Canada, bless the heart of the country known as America's hat. Canada's harmless, really, a beneficial neighbor/ally and always readily the butt of a joke.
So when evident representative of the entire country and proponent of the "Canadian Way" (whatever that means), Don Cherry, criticizes the "goofy" celebrations of Alex Ovechkin, he's oozing with snobbery expected of the French, not French-Canadians.
This "Canadian Way" -- Cherry surely can't be talking about the Canadian tuxedo, but rather a business like approach that all hockey players are supposed to practice. Essentially, Cherry's message is: If you're not doing what the Canadians are doing, then you're not playing "their" sport right.
Well, excuuuuuse me (and the hockey playing world).
Everyone is not the same. Simple as that. The man who pretentiously wears suits far more flamboyant than anything Ovechkin has done on the ice, needs to pipe down with the unnecessary pro-Canadian rhetoric.
Ovechkin's celebrations are hardly comparable to those in soccer, as Cherry insists. Have you seen the way those guys flop? Their celebrations are just as "admirable" as feigning injury.
But Alex the Great took a relative high road by brushing Cherry's comments off with a "He can say whatever he want. I don't care about him."
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And that's what Ovechkin should do, carry on in the manner he knows best. Don Cherry should be a ashamed that he's trivializing the passion of Ovechkin simply because he doesn't follow the way Cherry deems acceptable.
Hockey is clearly a relatively globalized sport and can no longer be solely claimed by its country of origin. Face it Canuckistan, the Canadian way ain't the only way.
