Women's Hockey Needs To Adopt A 60-Goal Mercy Rule

Confidence booster for every athlete anywhere in any sport: You may be bad, but you're not as bad as the Bulgarian women's hockey team. In a 2010 Winter Olympic qualification tournament in Latvia on Saturday, Slovakia beat Bulgaria 82-0. I'm not up on my history in that part of the world; what did the Bulgarians do to piss off the Slovaks so badly? It must have been terrible.

Bulgaria conceded a goal every 44 seconds in the Latvian town of Liepaja. They trailed 7-0 after five minutes, 19-0 after ten and 31-0 after one period. In their previous matches, they had lost 30-1 to Croatia and 41-0 to Italy.

My favorite part:

Down 77-0 with three minutes to go, Bulgaria put in its backup goaltender, who promptly let in another five goals on five shots in just 1:25 of playing time.

The third-string goalie is a dead raccoon which they lay across the mouth of the net. And now, the reviews are in: "What the Slovaks did to us was kind-of an insulting mockery, and is not at all sportsmanlike", the Chair of the Bulgarian Hockey Federation, Dobromir Krustev, said after the game. Kind of? The Worst Team In International Sport? [Yahoo Sports] 82-0 [James Mirtle]