Tuesday, August 17, 2010

We're Baaaaaaack!


After taking a brief Summer from the world of sports blogging, Autumn's Hattrick is back in action! Let's begin with a little hockey...

This will come as no surprise, but Canada continues to be a force at the national level. The U-18 team once again captured gold, marking the third gold in a row and sixth in the last seven years for the Canadian boys. Canada was lead by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins who posted 7 points in 5 games while playing in red and white, he also scored the eventual game winner in the gold medal game against the USA. Since the new year, the World Juniors, Olympics, and U-18 gold medal games have all been USA vs Canada. The States have really turned their hockey program around, even modeling it after Canada's program. The United States now holds camps months before they hold tryouts for their various national level teams, something that was only being done by Canada a couple of years ago. Congratulations team Canada!

Despite what most people thought would happen during the off season in regards to the Toronto Maple leafs, it seems as though the more things change the more they stay the same. Heading into the off season many people, including myself, believed that Kaberle would be traded by any means necessary. However, Kaberle will once again be suiting up with the blue and white this season as the team had no acceptable deals for the 32 year old D-man.

Now onto some football, the rumor mill is swirling once again concerning Brett Favre and his on-again off-again retirement battle. This time it appears that number 4 will be back in a Vikings uniform this season. This move doesn't overly surprise me, I mean, the guy couldn't possibly retire knowing that his last play in the NFL was throwing an interception.. could he?

Former Regina Rams standout Jordan Sisco has been sent back from the Indianapolis Colts, the team which he has been working out with for the majority of the Summer. Sisco is very lucky to have even had the chance to go down to the States and play pro ball. Andy Fantuz has been dying for the chance for scouts to give him a look, but no teams seem to be biting. Sisco will now join Fantuz on the Riders and will spend about 3 weeks learning and will then hopefully be thrown into the mix of an already stacked receiving core.

The world of MMA was up in arms for the first 23 minutes of the main event of UFC 117 which took place on August 7th. Anderson Silva was a mere two minutes away from losing his belt to the trash talking machine Chael Sonnen. Chael took Silva down within the first two minutes of every round and held him there, leaving Silva virtually powerless. The Spider was on his back but his long limbs allowed him to secure a triangle choke with 2 minutes left in the fifth round. Had Silva not secured the choke, he would surely have surrendered his belt to Sonnen, five rounds to none.

Since Silva once again found a way to win, a question remains.. who will take down the Spider? In my perfect world Georges St-Pierre would be the one to do it, however, that fight seems further away then ever these days. Georges recently stated that if he were to fight and beat Silva he would retire. On the one hand I could never blame GSP for retiring, it has always been my theory that you should retire on top, but because GSP brings in so much revenue for the UFC, I'm not sure that Dana White would fully support the fight knowing that he could lose his most popular fighter. Dana would also be against the GSP-Silva fight because no matter what one of his champions is considered beatable in a time where they seem to be virtually untouchable.

Now that my Summer is winding down, I will once again be doing frequent blogs mainly discussing hockey, football and MMA, with a special focus on Pats, Oilers, and UFC.

No comments:

Post a Comment