Hold on Junior A Crusher fans, it’s too early to jump off that bridge – give it another couple of weeks, at least.
Even if their winless streak has reached eight games, even if they haven’t won a game in almost a month, even if their goal-production (what goal production, you might ask?) is lacking, there’s always a bright side, and we’ll get to that in a bit.
It’s not difficult to identify the biggest problem for the local Maritime Hockey League entry: prior to Tuesday’s 7-4 loss to the Summerside Western Capitals at the MHL Showcase, they’d been having problems putting the puck in the net, scoring a league-worst 16 goals in eight games.
Unless basic math has undergone a major transformation, that’s two goals per game.
If the Crushers are to begin stacking wins together, a couple of their forwards need to step up their offensive production – they know who they are, and besides, it’s not all on the forwards, so there’s no sense singling them out.
And now, the bright side: you expect them to get better as the season goes along (of course, that’s a reasonable expectation of any team) and you expect a couple of players to break out of their scoring slumps.
Luckily for Pictou County, there’s not a lot of separation between the bottom four teams in the South Division, so a winning streak would do wonders.
• Thus far, the Major League Baseball playoffs have been less than electrifying. Yawns all around.
• (Update from Cleveland): When a football team wins one game in two years and four games total in the past three years, a 2-2-1 start to the current season is almost parade-worthy (take a bow, Cleveland Browns). That record might be even better if they weren’t getting hosed by the officials, but when you have a defence that is turning into a legitimate shutdown unit, and a quarterback who knows what he’s doing (thank you, Baker Mayfield), then you have a chance to win.
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Non-Sports Thought of the Week:
• We were supposed to do a guided tour last week of the NSLC location at the Aberdeen Business Centre, where soon you’ll be able to buy all kinds of marijuana-related stuff.
It had to be postponed until this week because the water pipe broke, which of course, is highly ironic.
We are less than a week away from marijuana being legal in Canada, so let’s sit down and have a rap session on this burning issue.
There is a voluminous amount of anecdotal evidence suggesting marijuana is not nearly as bad for you as alcohol – in any way you can measure – and we don’t need scientific studies to reach that conclusion.
I’ve known a few regular marijuana smokers over the years, and I’ve known a few intakers of alcohol over the years, and I know which drug is more dangerous. Ask any police officer – if they’re honest, they’ll tell you alcohol is the bigger problem. If they think otherwise, they haven’t been a cop for very long.
Obviously, those who smoke and drive shouldn’t be on the road, because the mind tends to wander on the wacky, and trying to handle a 2,000-pound hunk of metal while simultaneously eating a bag of potato chips can’t be easy.
Kevin Adshade is a writer with The News. His column appears each week.
