Matinée Hockey

Lets look back over the last few holidays…

Veterans Day. I worked.
Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Holiday bliss, sans work.
New Years Day. I worked.
Martin Luther King Day. I worked.

That’s three out of the last six. Today had one upside that the other two did not… A Bruins matinée. The Bruins beat the Jets in a shootout today. I got to listen to the whole thing on the radio. Hockey is finally back. Even though the stupid loser point and the douchey shootout still exist.

Go Bruins.

Hockey > Football

So the New England Patriots, my home town NFL team, are in the AFC Conference finals for the second year in a row. I’m pleased, but it’s football so I really am not that interested. Tonight I was sitting in the living room at game time so I figured I’d watch for a while. I watched both teams go three and out and then started flipping around the fios channel guide.

What’s this? The NHL network has the Penguins vs the Rangers from Madison Square Garden? Nice! A real game!

The Pats are up 10-7 in the second, but in a game that isn’t painfully boring to watch on television, Pittsburgh leads New York 2-1. I’m hoping to see Rick Nash score at least four goals in a loss. And if the Pats win and earn another Super Bowl appearance, I’d be cool with that too.

It Begins

Let Robbie’s hypocrisy begin!

Bring on the Hypocrisy

Today is the day that I, your humble narrator Robert, become a major hypocrite. Hooray.

It all starts at 3:00pm Eastern Time today when the puck drops in three cities. Well, two. One of the 3:00 games is Chicago at L.A. and the Kings will be raising the Stanley Cup banner before the game, so they will probably start late… semantics. Nit picking. Shut up, I’m mad at myself. Chicago/L.A. and Pittsburgh/Philadelphia are going to be shown on NBC. I live in the East coast, so I assume there will be no banner raising ceremony for me, even though I was 100% a Kings fan from the second round on last year. No, I get the first of a shortened season’s worth of national networks washing and polishing Sidney Crosby’s balls. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those people who hates Crosby. I feel that before his concussion issues he was the best player in the world, and I hope to see him come back 100% healthy. He can be the best player in the world again, just so long as it does not come at the expense of the Bruins. Okay? Okay. I just get really, really, really, awfully, terribly tired of all the attention the media lavishes on him. Yes, he is a great story. Yes, he is the best there is. Yes, he is good in front of a camera. Yes, his is essentially the face of the NHL. Still, when you watch national coverage, be it NBC or Vs or ESPN (that’s a little joke) it’s always Crosby, Crosby, Crosby, Crosby rode a bike today. Crosby went to the movies today (think that’s a joke? Nope. ESPN ran a story discussing how Sid the not quite Kid enjoys going to the movies. When did they run this? Yesterdady) Crosby had a hang nail today. Crosby tried Shawarma and liked it. Enough already! I can see Pittsburgh’s local networks going off the deep end like that, but national networks? No thanks.

What the hell was I talking about? Oh yes, hypocrisy.

The Bruins play the Rangers tonight at 7:00pm. If I’m not doing anything else I might watch it. Maybe before I go to bed I might listen to the end of the game on the radio. Who knows.

I swore that if the league canceled one game I was off the wagon for good. Today, I am talking about watching a game or maybe even two. Crap. I just suck. My hypocritical compromise is to watch, but not invest. No money shall leave my hands and go to the hands of the NHL or any NHL franchise, including my beloved Boston Bruins. Nope. No money. No part of the NHL is going to make a dime off of me. Fortunately, the NHL Game Center iOS app is free. I installed it on both of my iOS devices today. Hypocrite! Last year I spent $15 or so to upgrade to whatever they call the package is that lets you listen to the radio broadcast of every single game. Not this year. This year I will get my 98.5 the Sports Hub (WBZ FM) stream from the radio.com app. That’s it. I am sticking to the no money thing for as long as I can. If one of the kids starts begging that they want to go to a game, that will be the only way I will break this oath. My step kids are more important than my being pissed off at the NHL. Still, I do not expect much begging and pleading, so I’ll be all right.

So what about the games themselves? What can we expect? I had 98.5 on in the car as I drove to Dunks to get some donuty breakfasty goodness this morning and a caller was breaking down how the Bruins and Rangers match up. I was laughing my ass off (figuratively) the whole time he was talking. About half of the Bruins roster played in Europe during the lock out. They had more players playing this season than any other team in the league. The rest of the guys? They worked out, they skated, they held captains practices, they did their best. Then they had less then a week of camp and then the idiotic shortened season started. In other words, these guys all had an extended summer break and are right about now getting into what would usually be pre-season game readiness. Folks, the hockey today is going to be AWFUL. It’s going to be a terrible, sloppy mess. You can’t look at any rosters and say this team should beat that team because no one is anywhere near ready to play actual games!

My prediction for tonight’s game between the Bruins and the Rangers at TD Garden in Boston is: Bruins 11 – Rangers 10 with new Ranger Rick Nash scoring nine goals, all off of Tuukka Rask, and Bruin Tyler Seguin scoring eight goals for Boston and assisting on the other three. At least one assist on each of the 21 goals scored will be given to a player who is generally considered to be a career minor leaguer, because all such players actually played hockey, in the AHL, over the last four months. Expect results like that to be repeated league wide for at least the first three weeks of the season. Alex Ovetchkin and Sidney Crosby and at least five other players will score 50 goals in 40 or fewer games. Why? Because the first few weeks of the season they will be playing against goalies who are still waddling in pre-season form.

Bring on the sloppy mess.

I am a hypocrite. Deal with it.

Go Bruins

The NHL Apology

The NHL has apologized to newspapers across the continent. Or something like that.

Leave it to the league that followed record profits, disgustingly high profits, with an insulting, idiotic, moronic, douche bag of a lockout to tell its fans how sorry they are for taking their favorite league away from them via a dead medium.

Newspapers. You know, those things from ancient history that in the modern day are dying left and right because no on buys them anymore and therefore they cannot sell any advertisements and therefore go out of business?

The NHL took out full page adds in at least one paper in every NHL city, assuming the NHL city still has a newspaper because, as stated above, newspapers are going out of business left and right. Those papers that actually exist were probably overcome with bliss at the idea of actually selling an advertisement that takes up a full page. That means the papers published today will be at least one page long! The wonder of it all, eh?

Here is the add itself. Be amazed at the sincerity of the apology made by the billionaires who took our game away from us. It just brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it? Of course no one is going to see the actual apology because no one in North America actually reads newspapers anymore. They may as well have broadcast this text via telegraph.

So there you have it. Shared on the internet (I got the image from this article, published in a medium that people in North America actually use, on a web page) because it’s the 21st century and all.

I guess now that the NHL has apologized to the people who pay their bills all must be forgiven, right? We’re all happy friends again, right?

Wrong.

The Lockout is Officially Over

Both sides signed an agreement yesterday that officially ends the lockout. The union ratified the deal after a 36 hour internet vote. 11 players failed to vote, and 12 voted no. Lets hope that those 23 players all play for Montreal so that I can hate them even more.

Training camps start today. The season starts on Saturday. The Bruins will open against the Rangers at home. 26 of the 30 teams will play on Saturday. How would you like to be one of the four teams that has the wait last an extra day?

I’ll probably watch some of the game, and I’ll feel like a dirty hypocrite doing it. I’m resolved not to spend any money though. They don’t get a dime off of me.

Go (broke) Bruins!

Players Union Ratification Vote

The players union’s electronic (ie interwebs) vote to accept the new collective bargaining agreement was supposed to have ended about an hour ago. There has been no announcement from the union regarding the results yet.

A majority of the 700 or so union members is required to ratify the agreement. The owners ratified it on Wednesday (I think) so this is the last step. A yes vote from the players union means camps can open today. A no vote means the lockout continues, probably forever.

Do you think Gary Bettman is worried? I’m positive Donald Fehr doesn’t give a flying leap either way. Imagine the disaster a no vote would be. The dumbest work stoppage in history would be dumber by a factor of about 10 gazillion.

I expect a yes vote though, and so does everyone else, so we should have hockey in full swing by tomorrow. Just remember, all my fellow fans out there, do not give them your money this year. Spend your money on businesses that actually want to be in business.

Go (broke) Bruins’

When Did the NHL Lockout Truly End

Technically the NHL is still locked out. The legal documents are still being drawn up. The owners expect to ratify the deal tomorrow at the Board of Governors meeting. The players will have an electronic vote over the interwebs to see if they approve of the new deal. The talk now is of training camps opening on Sunday, and the season starting on January 19th. It should be noted that the 19th is one day after Gary Bettman’s deadline to cancel the season. Oh well.

So the lockout has not officially ended, but it effectively has ended. But when we look back at this years from now, what will be the moment we look at as the moment the lock out ended?

It will be the moment when the Toronto Maple Leafs fired General Manager Brian Burke.

This is the dick move of all dick moves. They waited through the off season after the Leafs failed to make the post season for something like the seventh straight season. They waited through four months of lockout. Then, suddenly, just a few days before training camp opened on the insultingly shortened season they gave him the axe.

There are rumors going around that he got canned over Roberto Luongo. There was talk of a trade in the works and the speculation is that Burke did not want to pull the trigger, but Leafs ownership did. I’m of two minds on Luongo. First, as a Bruins fan, I love to see him lose. He choked like a chump in the cup finals against the Bruins and it was glorious to see. How dare you tell Tim Thomas how to play the puck! Tim Thomas might be a right wing nut job, but he already had a Vezina in his closet and was a shoe in for a second. Forget the fact that after your little bit of friendly advice he went on to win a Stanley Cup (at your expense) and a Conn Smythe (again, at your expense). What a jack ass!

Of course I am also a lifelong fan of the Lowell Lock Monsters and Luongo was, for a brief time, one of us. I tend to go easy on him for old times sake.

But given the way he has tended to lose his sanity during the playoffs, and how he still remains saddled with the can’t-win-the-big-game label (unfairly thanks partly to the first three rounds of his Cup run, but mostly due to that shiny gold medal he won in the Olympics), there is no way any serious GM would have pulled the trigger on any trade, unless The Iron Lung (that’s what we called him in Lowell… well, that’s what my brother, sister, sister’s ex, and I called him) were some sort of inexpensive throw in. Nope. Not going to take that deal, friends. Luongo has to win a Stanley Cup before I would consider dealing for him. Let the Canucks deal with him.

Regardless of the why or the how the Leafs fired Brian Burke, the fact is that suddenly those few of us who still follow the NHL are talking about something besides the lockout. Today is the day that we actually start moving on.

I will be damned if I give this asshole of a league a dime this year, but I suddenly am not bitching about the labor dispute and the work stoppage. I suddenly am wondering if Chris Bourque can make his dad’s old team. I’m suddenly wondering if Tyler Seguin can score 50 goals in 48 games.

Go Bruins!

The Black Plague: Day Twenty-One

It’s official. The flu/cold/plague symptoms have now been with us for three full weeks. Hoo-freakin’-Ray!

After visiting the emergency room last week, Jen was not seeing any improvement so she went to see her primary care. He gave a better explanation of the situation and prescribed yet another new antibiotic (her fourth since this all started) and a steroid. Nice. My wife is going to smash the long ball, just like Barry Bonds!

I’m still congested. I still have a cough. Neither is as bad as it was three weeks ago, but they are all still sticking around. I had a bit of a tough night sleeping last night. The cough woke me up a couple of times. Last week I thought I was 90% well. Now I’ll put it at 70% well. My health is currently getting a C-.

We are having a post-holiday, holiday party with Larry and Mike and families this weekend. I am going to be well enough to go to that party, even if it kills me! My health needs to be at least at a C+. I can do it. Hear that, immune system? I have confidence that you can stop sucking just enough for me to spend an evening with my family and my friends all in the same place together. You can do it, immune system. You can do it!

Did you hear that hockey is coming back? (yes, that was a sudden change of subject) Baseball pitchers and catchers are less than two months away from reporting to spring training as well. The days of no sports to watch but football (yawn) and basketball (zzz zzz zzz) are coming to an end.I am still furious with the NHL. That is not going to go away. When it comes to holding a grudge about pro sports labor disputes, I am the king. I am still fuming over the 1981 baseball players strike. Because of that stupid thing, the stats on my 1982 Topps baseball cards did not include 162 games for that season. Dwight Evans only got to play something like 104 games. That sucked and I’m still pissed.

Anyway, I think one of the reasons why I am so much more upset about this lockout than the last one (don’t get me wrong, I was steaming with rage last time too) is that last time I had an AHL team to distract me. The Lowell Lock Monsters. Eric Staal. Chuck Kobasew (sp? sorry Chuck). Damn, what a great team we had that year. While everyone else was boiling over with rage about not having hockey, there were maybe one thousand or so people in the Greater Lowell area who had Monsters season tickets. No, it was not the same as having the NHL, but it did keep our hockey minds occupied for that black hole of a season.

I could have followed Worcester, or Providence this time, but I still have that old Lowell loyalty. Be it the Lock Monsters or the Devils that replaced them, I loved AHL hockey in Lowell. For the record, there was no way I would ever have followed Manchester. That would be like rooting for the Yankees in the Red Sox absence. It would never, ever happen. In fact, I talked to my gorgeous wife Jennifer about maybe going to a game in Manchester, but I made it clear I would be rooting for the visiting team.

Lock Monster hockey, it’s alive! (or at least it was back then when I needed it)

Drop the Puck

I have such mixed feelings about the end of the NHL lockout. I love hockey so much. I bleed black and gold. I am a Boston Bruins fanatic. I hang on every shift, every play, every pass, every check, every shot, every save, every goal. Damn it, I love this friggin game!

But they hurt me again. The hurt me eight years ago when they cancelled a whole season, yet this time hurts me even more. I guess it’s knowing that I am partly to blame this time. I came back last time and this year I paid for my lack of vision.

I believe in my heart that three lockouts under the current commissioner proves that the league is fundamentally broken and must be allowed to fail. Then a new league, one that cares about its customers and does not take them for granted or use them as bargaining chips, can rise from the ashes of the old.

But damn it if I don’t love my Bruins and damn me for wanting to see them play this year.