Crushers still have time to recover
It’s a big game, but not a mustwin.
Even if the Junior A Crushers were to come up short Friday night in the Hubtown against the Truro Bearcats, the Crushers are still in the playoff race and can’t be counted out.
A regulation loss in Truro would see the Crushers fall six points behind the Bearcats and the final playoff spot, but with 11 games left in the season, there would still be time for the Crushers to recover, especially since Truro will play two more games at the Pictou County Wellness Centre.
That the Crushers are still in the thick at this point in the season wasn’t always a sure thing, especially if you consider where they were in mid-December, a time when it looked like disaster might soon be knocking on the door.
Or kicking that door right in. They’ve battled through injuries — defenceman Marc Gagnon got hurt in October, which knocked him out for several weeks and triggered a long losing spell; their relative youth is at play and, until lately, they’ve struggled to get scoring from players not named Michael Dill, Jacob Hickey or Dylan Riley.
And yet, they kept believing and have hung around long enough to make late February and early March meaningful for them and (this is important, too) meaningful for their fans.
The Crushers, a franchise that in 13 previous seasons has not once missed the playoffs, have been approaching every game with a sense of desperation the last couple of months, and if they could somehow scrape their way into the playoffs, the locals would arrive there battle-hardened, which would be a nice mental edge to have.
For sure, that is a ways off — if it happens for them at all — but they’ve been resilient. They’ve had sand kicked in their faces this year but are still willing to hit the beach with a determined front.
Super Bowl thoughts
■ What should have been a heavyweight fight between two of the best defences in the NFL instead turned into a back-andforth offensive shootout. Either way is fine — a great defence, to me, is just as fun to watch as high-level offence — but I don’t care HOW it happened, I’m just glad it happened.
The Philadelphia Eagles got its first Super Bowl championship, and if you were delighted to see the New England Patriots walk off the field as total losers (sorry, my bias got through there), join the frickin’ club.
And that club is a crowded room.
The Patriots’ long-term success means that, unless you don’t care at all, you either love them or you hate them. There isn’t much inbetween on that score.
■ Justin Timberlake’s half-time show was barely watchable. If you like his kind of music (his acting is a bit more interesting, but let’s face it, the bar hasn’t been set very high), then you probably thought it was terrific. I haven’t truly enjoyed a Super Bowl halftime show since Bruce Springsteen, which probably makes me... not old, exactly, just older.