Wow - It's Been Awhile

Our media center at the World Junior Hockey championships. From here we assisted the various media types. In the foreground the play by play broadcaster for the Switzerland junior team



The gold medal winning United States junior team warming up prior to one of their games in the World Junior Hockey tournament in Saskatoon


It has been awhile since I have posted anything on this site. December 18th to be exact and ofcourse a lot has happened.
Most importantly was Christmas. My daughter was home from University in Ottawa, my son lives here in Saskatoon so we had numerous family get togethers.
Then came the World Junior Hockey Championships. I had volunteered to work in media as many years ago I had been a play by play broadcaster for several Western Hockey League teams.
I was assigned various duties in my volunteer role assisting some 450 assigned media types who were covering the World Juniors. Saskatoon put on a great show hosting the event setting the third highest attendance record. Not bad for a small non NHL city but we really know how to do things up right here. Saskatoon Shines right !
The 50/50 draws were incredible each game with the last one going almost to $300,000 and the winner taking home half of that.
Canada did not win. Disappointing to many but this Canadian team had nothing to be ashamed about. They lost 6 - 5 in overtime to the United States ending a streak of five straight world junior championships. And if they had to lose to someone, I was glad that it was the American team that won. Throughout the tournament in my volunteer role I got to mix and mingle with some of the teams and the USA team was very polite, very nice bunch of young men and very deserving of their gold medal championships. I also realized from this tournament how much I have missed doing hockey play by play and many times found myself wishing I could return to it.
Now the world junior is over attention has ofcourse turned to the Eric Tillman situation. The very popular General Manager resigned his position today after being given an absolute discharge on a low end sexual assault charge. Although it was classified as low end, the victim was his sixteen year old babysitter so not a good situation at all. I have mixed emotions on this one. One the one hand, you think there should be some accountability. He should receive some punishment. After all football is only a game and this is life we are talking about. And then on the other hand you just feel badly that this incident took place. Tillman is a likeable man and has done an outstanding job with the RoughRiders. Two trips to the Grey Cup in three years and what should have been two championships had it not been for THE MISTAKE in November's game against Montreal. Life takes some weird twists and turns sometimes. Although part of me feels Tillman's resignation or dismissal had to be, the other part of me senses that the Riders loss will be some other CFL teams gain as Tillman will not be out of work for long.