Banana embarrasses London

Yep, classless hockey fans are found everywhere, including the normally classy London, Ont., where a "fan" thought it was "funny" to throw a banana at a black NHL player during a pre-season game at the John Labatt Centre.

Minor hockey minds score big win in London

Kudos to decision-makers involved with minor hockey in London, Ont., for coming up with a better way to organize teams in the heartland of hockey.
Devoted and season-long readers of this blog might recall the chaos, anger and hard feelings born during a money-grabbing, team stacking tryout process last fall in which the London Junior Knights organization exercised its right to skim the best players from the city's neighbourhood hockey organizations with no regard for what families wanted.
The season unfolded as predicted. Junior Knights teams won. Ho hum. Neighbourhood teams were generally (but not always!) mere sparring partners.
Now, as publicly explained today by London Free Press sports columnist Morris Dalla Costa, the Junior Knights will reduce the number of teams it fields to one elite AAA team per age group and one AA "farm team" of skilled competitive players. All other kids get to play for their neighbourhood "A" teams without the silly threat of bouncing them "all the way down to house league."
Of course, due to low registration numbers, A and AA teams will still be lumped together to form viable leagues.
Best of all for families who like to vacation or have kids in summer sports, the tryout process will happen in the spring, not August like last year. Minor hockey volunteers will like this, too.

West London Hawks Midgets

This video was shot by Art, one of the parents on my son's midget hockey team. It's the West London Midgets in their parent-purchased third jerseys playing neighboring Oakridge London. This time we won, 4-1.

TV viewing saved by a hockey dad

Just when it seemed like it would be a hockey-free night in our household, along comes a fellow hockey day to the rescue.
Miffed that our two-year-old Samsung LCD big screen TV broke yesterday, and further miffed that the Samsung call centre in South Carolina insisted I had to call a Mississauga company to arrange a repair, I turned to the Yellow Pages for help.
I didn't expect the TV to be fixed in time for Christmas, much less tonight's game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks.
But Rouel at Oxford Electronics changed that. He fixed it in a matter of hours, on a Saturday.
Rouel started the job with one proviso. If he wasn't done by mid-afternoon when he had to leave for his son's hockey game down the road in Sarnia, then the TV would have to spend the weekend on the bench.
I could identify with that. Watching one's son play minor hockey is a priority - it used to kill me when I worked nights and missed games, so much so I would try to schedule vacation days around my son's hockey schedule..
Luckily for me, the TV repair was straightforward and Rouel (pronounced Ray-el) made the London Bandits major peewees game in Sarnia.
Of course I'm still miffed with Samsung and vowed to the supervisor at the service call centre not to buy anything they make again. Then my son held up his beloved and durable cellphone - it's a Samsung. Ditto for my cellphone.
We are in the market for a new dishwasher. Anyone know a good brand?