Sporting Madness

The fourth-oldest hockey rivalry in Canada is featured prominently tonight, with Queen's taking on the McGill Redmen. Things just got underway here in Kingston at the Memorial Centre, and the game's already heated: a Queen's forward collided with McGill's starting goalie, Jake Jarvis , and one of their defencemen early on and the whole tangle slid into the boards, sparking a bit of a dustup. Jarvis hobbled off afterwards favouring his arm and was replaced by rookie Danny Mireault . (Correction: LeagueStats indicates that it was Hubert Morin who was the original goalie, not Jarvis). First period 14:00: We're six minutes into the first period now and it's been pretty even so far. Plenty of checks and big hits, and some strong penalty killing from McGill. Queen's looked all right on the power-play chances they've had so far, but they couldn't produce a goal and we're back to five-on-five. 11:43: The Gaels are going on the power play again. Brandon ...

I watched a great match over at RMC's Constantine Arena tonight between the Gaels and the Paladins. As previously mentioned , RMC's arena is far too small for these sorts of games: fans were crammed into the rink in sardine-esque fashion, including those of us from the Journal : the press box was overflowing (Mike and I, Brock Harrison from the Whig-Standard and the CFRC guys broadcasting the game were all forced into regular seats). As this was the last regular-season game between Queen's and RMC, the Carr-Harris Cup (named after a prominent local family who had members play for both teams) was up for grabs, which meant even more people wanted to come to the game. I don't think the arena could have taken any more, though: all the seats were long gone by puck drop, and students lined the standing-room area around the glass as well. On the plus side, there was a great crowd and atmosphere: both the Queen's and RMC bands were out in force, along with students from...

In the final installment of Campus Corner for this week, here's my thoughts on the hockey teams. First, the men's team pulled off a very nice come-from-behind victory against RMC on Wednesday: the Journal was well-represented at the match, with Mike, Josh and myself all making the cross-town trip to Constantine Arena. I mentioned in a comment on Neate's blog earlier that I wasn't too impressed with the arena: to me, it felt way too small and cramped (the section we were sitting in was packed to the brim, and there were constantly people moving around looking for seats). Also, the penalty boxes weren't glassed in, which I haven't seen in a hockey rink before, and the whole arena's covered by white netting, making visibility pretty limited. Others think differently, though. Anyways, on the game itself: it was a pretty impressive performance from the Gaels. What amazed me the most was one particular coaching decision on the part of Brett Gibson. Pat Doyle was ...