Gearing Down For The Semifinals

Canada's National Hockey team over in Moscow has gone through lots of hardships so far. They had to deal with the Shane Doan controversy and coming back from early deficits in most of their round-robin games. But that was put behind them as they took to the ice to practice today.

Today, a 'strip shootout' took place at the Team Canada practice. The rules: Go in and shoot on the goalie. If you miss, you must take off a part of your equipment. It was funny seeing the players down to their padding and socks on the ice, but not even Bryan Murray could stand to see what Eric Stall was reduced to. Trying mercifully to score in his jock and underwear, Murray ended the drill.

"Oh my God, it was getting bad out there," laughed Lombardi of the Calgary Flames. "I was going to keep my pants on as long as I could so I would have gone to the shin pads and socks next. But I regained my focus or Wardo helped me out and let one in."

The players will play their semifinal game against Sweden tomorrow at 11:00am.

Perfect Through 6

The Canadian National hockey team for the World Championship was 5-0 through 5 game heading into the game today against the USA. The game was unlike anything anyone predicted.

Just 8 seconds into the game, Canada's Jay McClement scored. It was the fastest goal in Canada World Championship history. From then on, Canada dominated scoring 3 more in a row and winning 6-3.

Matthew Lombardi had a hat-trick and the Stall brothers were playing on the same line.

Canada will now play their quarter-final game against Switzerland on Thursday.

Defending Doan

A f---g frenchmen

That's what Shane Doan, the captain of Canada's World Championship team, supposedly said about a NHL linesman a year ago. It wasn't even confirmed he was the one who said it. But it was still brought up by a MP at Parliament.

The person questioned Canada's decision to have Doan as the captain of team Canada. But today, Bob Nicholson traveled from Moscow all the way to Ottawa to fight for Doan.

"You can talk to all of his teammates that have played with him. He says `fudge,' alot if he gets upset. He's a Christian and a person that I am proud to know."

But the MP came back saying "So what you're telling me is it's okay to make racist insults in certain situations," Bloc MP Luc Malo said after one hockey official pointed out that insults are part of the game.

Nicholson then got emotional pushing himself almost to tears saying "We're taking Shane Doan, his wife, his mom and dad, his four kids through an allegation that could have been dictated by someone else," Nicholson said.

"This is not right."

Guilty or not, Doan is the captain of Canada and will try to lead Canada to a World Championship.