Sports January 9th 2013 - Over the Edge BASKETBALL BACK ON COURT GEOFF SARGENT SPORTS EDITOR Only three home weekends remain on the Timberwolves’ basketball schedule this season, with the first falling next week- end. Winnipeg visits Thursday night (January 17th) for games against UNBC, while Manitoba is in town on Saturday, January 19th. The home dates will mark the end of the visits by Prairie Division opponents; afterwards, the Timber- wolves will host divisional schools UBC and Mount Royal in the final two weeks of the season. Before that, the teams will depart on their final out-of-province road trip, to Regina and cellar-dwelling Bran- don, this weekend. The UNBC women find themselves start- ing 2013 three games out of the playoffs at 3-7, and are in heavy need of a suc- cessful road trip to make up ground on UVic, currently in the last Pacific div- ision postseason spot. UNBC travels to Victoria in early February for two games likely to be the most important they’ll play, assuming they escape Brandon without a loss to the 0-10 Bobcats. The news is better for the UNBC men — at 5-5, they currently hold a playoff spot for themselves and are in charge of their own destiny. Key games look to be the home dates against 2-8 Mount Royal on the last week of the season; UNBC would likely be very happy to have a situation where two wins against the Cougars would book their tickets to the postseason. To get there, the Timberwolves will be look- ing to steal games from schools above them in the standings like UVic and Fra- ser Valley, when they make road trips south over the next month. did it multiple times er day. Do it your way. Enrol anytime, study where and when you want and transfer credits back to your on-campus program. www.truopen.ca/yourway Boe. THOMPSON RIVERS B UNIVERSITY MC117213 Flexible ¢ Credible « Online and Distance CANADA GEOFF SARGENT SPORTS EDITOR For the fourth year in a row, the holi- day dream of watching Canada dom- inate the World Juniors again turned into a nightmare. An embarrassing 5-1 loss to the United States in the semifinals relegated Canada to the bronze medal game, where they faced Russia in a game many had pencilled into the finals before the tournament started. The awkward time zone of the host city Ufa, Russia meant games started between 1:00 and 4:00am here in Brit- ish Columbia. It was an unfortunate year for the NHL to be locked out, as the lack of top-level hockey meant interest in the tournament may have been at an all-time high — especially with the prevalence of NHL talent on Canada’s team, that had players such as former #1 overall pick Ryan Nu- gent-Hopkins, future #1 overall pick Nathan MacKinnon, Dougie Hamil- ton, Mark Schiefele, and others. Tournament broadcaster TSN con- tinued its own yearly tradition by firing up the hype machine for the tournament. It was quite simply im- possible to watch TSN programming in the weeks leading up to the event without being inundated with adver- tising for both the live and tape-de- layed broadcasts of Canada, as well as games between other countries. Combine this with the already fright- ening level of devotion to the tourna- ment we have had in this country for over two decades, and the pressure may have been too much for the Can- adian players, especially compared with the under-the-radar American team who played loose and confident in the semis. Hockey Canada is also at fault for overinflating the importance of the event — spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on sleep special- ists, sports psychologists, and special ‘lighting devices’ that promised to speed up recovery to jet lag by days, provided the players huddled around the contraption for a few hours each day until their body was used to the half-day difference. Hockey Canada also sells out the players to compan- ies like Nike and Gatorade in com- mercials, who turn around and ad- vertise the amount of pressure the tournament has and how the players have to/will rise above it. One school of thought says the organization was only trying to help the team compete in the tournament, which is obvious- ly in their best interest; another says there was far too many hands in the cookie jar, and Hockey Canada’s ag- gressive approach only hurt the play- ers by producing an aura of import- ance the team couldn’t live up to. The oldest players on the team team were born in 1993 — younger than half the UNBC undergraduate student body. While every member of the team, without exception, have been playing top-level hockey for years, the tradition and pressure of the event was like nothing the players had seen before. A short round-robin and sin- gle-game knockout playoffs can only compare to the Memorial Cup, and even then, the World Juniors sit on a much higher pillar in the Canadian sporting hierarchy. Much of the blame fell on goaltender Malcolm Subban. Many thought that Subban wasn’t even the best goalie in the pre-selection camp, and was simply handed the job by Canada’s coaching staff or perhaps by Hockey Canada. Subban didn’t look overly strong in the exhibition games the team played before the tournament, only magnificent at times in the round-robin, and eventually conced- ed four goals on only 16 shots in the most important game Canada played in the tournament. Other coaching decisions were questioned, but most revolved around playing time of cer- tain players, unlikely to have made a difference if the goalie only saves 75% of the shots he faces. It has become evident over the past few years that the development of young hockey talent in at least three countries — Sweden, Russia, and the United States — has caught up to or surpassed that of our own. The im- pact on the psyche of players from Canada has to be accounted for, and perhaps Canada still does bring the best team on paper to the tournament every year, aS many seem to think — but four years without gold medals, an unthinkable streak following five golds in a row immediately before- hand — has sobered the confidence of hockey fans in our country. The final dagger came with the loss to the United States, which is never easy; as far as most of the country is con- cerned, they can have all the other sports, but hockey is supposed to be ours.