Sochi Hockey Updates
2/23/14 Closing Day

Biscuits and Breezers

    Welcome back to another blog of Biscuits and Breezers! In this blog we will be talking about the medal games, player injuries, and some statistics will be involved! With the 2014 Olympics coming to a close as of today, soon all of the athletes will be returning home to their respective countries and for your NHL players, they will be returning to their teams for the remainder of the NHL season. 

(Credit to Google Images)

  2 hours before going into the gold medal game against Canada, Team Sweden lost star forward Nicklas Backstrom due to a positive drug test. After reportedly taking Zyrtec-D for sinusitis, Nicklas failed the drug test due to high amount of psueudoephedrine. Pseueudoephedrine is neither a performance enhancing drug nor is it banned in the NHL. Apparently, he has been taking this for years and his levels exceeded the allowed limit. 150 micrograms per milliliter is the highest level allowed by the IOC and Nicky exceeded that at 190. He and the team doctor, Bjorn Waldeback,  reportedly told the IOC testers that he was taking this medicine before the testing took place and he had been for quite some time. Backstrom is furious over this and told the press, " I feel like I haven't done anything differently than the last seven years and I've been playing internationally for the last seven years and lots of games and haven't seen this before."  Nicklas was already in warm ups when he was called off due to the failed test taken 4 days previously. NHLPA official Mathieu Schneider told reporters, "We're certainly going to be looking into this and and find out what went wrong in the process and where we can make a difference." It surely is a good thing that this won't effect his NHL season. Could this turn out to be a full blown Olympic scandal? We will just have to see how this plays out. Personally, I am siding with Nicky because I don't feel that he would be lying about doping and it is very suspicious that he was pulled so close to the start of the game instead of days before. Very suspicious indeed.

(Credit to Google Images-Hockey Rumors)

  Two important injury updates. John Tavares of the New York Islanders will be out for the rest of the season due to multiple tears in his MCL and a meniscus tear in his left knee. This was caused by a brutal hit into the boards by Latvia's Arturs Kulda. It is undetermined yet if he will need surgery, but that will be discussed once he returns to New York. In my opinion, there goes the Islanders' playoff hopes. Lastly, Rangers forward Mats Zuccarello will miss 3-4 weeks of play due to a non-displaced fracture in his left hand. He is Norway's lone NHL player in Sochi.

(Credit to Google Images-sportspdyer.com)

 If you got up at 5 am this morning as I did, you would know that Canada is back to back gold medal champions with a 3-0 win over Team Sweden in Sochi! Yes that's correct, the Canadian Golden boys shut out the Swedes to win yet another gold! The disappointed Swedes, who beat Finland in the semi-finals, will be heading home with the silver medal and the Finns will take away from Sochi the bronze after defeating the Americans by an enormous 5-0 shut out. Team USA is sitting in 4th place. Team Finland's podium spot marks the 4th and last medal claimed by their very own team captain, Teemu Selanne. Pittsburgh Penguins stars captain Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz added the last two goals of the gold  medal game where as Chicago Blackhawks' captain Jonathan Toews started off the scoring for the Canadians. It was very hard to see the Swedes' devastated faces after the final buzzer because you knew at that moment they were empty. In my opinion all of the teams played very well throughout the Olympics. Selanne scored twice and fellow teammates Jussi Jokinen, Juuso Hietanen, and Olli Maata picked up 1 point each against the Americans. Tuukka Rask was finally put in net after having the flu during the deciding semi-final game against Sweden. Patrick Kane missed two penalty shots for Team USA and Jonathan Quick was in the cage. Lundqvist and Price were the gold medal opposing tendys. Congratulations to all of the medal winners!

(Credit to Google Images)

(Credit to Google Images)

(Credit to Google Images)

  It was phenomenal to see all of the athletes compete against each other for their home nations but now it is all closed and done. They will be vacating Sochi here shortly and the NHL games will begin again to lead into the playoffs. Great job to all of the athletes that participated and now we will have to wait 4 more years until we see them come together again in 2018 in South Korea! Congratulations boys you put on one heck of a show for the world to see!

           

Here is another Flipagram concluding your favorite players' time in Sochi!

Enjoy! (Pictures are credit to Pinterest and video made with Flipagram, music via Flipagram credit to Queen)

  Thanks for reading another blog of Biscuits and Breezers! Every blog will be filled with updated hockey news, player reviews, and much more! Until next time remember, don't get your breezers in a bunch because hockey is always around the corner. Remember, it's always a great day for hockey and it's a lifestyle not just a sport!

(Credit to Google Images-insidehockey,com)