Of hearts and other things

Guess what?

THE SABRES WON LAST NIGHT! In a very average, even game that was totally not even exciting at all! But it would have been if the score was 8-3 as it would have been if they had scored every time they had a wide open net at which to shoot! Yeah!

Now that that is out of the way...

1. Tim Connolly is, apparently, "questionable" for tomorrow night's game. We all know that this really means he will be out for six months. Is anyone else sick and tired of hearing about him and putting up with his crap? I do like the suggestion that someone made (sorry for not remembering who!) that he sucked when he was one of the iron men of the NHL and is awesome now because he made a deal with the devil. It went like this:
Timmy Ho: "Dude, I am so sick of, like, sucking. I mean, what gives."
Devil: "How about this. I make you amazing, under one condition. You will have to put up with various maladies that will cut the number of games you play in ha--, no, in quarter. These maladies will include concussions, bone spurs, a tweaked groin, back pain, stress fractures, bruises, cold sores, scratches, bad lack-of-hair days, hangnails, and chapped lips."
Timmy Ho: "Deal."
I am so done with him. I don't even care anymore.

2. Jason Pominville does not know the difference between bubble hockey and air hockey.

3. Jochen Hecht wins the Most Random Award for his music choices. I really do believe that the players are given lists of songs from which to choose when they get to pick songs to play during games, because, I mean, come on... But, even so, his choices? U2, Nelly featuring Ashanti, Foo Fighters, Mary J. Blige, Justin Timberlake, and Norah Jones? Hilarious.

4. I do hope that the KHL makes public the results of the further testing they are ordering to be done on several of their players. As of now, they have tested forty-nine players, and of that sample, five of them have some sort of heart defect. That could be incredibly interesting/incriminating, or it could mean absolutely nothing at all.

They may all have mitral valve prolapse, which is a heart defect that affects 2-20% of the population, depending on who is asked. For what it's worth, autopsies have revealed that 7% of deceased people had it. Essentially, its symptoms, if any can be felt, are a low tolerance for physical exercise, palpitations, tachycardia at times, chest pain, shortness of breath on exertion, fatigue, dizziness, and, in a few, fainting/syncope, or near-fainting. Other than those things, though, it does not affect a person's life at all and is almost always completely harmless. I could have mitral valve prolapse. You could have it. It really does not matter, and the trouble one must go through to have it diagnosed is more than the trouble of the problem itself.

On the other hand, they could all have cardiomyopathy, which is what Cherepanov had regardless of what the Russian doctors say; his heart was nearly the twice the size it should have been. That's all anyone needs to know to diagnose that, because, uh, that's what cardiomyopathy is: an enlarged heart. Even if only two or three of them have it, that would still raise red flags and set off alarms in my mind. It is well-known that there is a suspected link between steroid use and cardiomyopathy (not enough studies have been performed to really establish a link, only to suggest one, though what I have read on the topic suggests that most physicians are in agreement that one exists; and it is proven that anabolic steroids cause, at the very least, hypertrophy of the heart). If several of those players have it, I would immediately suspect that the KHL has a significant doping problem on its hands. The prevalence of cardiomyopathy, by the way, is 0.02%, or one in 5,439 people.

I hope that, because the KHL has, so far, made public the results of the testing it has performed on all of its players aged twenty and younger, it makes public the final results as well. Steroid use is one thing that I personally cannot stand. If I were the commissioner of any sports league, I would impose severe penalties upon any player found to be using them, regardless of who it is. It is true that most athletes who use them are smart and do not use ones for which there are current tests; I would, like cycling has started to do, have samples frozen to re-test again each time it is made possible to test for another form of anabolic steroid.

...This really has no point to it. I have just suddenly become highly interested in the testing that the KHL is performing on its players and the implications that it will have if several of them are found to have cardiomyopathy. I, for one, am hoping that they all have mitral valve prolapse, or perhaps another more common heart defect (though, for the most part, they are all extremely rare; that's really the only common one), simply because I detest steroid use, and it would be a shame if questions were raised regarding the circumstances of Cherepanov's death. Some things are better left unquestioned.

Lastly. The Tampa Lightning are beating the Detroit Red Wings 2-1 right now. Remember this moment and cherish it forever.