What the Puck?

I know we take our hockey a little too seriously sometimes up here in the naked north.  But I always took a certain comfort from the idea that college sports wasn't nearly as overblown in Canada as in the States. 

Then I saw this from today's Globe and Mail.  The Flava:

A volunteer hockey coach in Newfoundland has been given an outrageous one-year suspension for skipping the opening and closing ceremonies of a hockey tournament, and his team has been fined $2,000. Given that he and his players decided as a team not to attend the events because so many of them were studying for and writing university exams, the decision sends the wrong message about the importance of education for athletes.
...
Hockey Newfoundland and Labrador has since insisted that its decision was the right one, and further adds that it is in “no way suggesting that hockey is more important than education.” Until it reverses this heavy-handed sanction, most will assume that that is exactly what it is suggesting.

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