Good to be a Canadian sports fan. . .

These days it's good to be a sports fan in Canada.

This weekend the surprising Blue Jays took 2 of 3 from the evil Empire in Yankee Stadium. Sure it's early in the season and sure in 5 months time the Yank's will be headed to the post-season (maybe) while the Jays will be fighting to finish the season at .500 (almost definitely). But hey, the fact right now is that the Yankees and there $200 million-plus payroll are below .500 and actually looking up at the Jays and there sub-$50 million payroll. The Jays have looked good for the most part this season minus a little 5-game spell versus the same Yankees and the even more surprising Baltimore Orioles. If Vernon Wells ever gets going for the Jays and Shea Hillenbrand remains hot, this team will compete. And how good did Roy Halladay look on Friday night against the Big Unit? Say what you want about Dave Stieb's no-hitter but that game Friday night has to be one of the best-pitched games the Blue Jay's have had in a long, long time.

Moving to basketball, the NBA playoffs continued tonight and Steve Nash and his Phoenix Suns polished off the Memphis Grizzlies tonight. Perhaps after tonight's sweep critics will finally start to give the Suns their props. 62 regular season wins, a decisive first-round sweep of a very good Grizzlies team, and still the so-called experts want to say that the Suns aren't for real.

Say what you will about this team but I say they are the real deal. Not only that, Steve Nash is the MVP this season. Hands down. The Heat proved through the last month of the season, and through the first-round of their series against the Nets, that they can win without Shaq as long as they have Dwayne Wade (a future MVP).

The Suns on the other hand proved that when playing without Nash they are still a good team, but more like a 7 or 8 seed in the playoffs, not the dominant #1 they are now. No player makes a bigger impact on his club than Nash does with the Suns.

This is a great story for Canada but not one I think that gets near enough press time. While Canadian media continues to want to focus on the NHL lockout like a dejected junior high girlfriend (get over it already), the Steve Nash story is something our country should be celebrating more. Sure he's way down south playing in Arizona but the guy has never hidden the fact that he's proud to be Canadian, and Canadian's should be returning the favor and showing how proud we are of him.

I think back to when Mike Weir won the Master's and how proud this country was of that achievement. Everyone jumped on the Mike Weir bandwagon then, whether they were a golf fan or not. The guy's got his own line of clothing now for crying out loud.

Perhaps it's because Nash has a hairstyle like a 12-year-old girl that doesn't make him marketable. The fact is, he has a very good chance of being the first ever Canadian NBA MVP. Not only that, but he's a little white dude in a sport dominated by giant, athletically superior non-little white dudes. That in itself should make every little white dude (and Canada has the most of them per-capita) stand up and give their props to the finest professional Canadian athlete to come along in a long, long time.

Enough about Steve Nash, although, in case you couldn't figure out, I'm a big fan.

The World Cup of Hockey has commenced somewhere overseas. My first question is, does anyone really care? As I write this blog I'm watching Sportsnet and they currently have a story running on who's going to start in Canada's next game versus Slovenia. Again, I ask, does anyone really care?

I think Canadian media, along with NHL players, owners and anyone else affiliated with the game, are totally dillusional if they believe that anyone does. This report on the "goaltending situation" has been on for a good 5-minutes now. Interviews with Brodeur, Coach Habscheid, and anyone else wanting to put their forgotten mug in front of a camera. Yet, no one from Sportsnet was down in Memphis to interview Nash after his team sweeps through the first round and now improve to 66-20 on this season. Sorry, I said I was done talking about Nash.

The fact of the matter is that this one-time fan of the NHL has realized that there is life, and good life, without NHL hockey. And I considered myself to be die-hard. So, if it took me, a die-hard fan, only one missed season to basically forget about NHL hockey, how quickly have other's been able to move on who were only moderate or even fairweather fans?

What's more is that I don't plan to come running back to the NHL as soon as these morons make a deal. And so again I ask, if a die-hard fan like myself has little to no interest in whether the NHL ever comes back, how much more apathetic will the casual fan be when the arrogant millionaires of the ice come back to try to show how important they are?

My advice to sports media? Forget the NHL. There are bigger, better, and more inspiring stories to focus on in Canadian sports. Stop wasting our time with reports of who's offering what, who's playing goal in a meaningless game against Slovenia, and acting like anyone really gives a rip about hockey at this point in time anyways.