Are YOU watching?

Am I the only person that knows about this?

I'm not sure if anyone else follows the Spengler Cup, but tomorrow morning's game holds some special significance for Flames fans (but I'll get to that in a bit)...



For those of you that are unaware of the Spengler Cup, it is an invitation-only club tournament held in Davos, Switzerland every year over the Christmas break. The host club (HC Davos of the Swiss league), invites one team from three other European leagues (usually from amongst the Swedish, Finnish, Russian, German, Czech, and Slovak leagues), as well as a team made up of Canadian players that aren't playing in the NHL (most are either playing in the European leagues, or aren't currently playing anywhere at all). In addition, the host club is allowed to grab 5 other players from the other teams in the Swiss league...



Each team plays four round robin games (one against each other team), and the two teams with the top records play for the championship...

I've been watching the Spengler ever since I found out about it about 10 years ago...

This years version (in addition to HC Davos and the Canadian team) has clubs from the Czech league (HC Moeller Pardubice), German league (Addler Mannheim), and the Russian league (HC Salavat Yulaev Ufa)...


Which brings me to the main point of this whole post. For those of you that have read my blog with anything resembling consistency may know, Andrei Taratukhin plays for Salavat (who, I feel the need to point out, wear bright green from head to toe). And those of you that have been watching the Spengler, if there is anyone besides me, probably know that Mark Giordano has suited up for the Canadian squad. I realize that Giordano and Taratukhin may have played against each other in the Russian league already, but none of us can get those games...

Tomorrow morning the Canadians play Salavat, which means that we get to see the two Flames that we all wanted with the big club this year face off against each other on national TV. Of course, the game is on tape delay (don't read the sports sites!), so it won't be on until 3:30 pm EST (1:30 pm MST), but that just means we don't have to worry about sleeping in...

Unfortunately, this is a little bit of a conflict with the junior game (vs Sweden at 2:00pm EST), but those of us with a PVR (YAY, THAT'S ME!!!), can catch both in HD. The rest of you may have to settle for catching the second half of the Spengler game (or switch back and forth)...