Random Sports Thoughts on a February day:
• Stacey Murphy did practically everything for the Junior B Scotians’ hockey club. The team manager/stick girl/mama bear/chocolate bar getter/doer of hundreds of other things, stepped down this past weekend after five years, leaving a void that won’t easily be filled. There is little doubt that someone will step up, simply because someone has to: the details need to be taken care of.
Coaches come and go – and don’t the Scotians know it, having had five head coaches in the past five years – but some people are absolutely vital to a small-town junior B hockey team.
The organization will be hard-pressed to find a bigger cheerleader, as well.
• With the exception of the Valley Wildcats, who have been long out of the Maritime Hockey League playoff race, everybody is scoreboard watching these days. Even if people say they aren’t, they really are.
The Junior A Crushers season is winding down fast; the MHL club has just 10 games remaining in the regular season, and every point is valuable now as they try to fend off the South Shore Lumberjacks and grab the final playoff spot. Interestingly enough, the Crushers could conceivably catch the Truro Bearcats (and for that matter, so could South Shore). The Bearcats’ third-place position is not looking as comfortable as it may have seemed just a couple of weeks ago.
The reeling Bearcats are now only five points ahead of Pictou County and have lost six of its past seven games. The Crushers also have two games in hand on Truro, who have picked a really bad time to go into a tailspin.
• Zack MacEwan gives everybody hope, right? The 22-year-old at one time was the captain of the Amherst Ramblers and Amherst Stadium, just like the Pictou County Wellness Centre, is a long, long way from The Show.
This week, however, MacEwan appeared in his first-ever NHL game for the Vancouver Canucks. Who knows how long it will last, but for at least one night, the Charlottetown native was living the dream.
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Non-Sports Thoughts of the Week
• Del Atwood was venting in provincial court the other day, when the local judge talked about the intersection of North Provost Street and George Street in New Glasgow, calling it “an accident waiting to happen.”
Every busy intersection is an accident waiting to happen (especially in Pictou County) if drivers aren’t paying attention or following the rules of the road. People are in a hurry – they don’t have time for inconveniences like red lights, or pedestrians at a crosswalk.
• Mom called recently and asked me about marijuana oil, which you can buy to treat pain (it’s honestly not for her, and I don’t know why she’d think I’d know about such matters. She also called it “hash oil,” which I believe is a whole other thing).
Apparently, marijuana oil – it doesn’t get you stoned – works great but is not easy to get ahold of, because the federal government seems to have underestimated just how much weed and weed-based products Canadians would be purchasing once it became legal. The ganja kept flying off the shelves, which were emptying faster than you can say “puff-puff-pass.”
You just knew the government would find a way to drop the bong (sorry, I meant ‘ball’) on this one: they don’t even know how to sell dope properly.
Kevin Adshade is a writer with The News. His column appears each week.
