Tuesday, May 29, 2012

London Knights: near-miss champions and real winners for London

For the most part, I agree with Noam Chomsky about how sports is largely a bunch of irrelevant trivia designed to distract people from more important things. 

However, like how Chomsky does occasionally take in a baseball game, I do make an exception with the London Knights, but not for the usual reasons.  Ever since they moved their games from the London Ice House Arena to the John Labatt Centre, that team became part of the heart of London, Ontario and a economic boost to the area it sorely needs. So, that's a good enough reason for me to pay some attention; their success is part of what the London Downtown Core needs to survive and prosper.

That's what really annoys me about any negative tone to the stories of the Knights returning to London after losing the Memorial Cup Tournament final in Shawinigan like Metro's headline " Knights begin healing process following devastating defeat."

The team lost by the most honourable of situations, 2 to 1 in overtime. That means that the Knights made the Shawinigan Cataractes fight for every opportunity to score and they won by the barest margins in sudden death overtime. While it is still a loss, it is still a fine showing for a team that surpassed all expectations this season to at least become OHL Champions for only the second time in its history.

So the team definitely deserve the warm welcome and the parade yesterday, they have much to be proud of with a goal to do even better next year.  After all, the fans are happy and Downtown London will benefit with the next season.

As for me, the next really big thing at the JLC will be the How to Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular and I'll be weighing how much I really want to see a visually impressive, but really expensive live giant puppet show.


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