Olympic fever

The opening ceremonies might not be for a few hours yet, but the Vancouver Olympics have already kicked off with ski jumping pre-qualifications.

This was rather embarrassing for Canada. A field of 50 was narrowed down to 40 through today's runs. Canada had four jumpers in the field - not one of them made it through to the next round. The four Canadians were all found among the bottom seven.

But that's neither here nor there. I mean, it's only ski jumping, right? Is that even a sport? Isn't it like baby skiing, for people who can't actually go more than twenty feet without falling down? Yeah, I think that's what it is.

But the real reason I'm posting is to talk about hockey - because let's face it, curling might make for good background television, your grandmother likes figure skating, and skicross has a novelty factor, but all anybody really cares about is hockey.

After the crushing disappointment that was 2006, Canada has a good shot at hockey gold again in Vancouver. The team has been completely revamped - the old guard who brought home gold in 2002 are virtually gone, aside from a few who are still able to play at an elite level in the NHL (Brodeur, Niedermayer, Iginla, etc.). In their place, we've got the younger NHL superstars - Mike Richards, Drew Doughty, and for some reason Shea Weber.

Looking at the Olympic tournament, there's a different format in place. The group winners and top second-place team will get automatic spots into the quarter-finals, and the other eight teams will have one-game playoffs for the final spots. I see Canada, Russia and Sweden taking their groups, while the US and Finland will battle it out for the last bye in what could come down to goal differential - none of the minnows in groups A or C are particularly dangerous.

The Czech Republic have lost a bit of their luster as a hockey power, with the aging of Hasek and Jagr - I could see Slovakia or even Latvia scraping out a point against the Czechs.

The rest of the placements don't really matter - there isn't even relegation to worry about like at a World Championship or World Juniors, as the Olympics always have a separate qualifying tournament for the last few spots. There's always the chance of a Belarus-Sweden-style upset taking place, but it's certainly not something you can take to the bank.

I see Canada and Russia making it through the quarterfinals pretty easily, Sweden dispatching Slovakia, and Finland (my dark horse team, I think they're a lot better than people are giving them credit for) eliminating the US.

Semi-finals, Canada beats Finland and Russia beats Sweden. Demoralized Swedes don't play their best afterwards and lose the bronze to Finland.

Like a lot of prognosticators, my bracket has a Canada/Russia final...but I see Canada pulling it out. Ovechkin is amazing, yes, but Canada has the deeper team and one of the biggest home-ice advantages you will ever see.

Those are my predictions.

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In other news, this website posted a news piece about Facebook, as news websites are wont to do.

Somehow, many people came upon this story and somehow believed they were not on a news site, but actually on a redesigned Facebook that they couldn't log in to (see comments).

That forced the site to put up the bold disclaimer you now see after the third paragraph.

I'm too astounded to make a joke.

--Ryan