| 19 February 2010
Ah, Olympic hockey. The world's most graceful sport displayed on an international stage. Finally, the whole world will get to experience the majesty of a game that the people of Phoenix and Nashville have hoarded so secretively. But these Winter Sports - so mysterious and whimsical - need a greater audience. After all, how can you expect the world to care about skeleton, Nordic combined, and ice hockey if they've never even heard of them?
Enter the Vancouver 2010 website.
A resource for all things puck, our nice Canadian friends have given us a one-stop Interweb location for you, the casual Olympic fan, to learn about this obscure athletic contest. If you do choose to go there, consider yourself warned. The guy pictured above is omnipresent in every sidebar this website has to offer. Look at him! He's pure evil. He has a knowing look that says, "Yes, I am going to put this puck top shelf over your shoulder, and yes, I will pillage your small Latvian village afterwards to celebrate."
More observations, after the jump.
It appears that the people behind Vancouver2010.com are the very same people who created Bloguin Web Portal 2.0, because it appears they've found the same Rotate 4 Stories and Before Can You Click on the You Want Switch to the Next Story Widget. (That's the patented name, by the way.) Regardless, it's a good way to highlight the four biggest stories on the topic of Olympic Hockey.
Like last night, it took Hockey Jesus' shootout winner to down Team Switzerland and keep the hometown fans happy. This story will rotate with the other three stories hot off the press: Sweden holding off Germany on Wednesday, the Russians halting Lativa Monday, and Team USA opening the tourney with a victory of Switzerland. This confirms my theory.
Switzerland is the most important hockey team in the world.
Towards the bottom of the page you can also find the weather report for both Olympic venues: the UBC Thunderbird Arena and Canada Hockey Place. It's a resource designed to help not only the fans, but also the teams themselves. It's nice to know ahead of time if it's going to rain inside the arena. Makes line changes a sloppy mess when that happens.
But what happens if you have an interest in watching ice hockey but have never seen it before? You could turn on the television and have no idea if you've landed on a Czech-Slovak rivalry game or short-track speed skating. Fear not; the website has hundreds of Ice Hockey Photos! That way you can match up the uniforms in the pictures with the people on your television screen. That what I did! I knew I was watching hockey when I saw this on my screen AND in the Photo Section.
Ah, that clears things up.
And finally, the Vancouver Olympics understand that while watching hockey is an impressive pasttime, speaking hockey is even more special. For that, they've provided a glossary of common terms of the sport that will have you understanding Doc Emrick in no time. Here's a sample.
Well put, Vancouver. GO WORLD.
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