Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing well. Before I get started, yes, this post is super late. Why is that? Well, I’ve been far busier than expected and haven’t had much downtime to work on this post and the one I meant to release at the end of the month, which is today. Ideally, I had hoped to have had this one out within a couple of days after the main subject of this post took place, but that obviously did not happen. However, it’s not a massive deal at the end of the day. This is meant to be a casual blog, and I have been wondering if sticking to a super rigid schedule is really that important. Spoiler alert: I actually do have an answer to this question, but it will be in the next post, which will be posted sometime in March, probably around St. Patrick’s Day. But for now, let me tell you about a couple of crazy things I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks.

So, as you can probably tell, this post will mainly be about hockey. In case it hasn’t been made blatantly obvious in some of my other posts, I am a huge hockey fan and a Canadian, meaning I was born to be a hockey fan. Don’t get me wrong, there are many Canadians who aren’t interested in hockey or sports in general, but chances are that if you run into some random Joe on the street in any one of our 10 provinces and 3 territories, there is a pretty good chance that they will have some rooting interest in hockey, whether that be their local team or our national team. Eight days ago, our national team played the United States in the climax of the first actual best-on-best international hockey tournament we’ve had since 2016. Why has it taken so long for something this cool-sounding to happen again? Long story short, it’s for many different reasons, which I suggest you research yourself.

However, unlike past meetings between us and the US, this one had much more going for it. I’m sure most of you often keep up with US politics, and I’m sure most of you are aware of how Donald Trump and his administration have been treating Canada, as well as other nations like Mexico, Ukraine, etc. In Canada’s case, I can’t say that I really blame him in some respects, given how awful our government has been for the last few years and Trump’s clear distaste of our sad excuse for a prime minister in Justin Trudeau. The flaws of mass immigration and not taking our borders seriously have also earned the ire of Trump, as well as several Canadians, myself included. That being said, millions of Canadians have been seriously angered over his suggestions of making us the “51st state”, the tariffs that he has either threatened to place on us or has placed on us and so on. Given the threats to our sovereignty, many of which I feel are Trump’s attempts to bully us into doing what he wants and not actually wanting Canada as a country, this naturally boiled over into the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off, where Canada and the US were basically fated to meet. So, what happened during this tournament, and what happened eight days ago?

We won, that’s what happened!

Yeah, I know I spoiled it in the excerpt, but who cares. Canada won 3-2 in overtime, thanks to our hero Connor McDavid (the best player in the world) ripping one past an American wall in Connor Hellebuyck (probably the best goalie in the world). To say this was satisfying would be selling it far too short. My dad and I watched it together, and we lost it after that happened. Believe me though, getting to OT was not easy at all. While we got the first goal early in the first period, it was a pretty rocky road afterward. The Americans kept shutting down our best players and converting on their chances, eventually leading them to take the lead partway through the second period. However, we tied it later in the second, and until we won it OT, we were basically surviving an American onslaught.

This game could have been over a lot earlier had it not been for Jordan Binnington, our goalie, channeling his inner Spider-Man and making great save after great save on the US’s best players. Binnington was much maligned by Canadian fans going into this game due to his inconsistent play in the previous games we’d played in the tournament, especially after we lost to the States in our first meeting. But, in the same arena where he won the Stanley Cup with St. Louis back in 2019, he held his ground, did his job, and ultimately helped us win the game on American soil. Well done, Jordan. At least I can say I believed in you while others didn’t.

Now, while it will pain me to say this, I need to make a concession. For many years, American hockey fans have been boasting that they’ve finally caught up to Canada after being in our shadow for the last couple of decades. Their winning the previous two World Junior tournaments is definitely a sign that they are definitely closer to us than they were in 2015 for example, and even though I could say that the only reason they won both of those tournaments is because Canada shot themselves in the foot by not sending all of their best players two years in a row, I’m going to refrain from doing that. When it comes to junior hockey, I think it’s very fair to say that the Americans have finally equaled Canada.

However, when it comes to big boy, best-on-best hockey, the finale of this tournament proved to me one thing: the US is very close to us now, but they still aren’t us. While they may have won our first meeting in this tournament 3-1, the US proved once again that when it comes to winning the whole thing, nobody is better at underachieving than these guys. Despite how talented they have been for the last few decades, the United States has not won a best-on-best hockey tournament since the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. It is staggering to think about this when they’ve had such great teams like their 2002 Olympic team, their 2010 Olympic team, and this year’s 4 Nations team. All of these teams were absolutely loaded to the gills with some of the absolute best players of not only their generation but of all time. Do you wanna know the one thing that all 3 of these teams have in common? If you guessed that they lost to Canada, you’re absolutely right! Sorry America, you may still think that you’re on our level or that you deserved a better fate that night, but I’d like to believe that you got exactly what you deserved.

Jokes aside, it would be disingenuous of me to not highlight how hard the US played us during that game. I’d be hard pressed to think of a better, closer game that I’ve watched recently, and I have to tip my hat to the Americans for giving us everything we could handle. That game meant a lot to many people, but it meant even more to Canada. Our national pride has been under attack, we have been wallowing in a pit of mud and despair over politics, the economy, and many other things. After everything that has occurred over the last month, seeing Canadians come together to cheer on the greatest hockey nation in the world was great to see, especially since we haven’t had a chance to do this for so long. Connor McDavid’s OT winner, along with Sidney Crosby’s golden goal in 2010 and Edmonton punching their ticket to the Stanley Cup finals last summer, is a sports memory that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Alright, the time for singing about the greatness of Canadian hockey is over. Now it’s time to get serious, and it’s time to talk about something that has invaded seemingly every moment of sports analysis and discourse with what I’d call deeply malicious intent. I’m referring to sports betting, specifically how widespread it has become and how it is now being featured on so many major sports broadcasts, whether that be the NBA, MLB, or the NHL, who I would argue might be the worst offender of them all.

The metastasis of sports betting is a serious problem.

If you have watched a televised sporting event in recent history, I’m willing to guess that you have seen a commercial for sports betting during one of many commercial breaks or that you’ve heard some of the analysts or play-by-play crew mention the current odds for various things that might happen in the game you’re watching. It might be the odds of how many rebounds a particular player might get in a basketball game. For baseball, it may be whether a particular player hits a home run or multiple home runs. Regardless of what you’re betting on and which league you’re focusing on, the point of betting remains the same: to make a wager in hopes of winning big. That’s why gambling can be so addictive; the thrill of winning (when you do) and the potential to win unbelievable prizes (which usually doesn’t happen) are both quite tantalizing. It’s why so many people engage in it, with several unfortunately becoming addicted to it and causing tons of issues for themselves.

This isn’t a post detailing gambling addictions, however. This is one guy’s opinion, and this guy’s opinion is that the mass exposure of sports betting to these respective leagues’ audiences is doing way more harm than good. Not only is it distracting the audience from the product they want to watch, but it’s also leading to an increase in gambling addictions, as well as several scandals across the sports world. In the last two years, all 4 of the major North American sports leagues have experienced some form of betting scandal, all with varying severity levels. For example, a smaller-scale incident happened in the NHL back in October 2023, where Ottawa Senators forward Shane Pinto was suspended 41 games after the NHL caught a US-based account of his engaging in what they called “unusual activity”. From what we know, Pinto was not betting on the NHL or his team, and he did admit to making a mistake. He has long since rejoined the Senators and there have been no follow-ups, which has been good to see.

Meanwhile, the NBA and MLB have been experiencing a lot of issues with players making bets, and both leagues have permanently banned certain players for life after they were discovered to have bets on their own teams or other teams in their leagues. The NFL has also had issues with incidents like this, although, to my knowledge, nobody has been permanently banned. My pick for the craziest scandal so far was when Shohei Ohtani’s longtime interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, found himself in deep trouble after Ohtani’s representatives discovered that he had stolen millions of dollars from Ohtani’s account to pay off gambling debts that he owed to a Californian bookmaker. He has since been imprisoned and has confessed to all of his crimes, debunking the theory that he took the fall for Ohtani. I’ll never forget the week that this story dropped; it was truly insane.

In case it wasn’t obvious already, the point I’m trying to make is that not only is the increase of sports betting ads affecting regular people, but they also appear to be affecting the athletes that regular people bet on. Even if it isn’t the commercials themselves, there is definitely a link between sports gambling becoming more normalized and incidents like the ones I described above happening more and more regularly. Heck, I’m sure we’re not too far away from an actual superstar player in one of the major leagues getting caught up in a betting scandal of his own. Maybe we’re not too far away from a repeat of the 1919 White Sox scandal, where members of the White Sox threw the World Series in exchange for money. The fact that I’m even bringing these up as serious possibilities tells me that North American sports (and otherwise) might be in serious trouble soon. How do we know that the players and officials are doing things the right way and not manipulating the game to suit their interests? We trust that the integrity of the game has largely been uncompromised, but how much should we actually trust that notion?

I’d answer by saying that we should still trust that the products we see on our screens are genuine and to also keep an open mind. Also, remember that at the end of the day, sports are primarily for entertainment. The athletes involved may feel differently, with it being their passions and livelihoods, but for us fans, it’s simply a hobby or a way to pass the time. At the end of the day, is a significant betting scandal in one of these leagues going to majorly affect how we live our lives? My guess is probably not. That being said, I will still encourage those around me to not engage in rampant sports betting and to fight back against the ridiculous number of ads we see on our screens now. This culture of wagering and thrill-seeking has become normalized when it never should have been. The negatives generally outweigh the positives due to its inherently addictive nature, and we must always be alert and aware of this.

That should just about cover it, I think. I don’t have much else to add, I feel like I’ve said all that I needed to on this issue. However, if a significant scandal does indeed show up in the future, chances are that I’ll probably highlight it in a post not long after it happens. Especially if it involves hockey, because I’d likely have way too many thoughts about it. It feels good to finally get this out after not being able to find the time to work on it for the last several days, it really does. This may sound a bit cheesy, but I feel a sense of accomplishment when I finish one of these and I submit it. It’s nothing special by any means, but it’s a hobby of mine, and I like my hobbies. My next post, as I alluded to at the beginning, will be on whether or not I will continue this self-imposed schedule of 2 posts a month that I started in January. Also a couple of other things, but mainly that. Sure.

God bless, and I’ll see y’all later.