USAover Canada In the Olympics

Tonight USA defeated Canada in hockey at the Vancouver Olymipics. Althought Canada out shot the Americans 44 to 25 USA managed to hold on for the win. Mainly because of the Buffalo Sabres goaltenter Ryan Miller. he stoped 41 of the 44 shots, and he made some spectacular saves in the final 10 minutes to keep the American lead when they needed it. USA lead 4-3 and got an empty net goal by Ryan Kesler with about 45 seconds left to seal the deal. Kesler won the foot race with Canada's Corey Perry and dove to hit the puck into the net. Martin Brodeur was far from perfect tonight but came up with some big saves to keep it close. USA should win their pool and advance to the semi finals. If all goes as planned Canada will finish 2nd and also make it to the semi finals. The Americans head coach Ron Wilson had this to say after the game, "In fairness, Canada out chanced us 2 to 1 for most of the game and our goalie played excellent. We've still got a long ways to go here. Personally I think Canada is the best team and Russia is right behind them with all of the skill they have up front." I congratulate the Americans with the effort they put forth in this game and hope to see a remath in the gold medal game.

Phaneuf Trade

If you follow hockey at all you have heard about the Dione Phaneuf trade out of Calgary. Calgary's GM Darryl Sutter obviously had reasons for making the 7 player trade including: Phaneuf (D), Keith Aulie (D), and Fredrik Sjostrom (F) for Matt Stajan (F), Jamal Meyers (F), Ian White (D), and Niklas Hagman (D). This does have good points for each team. The leafs hired a new GM at the start of the year Brian Burke who has won a Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Ducks. At the start of the year he said he was going to try to make the leafs a lot tougher and Phaneuf will help reshape the team with his devastating hits and the ability to drop the gloves. The leafs have also made room up front for Christian Hanson who was a star with Notre Dame. Hanson is the son of the famous Dave Hanson from the Slap Shot movies. If he is anything like his dad in the movie this will also add alot of toughness to the Leafs.

Phaneuf who was considered one of the best defencemen from Canada will be missed in the Flames line up. The Flames also have another very good defencemen Jay Boumeister who is coming into his own. If he can step up to a little extra playing time and keep producing the Flames defence should be fine. The Flames recently have been lacking the ability to score goals so Hagman and Stajan should be able to help out offensively. Stajan right now is on pace for having a career year with 61 points.

Darryl Sutter has been a busy man as of late he has also traded away Olli Jokenin and Brandon Prust to the Rangers for former Buffalo Sabres Ales Kotalik and Christopher Higgins. Kotalik and Higgins are also goal scorers and should help out the Flames offense not only this year but for years to come. Olli Jokenin is a very good player but how could you not be playing along side one of the top players in the entire NHL Jerome Iginla.

I guess we will see if all of the trades will pay off for the Flames in the next few weeks.

Recently, Haiti has been all over the news because of the earthquakes. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The people of Haiti have to go through struggles every day. When a natural disaster like this happens in such a poor country the results are going to be devastating. To help raise money for the people of Haiti you can donate via text message. All you have to do is text "HAITI" to 90999 and your phone company will automatically add 10 dollars onto your phone bill and send that money to the Red Cross to help offset costs of all the damage that the earthquakes are causing. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti could put the death toll into the hundreds of thousands range. The earthquake was shallow, only 10 kilometers below the surface and it is said that a shallow earthquake will cause the most destruction. The earthquake took place between the North America plate and the Caribbean Plate. As of January 24th there have been 52 aftershocks with a 4.5 magnitude or greater. This earthquake with the magnitude of 7.0 is the biggest earthquake is over 200 years in this region. It is not known yet if the aftershock of the earthquake could trigger more serious earthquakes in the near future. Earthquakes are caused when two pieces of the earth's crust are moving a grinding on one another. When they rub together the stress can be released in bursts of energy that will cause earthquakes. It is not known whether the energy will cause a bunch of smaller earthquakes or one huge tremor. In the case of Haiti, all of the energy cause one massive earthquake and that is why the destruction total is so high. The Red Cross estimates the over 3 million people have been affected by this disaster. Other than the fires burning Haiti was in total darkness. All of the electricity was out in the capital city. Even Facebook is trying to help out with Haiti. There is a group on Facebook that will donate one cent to Haiti for every person that joins the group. There is already over 1.5 million people that have joined the group so even one cent per person will help out the people of Haiti tremendously. Haiti is in a very time right now and we need to help them out in any way that we can.