I have always been a rabid follower of basketball and not much of a hockey fan. But last Sunday I did the previously unthinkable and after switching channels back and forth between games for an hour or so I finally turned off the Lakers-Denver game to watch Team USA against Canada in the Olympic hockey finals. Wow, the excitement and passion of that game blew me away! When the match finally ended, I compared its nonstop action to the NBA's endless free throw parade and decided to follow the NHL a bit more and the NBA a bit less. If the objective is entertainment and the ideal is athletes giving their all, why do the local media and fans treat basketball as such a given and hockey as such an afterthought?
Letters: Hockey steals the show in Vancouver
SPORTS VIEWPOINT
And there's a gold-medal effort by photographers as well
Allison Wastri
San Pedro
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The Sports Media column Friday ponders how many people will watch the NHL after the Olympics, and specifically asks about this Sunday's Red Wings-Blackhawks contest on NBC.
But when I perused down Page 2 to the "Weekend TV Highlights" box on the lower left of the page, there was no listing for the Red Wings-Blackhawks game on Sunday!
Howard Cohen
North Hills
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All the best to Canada for the wonderful Games the country hosted. However, the ice hockey gold is of a baser metal.
The U.S. and Canadian teams completed the competition with one loss only and each loss was to the other. How does that make Canada the superior team? The only mistake the American team made was it won the first game against Team Canada and not the second.
Skip Nevell
Los Angeles
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The victorious Canadian women's hockey team partied hard, just like the men. But the Canadian Olympic Committee's adverse how-dare-they reaction burst my bubble. I had naively assumed that, unlike the United States, Canada was not controlled by sexist "family values" dogma. O Canada.
Bonnie Ann Baker
Irvine
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My favorite part of the Vancouver Winter Olympics? The amazing photographs by Wally Skalij and Robert Gauthier. How they consistently managed to be in right places at the right times befuddles me. And speaking of befuddled, I also enjoyed Chris Erskine's, um, we'll call them "insights." He's a treasure, whether he's a fan or just a man.
Lynn Chapman
Big Bear Lake
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I am too old for him, we are both happily married to someone else and I suspect that he would never leave Posh, but I have to confess that I am in love with Chris Erskine.
You can reformat, redesign and mess around with The Times without a complaint from this subscriber, but if you ever fire Chris Erskine I will end my relationship with your paper.
Thanks for sending him to Vancouver and letting me enjoy him daily instead of weekly.
Shirley D. Johnston
Claremont
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Kudos to The Times for your great Olympic coverage. Thank you for collecting the information into a special section that I looked for each morning. NBC made following the television coverage difficult — time delays, different channels — but you made it easy to find.
The hard news stories were good but the best treat was the human interest stories by your two columnists, Bill Plaschke and Chris Erskine. They brought home the Vancouver Olympic experience to those of us who could not travel to be there.
Great job for the Times team all-around! On to Sochi!
Thomas D. Penfield
Cardiff by the Sea
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Having NBC televise the Olympics is the biggest oxymoron I can think of at this time. Tape delay of events, inability to give exact time that tape-delayed events would be shown, and taking a one-hour break in the closing ceremony to promo a new show and show the news.
Guess there is a reason why NBC has its stellar reputation and blockbuster ratings.
Barry Levy
Hawthorne
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Norway was the best performer at Vancouver. If you evaluate the medal count based on population, the results would be much different. Of the top five medal-winning countries, Norway has the least population; about 5 million. Norway earned 23 medals with this population. The U.S. earned less than one medal for every 5 million in population. Germany would have earned about 1.9; Canada would have earned about 4; Austria would have earned 10. Even Estonia, with only one medal, earned almost four medals per 5 million population.
This puts a much different perspective on the "results."
Paul Waller
Woodland Hills
It's a crime
Buying or selling an Angels ticket on Anaheim Stadium premises, even at face value, is considered scalping and violators are subject to citation or arrest. I just bought a pair of upper deck Angels-Yankees tickets online through the Angels website and Ticketmaster at $27 apiece. Ticketmaster charged $6.50 per ticket for a convenience fee, and an additional $4.25 for an order processing fee. A 24% markup for convenience? Where's a cop when you need one? C'mon Arte, just because you've glommed onto the LA vibe doesn't mean you have to copycat the McCourts' chiseler ways too.
Roger B. Sypek
Lakewood
Blue in the face
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