Oh thank you, thank you, thank you hockey gods. Last night the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup giving me one final correct prediction and making my full post season record a tiny bit better than flipping a coin.
Whew!
Here are my win/loss records per round: First round: 6-2 Second round: 1-3 Third round: 1-1 Final round: 1-0
That gives me a record of 9-6. That looks like a 60% success rate to me. Much better than the 53% it would have been if Dallas had won. So even though I hate the Tampa Bay Lightning with a passion because they beat my Bruins in the second round, I have to tip my cap to them, congratulate them on their second(?) franchise championship, and thank them for making me look good in the end.
Okay, so it looks like the wild card round is going to be a set of three game series. I can work with that. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to flip a coin to make my picks for each series. I tried to use Siri but it gave me four tails in a row. The I started again and it gave me four heads in a row. Okay, let’s not put our trust in randomness.
Let’s start with the American League and hope that the coin doesn’t pick the Yankees. The team with the higher seeding is heads, lower is tails.
Rays vs Blue Jays: Tails. Blue Jays.
Indians vs Yankees: I’ve never hoped for one result over the other more than I am hoping right now. Come on heads! HEADS! I promise on all I hold sacred that I didn’t rig that. Indians.
Twins vs Astros: Tails. Astros. That’s too bad.
Athletics vs White Sox: Heads. A’s.
Now for the National League. In the spirit of pageantry I have decided to use a different coin for each league. Dramatic, eh?
Dodgers vs Brewers: Heads. Dodgers.
Padres vs Cardinals: Heads. Padres.
Cubs vs Marlins: Heads. Cubs.
Braves vs Reds: Tails. Reds. I played for the Reds when I was 12. Good choice, National League coin.
So I did hit heads four times in a row. Apologies to Siri.
The playoffs start tomorrow. Happy playoffs, everyone!
There was a chance that Tampa Bay could have won the Stanley Cup last night, but Dallas ended up beating them in double overtime. It feels like Tampa has spent so much time in overtime that they’ve played an extra round or two.
In the past few weeks I’ve been making my playoff predictions for each round of the NHL playoffs. I’m going to end up with a positive record no matter who wins in the final round, but I am only slightly better than 50/50. If Dallas wins I will actually effectively be 50/50 at 8 right and 7 wrong. Where am I going with this?
Baseball. The Red Sox have had one of the worst seasons (win/loss percentage wise, the season ends today after game #60 rather than the usual 162) in franchise history. I’ve been paying attention to final scores most days, but generally they were so bad I couldn’t watch. That lead to me sort of taking a pass on the rest of the league too.
Now that the playoffs are about to start, I don’t know anything about any team in the running except that I effin’ loath the effin’ Yankees. Other than that, I’m clueless. That, plus my lack of success in the NHL playoffs gave me an idea…..
I am going to make post-season predictions for Major League Baseball, but I am going to decide my pick for each series with a coin flip. Yup. This is going to be a case of is Robbie luckier than fate. I suspect that I am not.
I don’t even know how they formatted things this year. Is there a one game play-in round? All I know is there are bubbles involved. I’ll figure it out and let you know.
For a minute there, I was worried I was going to get both third round picks wrong. I hate you and you suck, Tampa Bay, but thank you for fulfilling my prophecy. Or something like that.
Going into the third round I was 7-5 for the playoffs. I was at risk of going into the finals at .500, but thankfully I’m still on top of things. I’m still better at this than flipping a coin.
My third round results:
Lightning vs Islanders: I picked the Lightning even though they are the slime that knocked out my Bruins. The Lightning won. I was right.
Golden Knights vs Stars: In Vegas, the house always wins in the end. I picked Vegas and Vegas beat me. Dallas won and I was wrong.
First round: 6-2 Second round: 1-3 Third round: 1-1 Total so far: 8-6
One round to go. The whole enchilada. The be all end all. The Stanley Cup Finals.
Stars vs Lightning: I have no idea. None at all. No clue. They’ve both screwed me over. The Lightning screwed me over by beating the Bruins. The Stars screwed me over three times by beating a team I picked. Should I go with Dallas just because of that? I don’t know. I think I have to pick Tampa Bay because… well… they are awesome and kinda deserve it. They deserved it last year too (it pains me so much to say that… I really freakin’ hate them) but choked in spectacular fashion. Will they choke again? Ah crud, who knows. I’m picking the Lightning.
The series starts tonight. The last hurrah for the bubble. During the pandemic in 1918 they made it to the finals before they canceled the season. This time, the bubble seems to be working. I think we’re going to have a champion this year. Unfortunately, it won’t be the Bruins. Crud.
I fully intended to get up early today and do car vocals. I actually did get up early but… As I mentioned last night… that last song I worked on… the lyrics were so bad. It just took the umph out of the situation, you know? I need to rewrite.
So… fasting. What’s up with that? Give yourself an eight hour window each day where you can eat to your heart’s (stomach’s?) content, then the other 16 hours you don’t eat. In my 56 seconds worth of Google “research” it looks like most people set their eating window at 1pm-9pm. Outside of breakfast, that works okay for me. I want to cut down on between meal sowing. Something like this could gimmick me into cutting back some. Also, my 56 seconds showed me that zero calorie drinks (water, diet soda) are allowed during the fasting times.
I found an app I wanted to try to use to help. I thought you’d plug in times and it would tell you when to eat. It doesn’t. You turn it on when you’re fasting starts (9pm) and it tells you when it’s over. Okay… I guess I’ll start this fad tonight at 9pm. consider today’s breakfast my breakie swan song. What the hell, it’s quarantine. Let’s jump on this (a/any) stupid bus.
After my horrid performance trying to predict the winners of the second round of the NHL playoffs, I went into the third round with a tiny bit of optimism. Then on Sunday night the West series started and my pick lost game one. That’s okay, I guess. It’s just putting my pick into a statistical hole that is too big for the majority of teams to crawl out of but that’s okay, right? Ugh. I had this bad feeling that when the East series started up last night there would be another crushing loss. I checked the score just before bed. Would Tampa crush my heart again? Nope. They were up 7-2. I checked the final score today. They won 8-2. I feel a tiny bit better now.
Television. Season two of The Boys is out. I forgot that Amazon released shows weekly. Crap. At least they put out three on the first day. They are good so far, but now I have to wait for Friday for episode four. On top of that, Jen and I started watching Cobra Kai. We plowed through the first season. It is so much better than I thought it would be. I expected it to be goofy and silly and a bit of a farce. It was, sort of. Not a lot though. It was just good. Yeah we saw the series finale coming miles away, but it didn’t lessen the effect. I’m looking forward to season two, and season three is supposed to be on the way. I’m paused on The Watchmen for the moment, but I’ll get back to it. Same with Breaking Bad. Eventually I’ll get to Lovecraft Country too. For now though… I’m up to season four episode 15 of Agents of Shield. The rewatch continues.
For now though. Let’s have a good work day on this, the first work day after Labor Day. The first work day after the symbolic last day of Summer. Today is probably in my top three least favorite days of the year.
The tradition has been continuing long enough that I just have to face facts. I suck at predicting the second round. I mean… I just plain suck. Royally. Certifiably.
Remember the first round? I did great in the first round. I correctly picked six of the eight series. Look at me being all 6-2 and stuff. Then comes the second round and everything falls apart.
Let us recap:
Flyers vs Islanders: Oh look at that, the Flyers lost. Welcome to the Conference finals, Islanders.
Lightning vs Bruins: Heartbreak. Devastation. I picked my hometown heroes the Boston Bruins to beat the Lightning and the Bruins lost in five. Sadness. Pain and suffering. Not only that but I got the whole Eastern Conference wrong.
Golden Knights vs Canucks: Who woulda thought that betting on Vegas would pay off, huh? I got one right. I’m not a total loser!
Avalanche vs Stars: I picked the Avalanche over the Stars and the Avalanche (who I also predicted would win the third round too) blew it and lost.
First round: 6-2 Second round: 1-3 Total so far: 7-5
At least I’m still on the upside.
So now we move on to the Conference Finals. All four teams are supposed to be in Edmonton now. Game one of the Western series is tonight at 8:00pm Eastern time, so I’d best get my picks in, eh?
In the East:
Lightning vs Islanders: Oh why don’t you just kiss my big fat ass, fate. The team that bounced my team matched up with a team from New York? How the hell do I handle that? I have to pick the Islanders because I can’t pick Tampa, even though Tampa’s probably going to win in four and then go on to the Cup Finals and win that in four. Ah hell, I have to pick with my brain instead of my heart and I hate both of these bastards anyway… shit… I’m picking the Lightning. Crap.
Over in the West:
Golden Knights vs Stars: At least this one’s easy. Well… I thought it would be easy in the last round too. I thought the Stars were cannon fodder and then there they are winning. Not this time though. Vegas is the team to be. I’m picking the Golden Knights.
And there we have it. Two more series. If I get them both wrong I’ll be exactly 50/50 for the playoffs which means I’m as accurate as a coin flip which is probably the only accurate thing I’ve thought all day.
I picked Colorado to win their second round NHL playoff series against Dallas. I changed my mind while listening to game seven.
I was using the NHL app to stream the Avalanche radio broadcast. During the second intermission the Avs were up 3-2. The radio broadcast back-at-the-studio guy was talking about the scores in the other series. He mentioned that game one of the third round series is scheduled for Sunday, and whoever wins the 9:00 game tonight will have to play the Avs on Sunday.
Wait, play the Avs on Sunday? The Avs still had a period to go in their game seven and someone was going to have to play them on Sunday?
Can you guess what happened? I could. As soon as that arrogant putz said it I knew Colorado was losing, and I knew I’d be happy about it. They ended up losing the game in overtime and therefore they lost the series.
Whoever wins the 9:00pm game has to play Dallas on Sunday.
I feel like we’re missing out. The Bruins were unceremoniously bounced from the NHL playoffs in game five of their second round series. All of the other series have gone to game seven. All three of them. I’m listening to Dallas/Colorado right now and I think I just heard them mention that all of the remaining three series had a team come back from being down three games to one to force their game seven.
As mentioned, Dallas/Colorado is happening as I type this (it’s 2-1 Avs in the first intermission). Vancouver/Vegas is tonight at 9:00pm (Eastern time, as always). Islanders/Flyers play tomorrow at 7:30pm. It’s still possible for these jerks to make my predictions look good. I think I need the Avalanche, the Golden Knights, and the Flyers to win, which would put me at 3-1 for the playoff round. I’d trade it all for another Bruins game though.
The first round of the NHL playoffs ended last night without any series going to seven games. Kind of a bummer in the dramatic sense, but the Bruins won so it’s all good.
Here are the results from round one….
In the East:
Flyers vs Canadiens: I picked the Flyers and the Flyers won. I hate the Canadiens with every fiber of my being, but I still kinda wish they’d been able to knock off the #1 seed. Oh well. 1-0
Lightning vs Blue Jackets: I was rooting for the Blue Jackets but they didn’t pull through. They did it last year, but not this time. The Lightning won. 1-1
Capitals vs Islanders: I went for the upset and I was right. The Islanders won. 2-1
Bruins vs Hurricanes: For the second year in a row, the Bruins beat the Whale and all was right with the world. 3-1
In the West:
Golden Knights vs Blackhawks: I picked Vegas and Vegas won. 4-1
Avalanche vs Coyotes: I picked the Avalanche and the Avalanche won. 5-1
Stars vs Flames: I picked the Flames… woops. 5-2
Blues vs Canucks: I picked the Canucks and the Canucks won. As much fun as it would have been to get revenge on St Louis in the finals, there will be no 2019 rematch this year. 6-2
I picked the winner in six out of eight series. I feel like NostroHockeyDamas or some shit. Of course, I usually nail the first round before crashing and burning in the second round. Here we go…..
In the East:
Flyers vs Islanders: Oh crap. I hate Philly. I hate New York. I would like to see them both lose. Given the current standings I would prefer to see Philly lose. They won’t. I’m picking the Flyers, but rooting for the Islanders.
Lightning vs Bruins: The match up we were all afraid of last year that didn’t happen is finally happening. This year… without Tuukka… ugh. I’m picking the Bruins because they are the Bruins, but it’s a pretty even series. This one is going seven.
In the West:
Golden Knights vs Canucks: Our old 2011 Stanley Cup nemesis is about to become 2020 cannon fodder. Sorry, Vancouver. I’m picking Vegas.
Avalanche vs Stars: I’m jumping the gun a tad here, but the Avalanche are my pick to win the West. Sorry Dallas, I’m picking the Avs.
Inside the Red Head's Head 