube clip of him, it’s really a trip to watch.

    BTW how many + are you in celebration?

  75. 75.

    Katie5

    @Yutsano Okay, into finals (not yet gold, but you know….). Amazing sport. Combining technique, strategy and knowledge of ice conditions.

  77. 77.

    madmommy

    @RedKitten:

    His name is Kevin Clash. There are YouTubes of him doing interviews and dropping into the Elmo voice. Hysterical! Like many of the puppeteers on Sesame Street, you can hear hints of his character in his natural voice, but when he goes full bore Elmo it is amazing that this very large dude is voicing a little red toddler/monster.

  80. 80.

    Gwangung

    And is it just me, or are there a LOT more African-Americans in the commercials lately? ‘Bout time.

    Not just African Americans but Asian Americans and other ethnicities. I can tell from looking at resumes that are a lot fuller than just a few years ago.

  81. 81.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Bill DeMong won gold and Johnny Spillane won silver in the Men’s Nordic combined. That was exciting. They left the Austrian in the dust. First US Nordic combined gold ever.

  82. 82.

    ChrisB

    @frankdawg: Completely agree with you. This was the only game that mattered. The US and Canada were the class of the field. That was a crushing loss.

    Also, I’d love to see checking at the level of Canada vs. USA but having watched the Canadians just overpower and manhandle (womanhandle?) all of the teams other than the US that could be brutal against lesser competition. That would be the case from peewees right up through the Olympics.

  83. 83.

    Katie5

    Bobsleigh teams are getting their medals at the moment. A Haitian Canadian woman just won a silver medal in 2 man bobsleigh. Nice to see a break in the whiteness of the Winter Games, although there a lots of Asians winning medals.

  84. 84.

    YellowJournalism

    Bronze for Canada in the Women’s Figure Skating! The gold medal winner was amazing.

    I love that clip of Elmo and Ricky Gervais. They played a skit today where Ricky sings Elmo to sleep. Celebrity Lullaby We have it saved under the favorites folder I use for all the kids’ songs and TV clips. (Also have a lot of old school Sesame Street clips. Both boys seem to really enjoy them.)

    “Is Ricky Gervais a celebrity?” Hell yeah.

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