Unsurprisingly, ice hockey goes into a xmas recess. The higher the standard being played, the shorter the break, but it seems that even the NHL enjoys a few days off. Which is a bugger for those of us who finally get a bit of free time over the xmas holiday from the daily grind - no ice arena to skate on, no team to train with, no games to get psyched up over, and now no televised games from the Northern Hemisphere.
Hence the importance of the Spengler Cup - a short form tournament from the Swiss town of Davos that takes place over the break. Last year we discovered it by accident on Foxtel. I'd been looking forward to a few days of late nights watching the teams from Switzerland, Russia, Serbia and the Czech Republic fight it out. Unfortunately, this year Foxtel isn't showing it.
Not to be deterred I went online to see what I could find in terms of results, gossip or even match replays or highlights. I found something better...
Online TV! In particular, this site, with its streaming content of all types of sports from all over the world. Go to the Sports Tab, click on Ice Hockey, see what your next viewing opportunity will be. Only, read the warnings first, because there's some nasty little bugs in some of the software needed to open some of the content! So far, I have watched parts of games from Switzerland, Russia, England, Canada and Finland.
Afterthought - when I told Wayne about this treasure trove of tv he rightly asked the question, isn't this 'piracy' and isn't it 'wrong' to watch it? I've thought about it a fair bit since then, and decided that my conscience is clean. My logic is simple, if the games were on regular or pay TV (ala AIHL), I'd watch them there (like I do for AIHL). If the games were available on a pay site for streaming (ala NHL) I'd pay and watch them there (like I do for NHL). But they're not, so I can't.
So sue me.
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