Friday, November 07, 2003

Battle of Alberta

Ice hokey is the most popular sport in Canada and they believe that It's invented by them. I believe so as well. There are only 6 Canadian team in NHL out of 30 all. the others are American. Best Canadian players mostly play for American teams because they are paid better. Before former USSR, Czech Republic and some other Eastern European countries let their players out, majority of big NHL players were Canadians. Roman Turek, the Calgary Flames net-keeper is Czech and there are many more in all NHL teams.
There was a game between the Flames and Edmonton Oilers two weeks ago and the Flames beat the Oilers in their home, 4-2. The game is always called Battle of Alberta and sometimes it's really a fight. In the last game the Oilers were very angry because they had lost the game in Calgary and were there to beat the Flames in Edmonton. But anger didn't help them and regardless of 3 fights (Between two opponent players) they lost the game. Fighting is ordinary in ice hockey. The referees usually ignore the fight in its first 5 or 10 min.!!! And after the players are beaten up(!!) they step in! It's part of the game and fans like it and cheer and clap for fighters!! The guilty players (Both of them are!!) will be sent to the penalty box for 5 min. Sometimes there are more than two and one team uses Powerplay.