Category: Hockey

RPM Day 22

Nothing new to report.  My last music post last night is still the most recent information.  I haven’t had time to do anything since then, and I probably won’t have any time for the rest of today either.  There are non-music (aka, real life) things going on that need to be taken care of.  Monday is still the sing-till-I-puke day.

What else is going on.  Well, the Bruins continued their ass kicking with another win last night.  The Red Sox had their annual start of spring training games against Boston College and Northeastern University last night.  John Lackey is starting the first real game of the spring this weekend.  Be afraid… be very afraid.

We’re supposed to get another big snow storm this weekend.  I have decided that it’s going to skip us.  Yeah, it’s just going to go around Methuen and give us a miss.  Right.  Right?

Anyway… I’ll try to get some guitar playing done this weekend, but I might be off the project until Monday.  I hope to have both RPM and FAWM finished, but there might not be enough time for both.  If I finish 10 songs then I can declare RPM complete.  I have to finish all 14 for FAWM.  We’ll see.

Lock Monsters Flashback

Only former Lowell Lock Monsters season ticket holders who sat in the back two rows of section G are going to get this.

I was watching the Penguins vs the Flyers tonight. After getting up to say goodnight to one of the kids I sat down on the comfy chair, looked at the game clock, saw that there was 13:45 remaining in the period and said out loud, “13 minutes left. I don’t count seconds.”

Ahhhh, memories.

G’Night, Ray!

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The Boston Bruins

I haven’t posted about hockey in a while…  here’s a random thought.

The NHL will never earn my forgiveness for this season’s lock out.  They will never earn my forgiveness for the other two lock outs either.

There is, however, exactly one way in which the NHL can calm me down.  Exactly one way that they can get me to step down from my furious little soap box (that no one ever notices) and get me to blend back into the crowd.

How can they do that?  Simple.  The Boston Bruins have to consistently kick the bloody hell out of every other team in the league.  If that happens, I’ll relax and be distracted from my hatred and raving madness.

So far, so good.

The Bruins have played the fewest games in the Eastern Conference (thank you, blizzard) and have the second most points.  They have played 10 games and earned 17 points.  Do the math, kids.  They are three points away from perfection.  They have only lost twice, and once was in overtime.  That is a team that is doing a pretty decent job of taking my mind off my anger.

Let’s note that Chicago has a better winning percentage right now, but frankly the Blackhawks have not had to play the Bruins, and I would definitely bet on my home town team in a head to head match up.  The Hawks are awesome right now, but they ain’t no Bruins.

The Big surprise for me has been the goaltending.  Khudobin is going to be a question mark all year just for his lack of experience.  Rask is different.  Tuukka has been the Bruins #1 goalie in the past and he’s been amazing at times, but he’s also blown a playoff series after taking a 3-0 lead.  I really don’t think anything short of a Tim Thomas-esque Stanley Cup championship performance is ever going to make me have faith in Tuukka after that Philly debacle.  Having said that, Rask is playing like he’s possessed.  Given the abortion of a shortened season (see?  I’m still pissed after all) could he stay this hot right through the end?  It’s doubtful, but I don’t think it’s impossible.

Go Bruins!

So Long Timmy

There are reports on Twitter that the Bruins have traded Tim Thomas to the Islanders for a conditional draft pick.

Hey Tim, thanks for that Stanley Cup and all, and I’m sure eventually we will remember you as a Boston Sports Hero, but for now…

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Hehe, the Islanders.  Hehe.

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Tell All

I have to hurry up and finish Derek Sanderson’s book.

Terry Francona and Dan “Big Bird” Shaughnessy have written a book giving lots of behind the scenes dirt on the Boston Red Sox during Francona’s tenure as manager.  This is just the sort of thing that a psychotic Sox fan like me needs to read.  Likewise it’s the kind of thing that non obsessed sports fans would look at and think, who gives a rats ass.

Sanderson’s book has been fun.  By fun I mean fun in the way that hearing reformed alcoholics telling stories of drunken debauchery from their drinking days is fun.  In other words, the stories are often really funny, but the subtext is kind of sad.  Reading about him driving down the walkway in the middle of Comm Ave in Boston in an attempt to make it to Logan Airport on time, and then, despite being completely blitzed, getting a police escort into the airport, is one seriously funny story, but knowing what it was costing him is sort of painful.  One thing the book is doing is making me want to read the soon to be released Bobby Orr autobiography.  Sanderson gives the impression that the ’70 and ’72 Cup winning teams were more or less the result of Bobby Orr’s will alone.  Bobby wasn’t the captain, but his word was law.  He was King both on and off the ice.

The other thing that trying to rush through the rest of the book is doing is making my eyes tired.  I’m basically seeing double as I try to type this.  I need a nap.

Wouldn’t it be Nice?

I’ve been sitting at my computer tonight more or less since I got home.  My beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, brilliant, amazing wife is next to me.  She built a PC today and is jumping through hoops trying to get all of her software installed and all of her settings the way she wants them.  I’m helping with the heavy lifting here and there.

I’ve also being a bootleg music nerd.  My goal to get a copy of every show on the Rush Clockwork Angels tour is more than likely never going to be achieved, but I’m now up to 17 shows (18 if you count the DVD of the first set of the Brooklyn show, which I don’t).  I’m fighting with the new iTunes and with iTunes match.  Apparently we no longer have the ability to open a playlist in a separate window?  Gee… thanks iTunes.  I never made use of that function ever (and by never I mean I used it constantly).  Now when I drag a new folder full of music into a playlist and have it upload to iTunes Match, it does not add the music to the playlist.  You know, the playlist that I just added it to?  I then have to go into albums and right click and select add to playlist.  It gives me a drop down of all my playlists.  I have about a hundred and eighty thousand of them.  Yeah, that’s easier than having two windows.

Anyway, the real inspiration for this particular waste of server memory is Monday Night Football.  I don’t have the television on, but I keep seeing Facebook and Twitter notifications popping up with posts about the Patriots game.  I live in New England.  I suppose I identify myself as a Patriots fan.  I just don’t live and die by football the way 95% of my fellow New Englanders do.  I want my home team to win, but I am not going to get upset if they don’t.

However, all of this football buzz is making me think…

I could really go for some NHL hockey right now.  A Bruins game would sure be a lot more interesting than a Patriots game.  Hell, a Columbus vs Florida game would be more interesting to me.  I’d park my largess down on the coach and watch the shit out of a game like that tonight.

Thanks a ton, NHL.

Tomorrow Night

Well it all ends at 11:59pm tomorrow night.  That’s when the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement expires and the third lockout in Gary Bettman’s reign as commissioner begins.  Let’s be real though, Bettman announced that the lockout would happen a month ago.  Everything that’s happened from then until now is just public relations crap.  The lockout began when that announcement was made.  Their first proposal to the players union was so insulting as to guarantee no middle ground would be reached by the deadline.  The lockout was already underway.

Three lockouts.  He’s already erased about half of one season, and 100% of another.  Now we’re going to go through it again.  Can you imagine trying to work with some one like that?  It’s almost as if his only means of negotiating is cancelling games.  It’s insulting. 

And where are the fans in all of this?  Ignored.  Forgotten.  Insulted.  The millionaires and the billionaires once again fight over our money like the spoiled brats that they are, and once again we are the ones suffering for it.  Do you think Jeremy Jacobs gives a rat’s ass that his Bruins miss a few games when he is bringing in revenue from every other event that happens at the TD Garden?  I’m going to see Rush there next month, and that asshole gets a piece of my admission.  Do you think the players give a rat’s ass about missing a few games when they can all barrel off to Europe and steal jobs from other, less talented hockey players?

For the third time we have to sit here and watch as a deadline approaches while both sides make pointless proposals that they each know the other side will instantly reject and then blame the other side for not being good negotiators.  It’s as if they are following a script.  Part of that script is when the lockout eventually ends, the fans will come rushing back into the arenas buying tickets and $100 jerseys and all the hot dogs Jacobs can sell so that everyone can start rebuilding their war chests so that they can be ready for the next lockout when it comes.

Not this time.  We fans need to stand up to this.  We need to stay away in droves.  We cannot come rushing back again.  When the lockout ends the entire league needs to play the entire season in empty buildings.  We can’t give them our money anymore.  We can’t watch them on television so that they can live off of that revenue stream.  We need their sponsorships to dry up and die.  We need their broadcast contracts to never, ever be renewed.

We need to let the NHL die.  Personally, I hope the next lock out never ends.  I hope they just wither and die.

To hell with them.

Collective Bargaining Bullshit

As another day draws to a close without any real progress on the NHL collective bargaining front (both sides offered proposals today, but it’s all just PR at this point) I can’t help but reiterate what I’ve been saying for the last couple of weeks.

This is all our (the fans’) fault.  All of it.

After the 2004-05 season was cancelled due to collective bargaining bullshit, we fans should have stayed away from the game in droves.  We should have punished both sides for not taking our wishes into account.  We should have made them suffer.  They cancelled the ’04-05 season.  We should have cancelled the ’05-06 season.

But we did not.  We came back in droves.  We missed our game… OUR game… so much that we came running back to the rinks and welcomed the league back as if nothing happened.  We welcomed them back with open arms, as if they hadn’t just collectively pissed all over us for an entire year.  We opened our wallets to them as if they hadn’t just taken a giant shit on us.

And this is the thanks we get.

Had we stayed away after the last lockout the league would commit suicide rather than consider another work stoppage.  They would be so terrified of losing the fans who did come back that they would never dream of closing the doors and locking us out of our game again.

But that did not happen, and now we are three days away from another lock out.

We cannot let this happen again.

There Will be No NHL Lockout for Me

I read two NHL articles on espn.com today during my lunch break.

The first, written by Katie Strang was titled No new CBA will mean lockout.  In this article NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is quoted as saying that the league will not play another season under the old labor agreement.  It says that after six weeks of negotiations there are still huge differences between what the league and players union want to do financially.  The players union has yet to enter a counter proposal to the initial league proposal which i find completely retarded.  You’ve had Six Weeks and you still haven’t responded?  I almost always side with labor in these negotiations, but in this case the waiting seems completely idiotic.  Anyway, the players have said that if no new agreement is in place when the current agreement expires on September 15th, they are willing to let the new season start while negotiations continue.

Not Bettman.  In a statement that proves without a doubt that the NHL owners and their lap dog of a puppet commissioner have zero interest in maintaining the NHL and are in fact actively trying to remove it from the face of the Earth, Gary Bettman said that if there is no new agreement in place by 9/15, the owners will lock out the players.

Now lets look at the wayback machine.  Eight years ago the NHL owners locked out the players for an entire season.  AN ENTIRE SEASON!  They cancelled a whole year while they squabbled over money.  It was disgusting.  It was vile.  It was evil.  And they didn’t give a flying leap.

The fans came back.  Much to everyone’s surprise, they came back rather quickly.  They were so happy to have their league back that they refused to punish them for their greed and lack of respect for those who actually pay for their crummy league:  The fans.

I’m just as guilty as the next idiot fan.  I came right back even though my team, the Bruins, handled the whole situation so poorly that they imploded before our very eyes and eventually traded the guy who would win the league MVP award for a bag of pucks and a broken stick blade.  It was horrible, and I came back anyway.  I did not do anything to make the league suffer for the way it insulted me the previous season.  I came back.

I will not make the same mistake twice.

The second article I read was written by Scott Burnside and it was titled, Fans should bolt if CBA halts season.  Never has a sports column resonated so deeply with me.  I agree completely.  If a single game is lost this year due to a lockout or a strike I am done with the NHL.  Not just the NHL, I will be done with hockey.  My wallet and I will carry out our sentence on all organized hockey.  No more NHL, not more AHL, no more NCAA, no Juniors, no anything.  I’m done.

I will not allow myself to be insulted again.

I have been a hockey fanatic for 20 years.  I had season tickets to an NHL team.  For years I had season tickets to an AHL team.  I used to host an NCAA hockey radio show…

And if the NHL has a work stoppage this year I will write it all off and be done.

I will not allow myself to be insulted again.