Tag Archive | NHL

A Summer Beard

Apr11

I spent more than a few minutes than normal on facial grooming today. I was slightly more meticulous, paying special attention to the length of the goatee and moustache which have adorned my face for more than a decade. Most of the time, I am less than careful about this. I allow my goatee to grow to lengths normally reserved for the late Captain Lou Albano. My moustache has never quite bordered on Wilford Brimley territory, but it’s gotten close.

Why make such an event of one particular shaving session? Why make so certain that it is done today and done just so?

Today, my friends, is the beginning of a (hopefully) long march. One which my blood pressure dreads being made again so soon. A slogging grind which will be almost as gruelling for the spectators as it is for those actually participating.
After today, some of us will obsess. Some of us will dissolve our lives temporarily out of anxiety and anticipation. Some of us… will grow beards.

As the NHL playoff matchups are settled with today’s dramatic conclusion, people like myself are shaving and starting fresh; hoping that, when our team reaches total victory, we have growth on our face enough to make al Qaida jealous.

The playoff beard is one of hockey’s most vaunted traditions. It’s right up there with fighting, toothlessness, and the usage of “eh” as punctuation. At first, it was a tradition started by the players. Currently, it is a superstition carried over to the fans.
In cities all over the NHL, men just like me paid tribute to the Hockey Gods by removing any winter growth from our faces and giving superstition a clean slate. We all hope that we won’t be shaving until the end of June.

For some of us, the journey will be over sooner rather than later. Some of us will carry our stubbled faces low to the sink before April is out in search of our razors while others soldier on.
For those of us among the fraternity of the bearded, it is a religious experience. Much like hasedic Jews, no one looks twice at a hockey fan rocking a full and thick beard at the onset of summer. If it’s 90 degrees and your team is in the playoffs, it is a true test of your devotion to let that bad boy keep growing.
I was torn two years ago when my wedding day coincided with game one of the Stanley Cup Finals. I had to shave or my waiting wife to be would have had my bearded head on a pike.
My offense to the Hockey Gods (including missing the rest of the round while on a cruise ship in the middle of the Mediterranian) felt like it cost the Pens their victory. I was lucky enough not to have as many commitments the following year and the Hockey Gods were pleased.

This example proved to me the seriousness of the superstition. And so, I join my fraternity again. I band with my bearded religious order in observing our annual penance. I may not like them if they are from an opposing faction, but I see their faces and I know who they are. I may hate them, but I respect their zeal for it nearly matches my own.

All that being said, I masochistically look forward to the sleepless nights, the cardiac moments, the breathless seconds, the extra-strength heartburn, and the anxiety that comes between.

Let the playoffs begin.

Let’s go Pens.

Classics, Class Acts, and the Classless

Feb24

Gene Collier of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has long been one of my favorite editorialists. Even if his column is about something which doesn’t immediately interest me, I still read it for the fun of reading a good piece of writing.
Today, his column happened to mention the possibility of the NHL Winter Classic being played within the confines of the majestic PNC Park – the nicest ballpark in which any home team has ever completely hit the shitter.
When speaking about this, he mentions that the ownership of your Battlin’ Buccos (read: straddlin’ suckos) should be contemplating more important things that go on inside PNC Park, such as, oh, I don’t know, baseball, rather than courting the NHL for its annual outdoor extravaganza.
In case you’ve missed the story as it floated through the news, the details are rather cut and dry: Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins, PNC Park, New Year’s Day. Crosby and Malkin vs. Ovechkin in the (hopefully) frosty climes of Western Pennsylvania with naught but league pride and one of the marquee matchups of the regular season on the line.
If you’re a Pens fan and that doesn’t make your pants feel a little tighter, check your pulse.

While I’m excited at the prospect (and the amount of press it’s been getting), Collier does make a good point in his few statements at the beginning of his rant. He goes a different way with the conversation, but I’m going to hang on to the initial premise and lay down some obvious facts. The first and most glaring being this: Sure, the Winter Classic is awesome, but shouldn’t we spend some actual money and time working on our baseball team?
I’ll admit, I am not a huge baseball fan. I was not raised on it as some people were. My grandfather tried to get me in to it but I was too hyperactive. Baseball is not a sport for the easily bored. I wanted frenetic non-stop activity and that’s what hockey gave to me. Until I began my drinking career, I couldn’t sit still or concentrate on it long enough to see more than 2 consecutive innings. Even when the Pirates were winning.
I still hold some amount of disdain toward baseball though, being married to a woman who practically worshipped the Pirates of the late 80s and early 90s, I sort of got into it and started watching. Baseball being on at the bar also helps. Still, I can’t fully get into it.

I don’t want to say that if the Bucs were doing well, I would pay more attention to them. That would make me no better than the people I hate for becoming latter-day Pens fans now that we’ve got some of the best players in the league, two Conference Championships, and a Stanley Cup under our belts. I heckle those who jumped on the bandwagon without struggling through the thin years. I know that true fans are the ones who stand by the team, even when they’re in the direst of straits.
How long, though, can anyone really stand by a team? If the Pirates have another losing season, their streak will be able to walk into a convenience store and buy cigarettes. If the Pirates have another losing season, their streak will graduate over the summer and start looking for colleges so that it can become an even better (worse?) losing streak.
After seventeen years of losing seasons, I couldn’t blame even the most staunch Bucs fan (and they are out there, I know a few) for abandoning the sinking fiery wreck which this team has become. With piss poor ownership, used-car salesman management, and bargain basement talent at bargain basement prices, there’s nothing to really like about the future of this franchise.

There was a brief glimmer of hope a month ago when Lemieux Group LP offered to buy the team from the vile and detestable Nutting family.
As designated God of Pittsburgh, Mario reached down his mighty hand and attempted to enter negotiations. The Nuttings weren’t having it, though it stirred the city into a brief frenzy of what-ifs.
What if… the ownership of the Pirates cared about its welfare?
What if… the ownership was worried about more than lining their own pocketbook?
What if… it was all just a ploy to light a fire under/draw a magnifier over the Nutting family?
What if… the goal was to have Lemieux Group LP buy the Bucs in an effort to create an official Pittsburgh Sports Network, ousting Fox Sports Pittsburgh from its current contracts and creating an on-air revenue stream which runs right into the improvement of two of the city’s sports teams?

None of the above wonderings are bad things. There’s really no way that Mario even offering to buy the Bucs could do anything but help the team. That man turns ownership into pwnership.
The Bucs would win out in the deal as much as Pens fans would. All that gate money, all that food and beer money, raked in when the joint would otherwise be locked up tight. The money-grubbing bastards are doing it behind the screen of our much beloved world champion hockey team, too. I’d like to see the Winter Classic come here. Just, maybe not to the benefit of Pirates ownership.

If the Bucs are to benefit from the Penguins celebrating a 6-2 stomping (you heard it here first!) of the Washington Capitals in the 2011 or 2012 Winter Classic, I would hope that they would take the ill-gotten gains and spend them on something other than another West Virginia Manse for the Nutting family. Maybe invest in a half-decent crop of ball players who may have to be paid above league min but will still put up more of a fight than the current caste of characters.

It’s a crazy dream, but dammit, I have it.

Keep fighting the good fight.

—end transmission—

A Tip of the Cap, A Wag of the Finger

Nov5


The New York Yankees are your new World Series Champions.
I can make this statement using two distinct and opposite emotions.

I can say it happily because it prevents my personal most hated city in the world, Filthydelphia, from gaining any kind of victory. Any time someone shuts down a Philly sports franchise, especially by pummeling them into playoff elimination, my heart swells.
What can I say? I was born and raised a Pittsburgher. We’re bred to hate Philly and Cleveland. Sorry, it’s just regional genetics.

On the other hand, I make my statement angrily. If this World Series proved anything at all, it proved once again that, for an immense amount of money, you too can be like George Steinbrenner and buy yourself a Commissioner’s Trophy.

The whole thing made me realize that, with both the NFL and the NHL’s respective players associations going into renegotiations with their respective leagues regarding a possible removal of salary caps, what is next for sports in America?
Salary caps are what really keep things in line in sports. By making sure that no team can retain every player of increasing value every year, you allow some of the spillover to be distributed to lesser teams for possible improvement.
Yes, there are dominant teams and yes, there are far-less-than-dominant teams. The ebb and flow of the leagues, however, is dependent more upon performance of the players rather than the budget of the teams. This is the way sport should be.

Rather than come by things honestly, teams like the Yankees can use monetary temptation to lure players from elsewhere and build an all-star team, which they have done to a great degree of success over the last decade. This proves nothing other than the ability to flaunt money and buy a championship. It also makes things pretty lame for baseball if you’re not from a market with a team who has MAD BANK to shell out on a ton of big guns.
MLB should absolutely push to institute a salary cap. Think of the mass roster exodus of the uber-market teams. How many teams could benefit from veteran leadership which they just don’t have? How many teams could use a heavy bat or a golden glove or a cannon to help them become competitive?
Take the Pirates (Seriously. Take them. Please.) for example. They get someone good, he gets dealt to the bigger teams for peanuts. It happens at the end of every season as if the Buccos are some kind of farm club for the actual teams in the MLB.
Teams like the Pirates are simply breeding grounds. Sure, they play in the same league as the New York teams, Boston, the Chicago teams, etc, but they may as well be an independent minor league franchise which does nothing but breed mercenaries. We are arms dealers. We cultivate guns only to sell them to the highest bidder when they are primed and ready.
Ownership of these teams would have you think that there isn’t enough money in the organization to field a decent team. This is simply an awesome excuse to sit back and clean up on merchandise, concessions, and ticket sales while the team continues to suck donkey balls. The owners of these arms dealerships are only worried about the individual price tag of the men on the field. If they can keep payroll to a minimum while still offering up enough promotions to keep butts in the seats, it won’t matter if they tank season after season. At least, it won’t matter to the owners.
Under a salary cap, however, any owner would be seen as a fool if he didn’t allow his management to spend up to the absolute ceiling. With the talent overflow from the Yankees alone, the entire face of the league would be changed overnight. It may even allow some teams who don’t regularly haunt the lower ladder to actually make a run at something special.

Salary caps level the playing field. They make the championship anyone’s game at the start of the new season.
There are always dominant teams, but their championship reign is hardly guaranteed from one season to the next in the same way that it can be when there is no spending limit.

MLB should take an example from the NHL. Especially with the shape of the league right now. Many players who became more big-ticket last year were traded or snagged from free agency by traditionally lower ranked teams, lending to unexpected surges in the W column.
Also contributing to that is the lack of presence by most of the traditionally dominant teams due to age or fatigue or injury. With so many strange things happening, it seems as though there are no real early on favorites for the Stanley Cup as there have been in years past. Sure, I’d like to see the Pens take it all again, but whoever comes out of the east will give them a good run for their money as much as whoever they face from the west in the finals. Everything is up for grabs. Hockey is exciting again.

Baseball seems as boring as ever. If you know your team well enough, you could write the story of their season as soon as spring training starts. No names, no money willing to be spent on names, no real chance of victory.
There are those miracle players who come from nowhere to surprise everyone, but they are few and far between. An even rarer bird is the low-ranked team taking it all in some sort of drive for the ages. It has happened, it could happen again, but the chances of it happening are insanely slim. Chances of a miracle season under a cap? Much, much better.
One needs look no further than the reigning Stanley Cup champs to see proof. Going into the final stretch, they were almost iced out of playoff contention. Fighting back, they managed a fourth-place finish in the conference and surprised everyone by challenging the Red Wings to a rematch in the finals and winning.
Take this fan’s word; it was a dismal winter in more ways than one. To see them rise to the challenge was incredible. If not playing under a cap and going into the spring stretch with a losing record, you can pretty much count your team out. Most of the eligible players will be sold piecemeal to the highest bidder with a playoff berth without a thought. I’ve seen it happen in seasons past. It sucks.

Without salary caps to protect sports, things will become a buyer’s market just as they have in the MLB. There will be no point to any championship. Credibility for any trophies will plummet. Everything sacred about the game will crumble and the smaller market teams will be left in the dust.
I am not necessarily a baseball fan, so I’m not making this rant solely to oppose the reign of the Yankees as World Champs. I am merely a sports fan in general, pleading to the players, the owners, and the league management staff: If it’s not capped, cap it. If it is capped, keep the lid on it. Don’t let things get out of control for want of money.
The integrity of baseball is destroyed and can only be restored if the system is purged and the playing field leveled. I hold out hope that the same won’t be true for more sports in the future.

Keep fighting the good fight.

—end transmission—