IL Indoor

At the risk of upsetting our American readers I have to talk about the big Gold Medal hockey game at the Olympics. I managed to put a makeshift antenna on an old 13 inch TV so my son and I could follow the game as I drove him to lacrosse practice.

With a couple of minutes remaining, I pulled over so I could concentrate on the game. That was when USA’s Zac Parise (his dad played for Canada in 1972) scored with 24 seconds left to send it to overtime. We were sitting in the parking lot at the arena when the Canadian poster boy Sidney Crosby won it and suddenly were heard cars honking from all around.

Although Canadians expect to win the gold in our game, we are still euphoric when it happens. On the other hand, we loathe ourselves when we lose. Imagine if football (American Football, not soccer) was in the Olympics and somehow the USA finished out of the medals in that sport. That’s what happened to Canada in Turin four years ago and now everything in the world (or at least Canada) is right again.

Congrats to the USA for a great hockey tournament and a fantastic Olympics where you led the medal count with 37. And congrats to Canada, wwhich had our best winter Olympics with 26 medals including 14 golds, more than any country has won in a winter Olympics. (Very un-Canadian for our small nation of 34 million)

Back to lacrosse. I might as well throw all the teams in a hat because the last few weeks have changed everything. A few weeks ago Washington and Toronto were running away from the rest of the league. Not so now. Let’s check out the Power Rankings.

1 (4)	Orlando Titans 4-2 Matt Vinc, Casey Powell and strong team defence have made the Titans the hardest team to beat right now. We’ll see if they really belong here after they complete three games in the next two weekends.
2 (3)	Calgary Roughnecks 4-3 Yeah I know they didn’t play this weekend but no team has looked looks stronger than Calgary in the last few weeks.
3 (1)	Washington Stealth 6-3 Three losses in a row. These guys are in a slump.
4 (2)	Toronto Rock 6-4 Read what I said for Washington.
5 (7)	Edmonton Rush 5-3 It’s never easy to get a win in Rochester, where the Rush defeated the Knighthawks in OT. The Edmonton Rush have never played with the confidence that they have right now.
6 (6)	Boston Blazers 5-4 Handed Washington its third loss in a row. Boston battles every game.
7 (5)	Rochester Knighthawks 5-4 OT loss prevents the Knighthawks from jumping into first place. Rochester is actually playing their best ball of the year. They only dropped in the rankings to make room for Boston and Edmonton.
8 (8)	Minnesota Swarm 4-4 Another surging team. Although it was not as easy as it was last week the Swarm defeated Colorado in Denver for their third straight victory.
9 (10)	Philadelphia Wings 2-6 The Wings get their first win since Jan. 16 by beating the Bandits in Buffalo. They have three games in the next two weeks so if they are going to make a move up the standings, here’s their chance.
10 (9)	Buffalo Bandits 2-6 One step forward, one step back. The run we were expecting to see, now that Tavares is back, didn’t include a 15-11 loss to Philly at home.
11 (11)	Colorado Mammoth 2-6 Well, they rebounded from a brutal game in Minnesota but still found themselves on the losing end of their rematch with the Swarm. If they lose their next game then it will be time to trade a few valuable veterans to continue the youth movement.

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