The Stanley Cup Final has finally started. They only had 469249624 days off since the Conference Finals ended.
After two periods, the Oilers trail the Panthers 2-0.
Oh come on now. Let’s score some goals, Edmonton. I want this series to be an Edmonton sweep. You are not allowed to lose a game, Oilers. You are not allowed to win a game, Panthers. Screw you, Panthers!
I have a bad feeling about this.
I can’t remember a time when I was this blah for the last two rounds of the NHL playoffs. Blah, I say!
The Conference Finals are over. It is time to review how my predictions did in round three, and to make my pick for the Stanley Cup Final. Over the first two rounds I had correctly chosen the winner in six of 12 series. 6/12 is terrible, but it is WAY better than my coin flip control group which has been correct in three out of 12 series. That is just pathetic.
So how did we do with the two series in round three?
Rangers vs Panthers. You know, this is what happens when you live in Boston and put your faith in a friggin’ team from friggin’ New York. Of course the Rangers lost. Assholes. You guys suck. That sound you hear off in the distance is me screaming in hockey related frustration. I hate the Florida Panthers so much that I cannot accurately put it into words. I hate them so much that I was rooting for New York. Argh! I picked the Rangers and was wrong. That puts me at 6/13. The coin, the prick, picked the Panthers. It is now 4/13.
Stars vs Oilers. I feel a little better about this one. I am ambivalent about the Stars and I kinda find the Oilers enjoyable. That’s why I picked the Oilers. The coin flip picked Edmonton too. That puts me back at 50% at 7/14, and moves the coin to 5/14.
I guess that means that now it’s time to make my pick for the final.
Panthers vs Oilers. As I previously stated, I hate the Panthers with the burning passion of 1000000000 suns, and I kinda like the Oilers. I am making this pick with my heart and not my head and I’m picking the Oilers. Let’s bring that Stanley Cup back to Canada, shall we? For the coin flip, heads goes to the higher seed, which is Florida. The coin flip is tails. That means the coin and I both picked Edmonton.
You heard it here first, kids. The Oilers are going to win the cup this year. Pretty please, at least. We have a long wait for game one, as the series doesn’t start until Saturday. Five days from now. Hey NHL… WTF is up with that? What is this, the NBA? Damn it!
This sucks, man. My team lost and New York’s team won? Talk about a crap fest.
My predictions in the first round were not very good. I picked four series correctly out of eight. The coin flips I used for a control group (or something) picked three out of eight.
How did I do in the second round? Not very good.
Panthers vs Bruins. The coin and I both picked the Bruins. This sucks. I am now 4/9 and the coin is 3/9. Screw you, Panthers.
Rangers vs Whalers. I picked the Rangers, even though it hurts my soul to pick any team from New York, and the coin picked the Whale. The Rangers won. I am now 5/10 and the coin is 3/10.
On to the West…
Stars vs Avalanche. The coin and I both picked the Avalanche and they lost. The Stars moved on and the Avs made me look bad. I am now 5/11 and the coin is a dismal 3/11.
Canucks vs Oilers. The Bruins are out. The Avalanche is out. There’s only one team left that I would actually want to root for. It’s the Oilers. I picked them to win and the coin picked Vancouver. Who won? The Oilers won. Oh thank goodness. I am back up to 50% at 6/12 and the coin is completely shut out in this round and is now at 3/12.
Now let’s move on to the Conference Final round. Round three.
Rangers vs Panthers. Oh good, the team that beat my team for the second year in a row against a team that I absolutely hate. Yippee. I want them both to lose. I am going to pick the Rangers but not because I plan to root for them. In this series I am rooting for the Zambonis. For the coin flip, heads goes to the higher seed and tails goes to the lower. It is tails. The coin picks the friggin’ Panthers.
Stars vs Oilers. At this point I think the Rangers are going to win the cup, but the Oilers are the only team left that I actually like so I am picking them. That’s me going with my heart instead of my head. The coin picks the Oilers too, which guarantees they will lose?
So I am predicting a Rangers vs Oilers matchup in the Stanley Cup Final. You heard it here first.
Blah.
What am I doing? I don’t know. I feel like the universe is in a weird place right now (yes, I know that mathematically that sentence does not make sense). I don’t know.
I had the opportunity to play my guitar tonight and I sat on my ass on the couch watching TV. I watched an episode of Torchwood. I’m trying to get back into that. While I was on the AppleTV app formerly known as HBO Max I figured I’d maybe start watching The Leftovers again. I watched the first episode. I’ll go to my grave saying that the second season of that show is television perfection. The first and third seasons are great too. The first season is just so soul crushingly depressing though. It is tough to get through and I suspect that watching one episode is part of the reason why I feel like I am in a screwy state of mind right now.
The point of all of this though is that I could have played guitar tonight and I did not. Ugh.
I had two slices of a small pizza for dinner tonight. The second one came back for another view. Oh yeah, TMI Alert here. Yeah. It went down, but it didn’t stay down. Shit. I ate too much too fast and paid the price.
I’m on the youtubes right now watching a photography channel. It’s a pro photographer telling me I should use Aperture Priority instead of Manual Mode. But what if I want to use Manual Mode? I use Aperture Priority a lot with one of my film cameras. The term Aperture Priority wasn’t invented yet when the camera was built, it’s called Auto on the camera, but it’s the same thing.. I use it because the light meter inside the view finder is often hard to read. I like using Manual though. It makes me feel like I know what I am doing even though I don’t really know what I’m doing. The video also says to keep the aperture away from the extremes. Don’t use f2.0 or f16, use f5.6 or f8. You don’t get the blurry background as much as you do with f2, but you get some which is more than f16 gives. The video says the images will be clearer in the middle ground apertures. I think I had figured that one out on my own and was starting to come around to this way of thinking. Then again… I really dig all that blurry background.
Miss Robin Sparkles says hello.
It’s Monday night, just about bed time. Almost 10:00pm. At this time four days from now we’ll be about seven hours into our road trip to Florida. That’s the main reason why I am in such a weird headspace tonight. I just want to go. I want to leave now. I don’t want to worry about work or anything outside of travel. I just want to go. I have a shit load of stuff to do before we go, but I just want to go.
Ugh… I should just go to bed.
Looking ahead to tomorrow. There is likely going to be an NHL predictions post for the third round. I am hoping the Edmonton Oilers will win their game seven tonight against Vancouver. If that happens there will be exactly one team that I kinda like in the Conference Finals. If they lose, there will be three teams I hate one one team I don’t care about. My heart is officially no longer in the NHL playoffs at all.
Also, expect lots of posts where I talk about how I just want to jump in the car with Jen, my wife, and head out on our trip. I have vacation-itis right now. Big time.
The Bruins were bounced from the playoffs last night.
The Red Sox have lost four games in a row and have dropped below .500.
Those are the only pro sports I follow, and they are both making me sad.
The Boston team in the new Professional Women’s Hockey League is in the finals. It’s about time I started following that league now.
The Bruins lost.
Crud.
My hockey heart and hopes have been smashed against the rocks. Now the Conference Finals matchup in the East is the team that beat us vs the team from New York. I can’t root for either of them!
Crud.
Oh thank the Old Garden Gallery Gods, the Bruins live to see another day!
They beat Florida tonight in game five of their second round playoff series, 2-1 to stave off elmination!
Oh, happy day!
Florida still leads the series three games to two, but game six is Friday (Friday? Not Thursday? FUUUUUUUU) back in Boston.
Oh happiness! Oh sweet hockey rapture! We get another game!
WOOHOOO!!!!
12 minutes and 29 seconds left in the third period and Florida just scored to take a 3-2 lead over the Bruins.
Crud.
We’ve played one period at the TD Garden in Boston. The Panthers have been MASSIVELY outplaying the Bruins thus far. The ice is literally tilted toward Jeremy Swayman. It’s been tough to watch at times.
However… magically… having said all of that…
The Bruins are actually up 2-0.
It’s a miracle. Truly, a miraculous miracle.
The Bruins lost 5-2. Friggin’ Bruins.
Robin turns her back on them. I won’t, but she did.
ADDENDUM: I must have missed an empty net goal in the last seconds of the game. The Bruins lost 6-2, not 5-2. Bite me.
Inside the Red Head's Head 