Littlefield On Sports: Sochi Paralympics, Goalies, Lakers, Soccer Season

Think the great games in Sochi are over? Not so fast, the Winter Paralympic Games begin in Sochi on Friday, without all the security, but with some boycotts and lots of controversy.

Also, why do all the good hockey goalies hail from Finland? And what we can look forward to with the opening of the major league soccer season.

Bill Littlefield, Host of NPR’s Only a Game (@onlyagameradio)

Atlantic "You skate onto the ice and into this net, toward which rugged northern men with missing teeth shoot hard frozen rubber from misleading angles at upwards of 100 mph. Your failure to stop a shot triggers, in very short succession, the flash of a bright-red light—like a police light—directly behind your head, the eruption of a deafening horn, and the jarring rise of 20,000 fanatics above, celebrating your failure and, not infrequently, chanting your name derisively, hoping to instigate your mental breakdown. The psyche of goaltending is such that a promising career can turn on a single bad goal, or certainly a short string of them."