posted 2008/06/04 at 23:41
A couple of nights later than I would have liked, but hey, I'll take what I can get.
posted 2008/06/01 at 20:40
Well, at least one of my two picks to make it to the Stanley Cup finals got there, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb predicting that the Red Wings hoist the cup tomorrow night. Particularly given the demoralizing nature of Saturday's game on the Penguins, not to mention Crosby going off like he did after the final whistle, I just don't see a way for the Penguins to come back to win this series, much less win tomorrow night at the Joe. Mind you, I should have known that the Red Wings would get the cup tomorrow night because it's the only night of the series where I teach on the same night. After all I've been through lately, I surely need the visceral thrill of watching the Red Wings bring home yet another championship. (Yes, for those of you who strayed to the Pistons or Tigers or even the Lions, the rest of us will still forgive you for your transgressions. Hockeytown always has room for more residents.)
I will admit that the Red Wings kind of lucked out, facing a very depleted Colorado team in the second round, then catching the Stars after that quadruple-overtime game. There have been a lot of questionable calls going Detroit's way this whole playoff season, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the NHL Rules Committee revisit the rules on goalie obstruction after the way the Red Wings' opponents have been complaining about their style of play. That being said, I think a healthy dose of luck is necessary to win any championship, and, well, the Red Wings were due for some luck after the way the past few seasons had gone. I think these Wings still have some championships left in them -- only now does everyone seem to be catching on to how the Red Wings managed to stay dominant in the salary cap era thanks to a top-notch front office that scouts out European players as closely as North American players -- but I don't think they're going to be quite as dominant as the 1997-2002 teams. It'll probably be a while before the Red Wings hoist another cup, so I'm going to make sure to enjoy this one as much as I can.
This all being said, I'm now more convinced than ever that wherever I go in this country, I will need to pick up NHL Centre Ice just so I keep access to CBC's NHL coverage. Hearing the analysts on Versus talk about how the next two NHL franchises should go to Kansas City and Las Vegas gave me a headache, not to mention all the American commentators trying to say that Hockeytown faithful were cheering McCarty more loudly than the other Red Wings because of "his story," not because, you know, he pounds the ever-loving crap out of the opposition. I know that hockey will never gain the same national attention as other sports just because the sport dictates facilities that are easier to find and make here in the northern part of the country, but still, the standards for being a "hockey expert" in the American media seem to be even lower than those for being a "celebrity" these days. Some of my students from last semester went on a trip to Toronto this weekend, and I probably should have gone along with them; I doubt I could ever live full-time in Canada just because I'm so attached to my American creature comforts, but I should check things out there at least once.
posted 2008/04/09 at 21:21
You know we're getting into the heart of April in this part of the country when buds start appearing on some of the trees, you see young people milling about in promwear on Fridays and Saturdays, the post office gets busy with people filing their taxes in the last week to do so, and, of course, the Detroit Tigers are mathematically eliminated from the pennant race. Seriously, I don't know what's caused the Tigers to have this startling of a collapse in the early part of the year, but it is disconcerting to say the least. Things have to turn around at some point -- right? -- but all those early-season hopes of another playoff run have been fairly well dashed already. I expect Jim Leyland will last until the end of the season, but I doubt his contract will be renewed after the season is over. Is it too much to ask for that the Tigers bring Kirk Gibson back and make him the skipper like they should have done back in the Trammell era?
Of course with the Stanley Cup playoffs going on right now, I can't really care that much about baseball. I only wish I could be more confident about the Red Wings' chances given their propensity to choke in the first round when they win the Presidents' Trophy. Nashville was probably the best first-round opponent the Red Wings could have drawn simply because it will cut down on travel so much, but Nashville is due to finally win a playoff series here. If the Red Wings can win the series in short order and get more of their players more time to recover from the injuries they received this season, then maybe they've got a shot, but the Western Conference is just a huge mess these days with eight teams seemingly equally capable of making it to the finals. I'm going to say that the Red Wings make it to the finals this year, but I'm predicting they lose to Montreal there for two reasons. For one thing, I've been clamoring for an all-Original Six final for some time here, and of course there's the whole "be careful what you wish for" thing going on there. Secondly, for whatever reason (and I really can't think of a good one right now), the Canadiens' fans' chants are really getting on my nerves these days. I'd like to see the Red Wings get their eleventh cup this year, but I don't feel like there's a good chance of it happening.
As far as other sports go, I'm even less interested in basketball now than I can remember being before, and of course the Bengals' continued problems with Chad Johnson and players getting in trouble with the law make it hard to care much about football. I am looking forward to the NFL Draft like I do every year -- even if I don't follow college sports at all I just enjoy the "chess game" aspect of the draft -- but I have no choice now but to pin a lot of my hopes on the Red Wings, hopes that I somehow doubt they'll be able to fulfill.
posted 2008/02/17 at 17:41
Somehow the news of Richard Zednik getting his carotid artery cut by a teammate's skate blade passed me by for a little while. After I heard about it, video of the incident surfaced in the "now playing" part of the YouTube homepage, and the first time I watched it, for a little while there I think I was as close to throwing up as I'd been in several years. I couldn't see any blood in the early part of the footage, though, and then later when I saw the footage on television I didn't see any blood there either. Still, something in me just gets sick whenever I know I'm about to see something like that, even if I know ahead of time that I won't be seeing lots and lots of blood. As much as I like to read horror novels, I strongly dislike watching horror films, and similarly I just don't think I have the stomach for those kinds of things in real life. Even knowing that Zednik is fine now, knowing how close he came to losing his life there just makes me want to never see that footage again, as much as everyone has been playing it over and over this past week.
I'm writing this post now so I don't have to keep watching the Red Wings lose yet another game here. (Why did they have to start the losing streak right when they start selling out the Joe again?) Even with the salary cap in place, I still think that the Wings are going to feel a strong temptation to try to spend their way to another cup by bringing more veterans in, and even though they've given away so many of their young talent and still remained a strong team, I don't like Wings' management's fetish with older players. The Wings need to get toughter, and I can only hope that Darren McCarty scoring a hat trick in Grand Rapids a few days ago means that he might get called back up soon. Part of me wants to think that the Red Wings might deliberately be dogging it right now just to try to get McCarty back up sooner, but I know that they wouldn't actually do something like that. I could handle this losing streak a little better if I knew that McCarty would be coming back soon, but right now it's gotten to the point where I may actually skip watching Monday's game when I've been putting a lot of effort into catching as many Wings games as possible this season.
Given that pitchers and catchers reported to spring training last week, maybe it's time to think more about the Tigers here. As much as I would prefer to go see a Red Wings game over a Tigers game, I'd be more likely to go see a Tigers game due to a variety of circumstances. The main problem I have with going to either a Red Wings or a Tigers game right now is that I don't have anyone to come to a game with me, and I'd really prefer not to go to a game by myself. My schedule is so unbelievably packed with work and other pursuits right now that I just don't have any time to socialize, and things won't get better in that regard any time soon. I don't even think I'm going to have that much time for myself over spring break, and I've applied to teach over the summer as well. The worst part is that I know that I could probably make time to socialize if I put some effort into it, but given my lack of luck in that regard in recent years, I'm kind of afraid to put myself on the line like that. I need to get over that soon, though, because it's just not been healthy for me.
posted 2008/02/03 at 18:27
Someone has yet to explain to me the allure I've found in the past two years' Puppy Bowl broadcasts on Animal Planet. I'm not a dog person in the slightest, and I never watch Animal Planet any other time of the year. (We get enough animals coming around here to eat the food we leave out that I don't need to go to television to get my fill of animals.) There's something about the Puppy Bowl that just keeps me watching, though, and not just because there's nothing else on television right now besides you-know-what. Getting people to tune into the Puppy Bowl instead of the Super Bowl would be an interesting countercultural project, although I have a feeling it would attract more people who disliked teams in the game than people who wanted to make any kind of grand statement against football or the Super Bowl teams. Hey, I'll be the first to admit that if the Bengals were in the Super Bowl, I'd be watching that instead of the puppies.
All things being equal, though, I am going to flip over to the game every once in a while just to see how things are going there. My feelings about the Patriots and the Giants aside, the fact that the Patriots might go undefeated kind of adds an historical element to tonight's game that makes me feel obligated to catch at least parts of it. It's just one of those things that I feel a strange compulsion to watch, like Barry Bonds breaking the home run record or something along those lines. I imagine it's the same way for anyone with even rudimentary knowledge and interest in sports; when you know something historic may be about to happen, you feel obliged to keep track of it even if you have no personal investment in any of the players or teams. I guess it helps that in my favourite (North American) sport, the Red Wings have been the team breaking all of the records in recent years.
There's another reason I feel obliged to catch parts of the game, which is that I'm sure that my students will be watching as well. Even with as late at night as I teach, I'm sure some of them will still want to talk about the game, especially with Tom Brady being a University of Michigan player back in the day. I try to keep up with the music and television and such my students consume just in case I can find some teachable stuff in there (you'd be surprised how much of my class I devoted to stuff from Chappelle's Show back when I taught at UT), and although I doubt I'll find much to teach from in the Super Bowl (especially since my students will be doing peer reviews Monday and Tuesday), maybe knowing a little about what happens in the game tonight will make me seem a little less dorky than what I normally come off as.
Labels: sports, teaching, work
posted 2008/01/10 at 20:00
Only with the way the Red Wings have been playing this past decade could their record-setting first-half performance cause the league to barely bat an eye. Of course, the way these things seem to have gone in that time, they'll probably get a good first-round scare and possibly be eliminated, and knowing my luck it'll probably be the Blue Jackets who knock them out. Still, for all that the Red Wings kind of became the New York Yankees of hockey in the mid-90s by outspending nearly every other team to ludicrous degrees, three years into the salary cap system they're even more dominant than ever. Even with so many of the old Russian players gone or retired, and with a head coach who was never around during that time period, that old puck-possession system continues to reap dividends with the Red Wings' goal differential and shot differential both at absurd levels. After the Wings' dominance of the past decade, though, hardly anyone notices.
I was glad to see Chris Osgood get another All-Star nod, although the goalie situation for the Wings is kind of worrying me. As much as I hated the Red Wings waiving Osgood back in the day and signing Hasek, at the time I couldn't deny that Hasek was a better goalie than Osgood. I don't think that's the case these days, though, as evidenced by Osgood's stellar win-loss record and goals against. When it comes time for the playoffs, I'm not that sure just how the Red Wings will play things; "Hasek is still the number one goalie" seems to be the mantra of the Wings these days, but Osgood is just plain performing better, and Hasek's body isn't allowing him to start that many games. I don't think Hasek should sit for the playoffs, but I don't think Osgood should, either. Alternating the two feels like the best thing to do, but I can't recall any Stanley Cup champion in recent memory deliberately alternating goaltenders in the playoffs.
The real Red Wings story that's getting buried right now, though, is that Darren McCarty just started his first minor league game last night in a rehab stint. I don't know if there's a place for McCarty on the Red Wings' roster right now given how everyone seems to be clicking on all cylinders, but him returning to the Red Wings would really help fill up all those empty seats in the Joe. Aaron Downey's been half-playing an enforcer roll with the Red Wings so far this season, which I think is playing a big part in the Wings' success, but McCarty at his peak could earn his spot on the roster by both his play with the puck and his ability to knock some teeth out. I still think the Red Wings' publicity problems of the past few years had a lot to do with McCarty's departure -- of all the modern Wings players, his grit and toughness best embodied the spirit of Detroit -- and if he's healthy enough to play at the NHL level again, bringing him back might just get the Joe selling out again.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon