What is a conductor? He sets the tempo. What is a hockey coach? He sets tempo.

I played an opera this weekend (Tosca by Puccini (a beautiful work)). The first act was excellent. In the second, the conductor blew an important moment. The mistake lost the confidence of the orchestra and, no doubt, the principals on stage. This led to a mediocre performance for the remainder of the opera. We lost our momentum by not being confident in the direction of and by the conductor.

That's what I saw in today's game.. Although I was only able to watch until the third Russian goal 6 minutes or so into the third period, I saw enough. TC had the initiative and the momentum and all of a sudden the tempo changed when TC abandoned the forecheck! WTF? I couldn't believe my eyes.

It's been tough weekend.

Congrats to Russia.

BTW, I liked the home ice advantage displayed by Russia on their second goal. A hard pass/shot from the point off the end boards to the right side of the net that popped out right to the stick of a Russian on the right side of the net.

Why would the organizers have TC travel when they were the home team? The IIHF, that's why.

There were definitely negotiations between Halifax and Quebec City as to which games would be played where...but you can be sure Halifax would never have accepted having all TC's games played in Quebec - so that was the arrangement they came up with...

meh...

To have more money on ticketz. Halifax + Quebec.