Hockey: The forgotten middle child

        My dad knows I'm a huge sports buff and saves all his Sports Illustrated for me. My pile is only at ten issues right now, two of which have hockey-related articles. I looked at each table of contents and found one article on the Colorado Avalanche and one on Russia's hockey team. This infuriates me. If you can't tell already, hockey is my favorite sport to play, follow, and watch. The lack of coverage is insulting.

        The Colorado Avalanche team is newsworthy with new head coach and former goalie star Patrick Roy. First overall draft pick Nathan MacKinnon adds more youth to the already youthful team, joining Gabriel Landeskog, Jamie McGinn, Paul Stastny, and Matt Duchene. Of the 26 players listed on the roster, only seven are 30 or older. The oldest two are defenseman Jan Hejda, 35, and goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere, 36. In hockey years, that's not old. Not yet.
        On paper it makes sense to focus on Colorado:

• A new head coach, who happens to be a very famous former goalie
• Overall young team
• The top draft pick, a skilled dude who is younger than I 

        How could you not write about such a team? I think they will be cup contenders, even in the tough Western Conference. Which reminds me, there should be an article spotlighting the Western Conference teams. The 14 teams in the west include the stacked teams of San Jose, Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, Anaheim, and Colorado. The other teams are close behind, like Dallas, Phoenix, and Minnesota. Come playoff time, the west is going to have the more competitive series. Sure, if you look at the standings in the east, you might think it's anybody's game. Wrong. The clear leaders of the divisions are Boston and Pittsburgh, with 93 and 92 points, respectively. The closest team has 80 points. Unless Boston and Pittsburgh choke, I see them playing in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Western Conference will most likely see series going the full seven games. I can't begin to speculate which two teams make conference finals in the west. It all comes down to who can stay healthy and focused, and, most importantly, goaltending. Your forwards can score plenty of goals, but you won't make it with a shoddy goalie, or shoddy defense.

       I don't understand why SI published an article on the Russian hockey team. It's an American magazine. The story behind the team might be intriguing, but I'd prefer if they could balance that out with coverage on the American team. Where's that article? The American team is full of mostly lesser known players, clearly underdogs to team Canada's roster of NHL captains. Yeah, we have Patrick Kane and James van Riemsdyk, but that does not compare to Sidney Crosby, John Tavares, Patrice Bergeron, Martin St.Louis, Dustin Brown, Jonathan Toews, Corey Perry, and Shea Weber, to name a "few." Now I've rambled. Back to Russia! I enjoy reading about one of my favorite players, Evgeni Malkin, but he wasn't even the face of the article in SI. Russia's team was dubbed to belong to Alex Ovechkin, a poor decision. He hasn't impressed much as of late. I'd choose Pavel Datsyuk, the mayor of Danglestan, as John Buccigross has said. I still want more on our team. It's an underdog story. A decent transition from analyzing Russia's team to analyzing team USA would be to use the 1980 game, arguably the most important sporting event in our history. I don't think it's that hard to do. Maybe there's a rule as to how many hockey articles can be included, or maybe this one story reached some sort of quota. Clearly I'm getting heated and more bitter as I type. I'll close with Herb Brooks and the greatest sports speech ever for two reasons: Miracle is the best sports movie of all time, and I have some hockey games of my own. I could always use a Herb Brooks pep talk.