Recommended Listening for all readers

On Sunday, CBC Radio's show "Cross Country Checkup," asked Canada this question: "What's your reaction to the cancellation of the NHL season?" The responses they got were very interesting, to be sure. I highly recommend listening to the show, despite the fact it is almost two hours long. A lot of good stuff was said and I definitely enjoyed listening to it today. I would like to remind our friends north of the border that, although hockey may be your game, there are some serious fans here in the US too, as I think this site and others have shown. I love hockey as much as anyone and it hurts when Canadians make a blanket statement like "No one in the US cares about hockey at all." It sucks enough being a hockey-starved passionate fan here in the US without being told you're not a real fan just because you're not Canadian. I thank the show's main guest, Tom Harrington, for pointing out early on that there are serious fans in the US. Mr. Harrington was probably the best part of the whole show and was very informative throughout. It was good to see the variety of perspectives from average Canadians from all over the country as well. It was said often that the NHL is not the only hockey available to them and that it would not be missed as much as you'd think. That's great for them but here in the States, the NHL is just about all we get, if you want any level of quality. If I could watch the WHL or QMJHL or CHL, I definitely would. I'd give an awful lot right now to have TSN or Sportsnet here. I do have four tickets to the Grand Rapids Griffins I can use next month, though (thanks SoBe NoFear and CU vending machines!). Another thing I noticed was that there is a lot of optimism among Canadian fans. That's not what I've been feeling but that probably has something to do with the fact that there is a significant hockey presence in Canada that is able to act as a quality replacement for the NHL. Not so here. To me, the prospect of a dead NHL is real and scary. I have sort of the snobbish attitude Jes Golbez wrote about today but that's because the NHL is the only hockey I've ever known. I don't want to have to watch the AHL! The NHL is hockey to me, as long as we don't have such a great major junior system here in the US. Anyway, be sure to check the show out. Click here for the MP3 version and here for the RealPlayer version. It's a big download (25.8 MB) but well worth it, in my opinion. Thanks to HockeyNation for the link. Totally unrelated update: I didn't want to do a separate post but this is worth mentioning. As already pointed out by Christy on her blog, the Wings' official site has been redone. It looks a lot better than before and might actually be useful now. Perhaps the best part is a written history of the team. Check it out.