It’s the 2017 World Juniors, Team USA vs. Team Canada, the game is tied 4-4 and overtime is coming to a close. The game is decided in a one on one shootout, and of course, Canada loses 5-4. The shootout in hockey was adopted for the regular season in 2005-2006. This was after the 2004-05 NHL lockout so you know that they had to do something to “improve” the game and bring back the fans and save the game, but was the shootout really what the NHL needed? It seems no matter who you talk to people seem to either love it, or hate it. Add me to the haters. The first thing should seem obvious, hockey is classified as a team sport, so why is a game decided by a one on one. In a regular NHL game the average team has 18 skaters and two goalies with 5 guys on the ice all contributing to get a goal and win the game. So why is it that if a game is in a tie, goes through overtime without a goal, it all the sudden becomes decided by a one on one decision. Last time i checked 20 guys don’t contribute to a shootout goal. Every year after 82 games the top 16 teams make it to the playoffs and battle it in a bunch of best of 7 series to see who wins the famous Stanley Cup. Yet in the playoffs the NHL all the sudden realizes that games shouldn’t be decided by one player and a goalie. Why does it take the entire 82 game regular season for the league to believe that games are all of the sudden too important to be decided so unfairly. This only shows that the NHL knows that the shootout isn’t fair yet it can’t make up it’s mind to remove it from everywhere. Now, don’t get me wrong I believe that one on one’s have their place in the game of hockey because they are there. First of all, the breakaway. I would say that the breakaway is the “best” form of a one on one in hockey, it shows both the skill and speed of a player, and it happens naturally. And now for the penalty shot. The penalty shot is one that is much closer to the shootout as it’s once again a one on one, but I believe it deserves to be in our great game as it only occurs because the player was already on a breakaway (which I’ve already explained). But what do these have in common, they don’t decide the game once and for all and end the game. After all these years the shootout has dominated close games throughout the regular season. Even after all of the games that have been unfortunately decided by the one on one the NHL still seems to want to keep it. The NHL doesn't think it should be in the playoffs, a shootout goal isn't by the whole team, and one on ones already have their place. So why do we still have the shootout in hockey.
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Siblings, you know those people that you’re forced to live and deal with every moment of your waking lives just because for some reason we have the same parents. You have your older siblings who always seem to want to do nothing but pick on you no matter what you do and then you a have the younger brothers and sisters who make it feel like their only purpose on earth is to embarrass you and to suck up to your parents. Oh, and there’s also the middle child who I always seem to act like they’re forgotten all the time (frankly I don’t see it) but in the end siblings are siblings. The younger siblings, we all remember that dreadful day our parents told us we weren't going to be the only child, some of us cheered as I did, and others hang there heads and beg that they will still be their favourite. People always complain about their younger siblings saying how they always bug them and embarrass them about everything in front of there friends. Well they’re sorry, they only meant good trust me, they were probably just trying to help and do their best (although i’m sure your little sister/brother does it on purpose). Older siblings, the ones that are always picking on the younger sibling yet you still always seem to be able to love them and hate them at the same time. Now this may be coming from a older brother (A pretty awesome one at that) but all I have to is that they do it out of love trust me. Oh yea, I almost forgot about the good ol’ middle child. The middle child is the sibling that always seems to be under the impression that everybody forgets about them. The reason that I think this happens is because they don’t really fall into one of the other two categories specifically. The older child is the one that always gets the most responsibility while the younger sibling gets all the attention with them being the youngest, this all leaves the middle child feeling forgotten when they may not really be. Without siblings your life would never be the same, sometimes we take them for granted and should stop and realize how nice they really are to us. Just remember they DO love you no matter how much they bug you or tease you, and you’re gonna have to deal with them because you’re stuck with each other whether you like it or not. In the past 30 years the evolution of video games has been astounding. To think that in just 1977 one of the first mainstream home consoles, the Atari 2600, became THE console to have with its groundbreaking features to have cartridges that could save your game on them, joysticks to play the games, and did I mention that the games were in colour? The 80’s were the decade that really began the introduction of video games to the mainstream public. This is when places like Arcades started to open letting you play classic games such as Donkey Kong or Pac-Man. .After years of gaming the explosion of consoles like the ColecoVision, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and the grandfather of all handheld video games, Nintendo’s GameBoy in 1989 exploded onto the scene. Unfortunately, in 1983 the video game industry hit an unfortunate crash ending what was considered the second generation of gaming. People believe that the main causes for this was due to the flooding of cheap and rushed games, the introduction of home computers, and the failure of the Atari 2600 titles. This crash lead to infamous Atari burial of Atari games in 1983. Now comes the 90’s, the decade that in my opinion created what videogames have become today. This decade is what brought us the famous consoles such as the original playstation in 1994 or Sega’s final console the Dreamcast at the closing years of the 90’s in 1999. Now don’t forget the infamous Virtual Boy in the mid 90’s, the console that will forever go down as the red tinted migraine inducer (That can go upwards of near $300-$400 now by the way…) In the end we have to thank the 90’s for giving us the Game Mortal Kombat that forced the creation of the ESRB ratings that you see on games now, so yes Mortal Kombat is the reason you can’t buy that M rated Call of Duty without having your mom stand there to buy it for you. But to be fair we have to love this decade for giving us the first step into 3D gaming and the start of 32-bit and 64-bit games. This brings us to the 2000’s. This is when the world was blown away by the introduction of the Playstations second iteration the PS2 (The 2 is stands for the second Playstation) and it’s at the time absolutely stunning graphics. In 2001, just a year later Microsoft fired back with it’s brand new Xbox featuring the huge 8GB hard drive, PC technology, and the ability to play CD’s making it a prime competitor to the PS2. In 2006, we were all shown the brand new technology of the Wii that went on to show off the new innovative controllers with their interactive controller allowing users to point with the controller to move the cursor. This brand new concept helped to lead the Wii to selling over double the amount of consoles as Sony with their PS3. Looking back makes you realize how much videogames have evolved in there meer 40 odd years of exiting. Now we have the new Xbox One along with the PS4 and there still new and innovating technology, and the insane new idea of virtual reality with the Oculus Rift. It truly is amazing how far we’ve come in the technology of video games, imagine what they’ll be like in another 40 years. Technology is something that has become a part of everybody's life whether you like it or not. Technology is something that changes the way we live our day to day lives. No, technology has become our life. The average person now spends an average more time on technology than they actually spend asleep. From 1999 to 2010 the amount of technology exposure increased by an average of about 1 hour and 30 minutes. People are sitting away there lives by staring at a screen or having somebody they don’t know talking or singing into their ear rather than sitting down and having a REAL conversation with a REAL person. Kids and teens would rather like and comment on the photos that other people posted on their smartphone saying how nice they look instead of going to them and seeing in person and asking how their day is. These are the stereotypes that our generation are getting, and they need to stop. The first thing that we all need to realize is that these are stereotypes, and like all stereotypes they’re not all true. The thing with technology is that it’s everywhere from being a video game console to it being simply our music that we put into our ears when we’re trying to relax and unwind at the end of the day, in fact without these electronics I couldn’t be writing this for you today. Electronics aren’t something that we can just avoid, they’re a part of our lives to help make different things possible or easier and we need to realize that. The next thing that we as a consumer need to realize is that unlike how these stats seem to want to show us, technology isn’t all that bad. Without the use of these electronics we would in no way be able to do half of the things we do on a regular bases. This means that we couldn’t do any of the work assigned to us with our Chromebooks in school, we couldn’t use all those fancy navigational systems in your car, or even quickly message your friends who are in need of comfort because they’re on the other side of the world helping people by using technology. The use of technology has helped people like me create friends through a screen that I would have never got to meat if it had not been for the use of those seemingly “bad” electronics. If we weren't so caught up in trying to argue on why technology is so bad for us then maybe we could open our eyes and realize how much technology and electronics have helped us advance, creating who we are as people, and connecting to each other from places we’d never even of thought to visit. So, now I ask you, is it really that bad that technology has become our life? |
AuthorDean Crossman Archives
April 2017
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