Ice hockey world championships preview 2012

Shit, I don't know. It's not like we'll be seeing them now that they're on pay-tv. No way am I paying for Viasat for the NHL and MTV3 MAX for F1 and a third provider for this.

Did I mention it's Susana Spears's birthday?

I still don't know why the sight of her hit me like a ton of bricks, but it still kinda does.

Happy birthday!

NHL second round playoff preview

Next round! First of all, while I'm delighted at the lineup of Western teams that made it to the semis, I have to say I've seen too few of their games to have any particularly well-thought-out picks. I'll just say I'm picking the Kings and Preds for the conference finals. My first round picks were 4/8, so I might just as well have flipped a coin.

**

The East I actually have something to say about. I'm damn disappointed that my dream of a Panthers-Kings final is not to be, but the Panthers played a heck of a series. The Devils are another team I can't really figure out: are they better than they look, or not?

As for the Flyers, I picked the Penguins to win the series because the Flyers don't have the team defense to succeed in the playoffs. In my opinion, that's still true, but they compensated by scoring a gazillion goals. If the Penguins hadn't been so lousy and had Marc-André Fleury been able to stop anything, you have to think they would have won the series despite the Flyers' offensive firepower. When Pittsburgh briefly got their game together in game 4, there was nothing the Flyers could do about it.

But they didn't get their game together. Instead, the entire team disintegrated, and Fleury was as terrible in net as the guys in front of him were at defense. I've said over and over on this blog that Fleury is overrated, and this series was a fairly good example. But the bulk of the blame has to go to coach Bylsma and captain Crosby. Ever since he came to the league, we've been inundated with the NHL's official propaganda about what a great leader Crosby is. It's nonsense, similar to the notion that he's somehow a two-way player. The league and the North American hockey media say these things because as the anointed Next One, Crosby has to be a great leader and a great two-way player. Both are just lies.

In this series, Crosby really showed his character. On the ice, he degenerated into a childish rat and a punk, knocking Jakub Voracek's glove away from him, bitching about how he hates the Flyers and holding a guy down while his team-mate beats him up. Shades of the Boris Valabik nut shot on that last one. Meanwhile, Bylsma seemed to have no control over his team whatsoever.

When the Penguins win, no matter what happened, Crosby's boosters give him all the credit, because allegedly whenever the Penguins succeed, it's due to Crosby's leadership. How many times have we been told about how he supposedly makes everyone around him so much better? If he gets to take credit for the Penguins' successes due to his supposed leadership, then he has to take responsibility for their defeats as well. Given the way the team fell apart, Crosby shouldn't be held responsible only for his lackluster personal play but also for the breakdown of discipline that he directly contributed to. Of course, as everyone knows, no such thing will happen, because we've already been told that the Penguins lost despite Crosby. That's just bullshit.

The Flyers-Devils series will turn on team defense. If the Devils can defend against the Flyers offense, they'll win the series. The few times the Penguins out together any kind of defensive effort, it stopped Philadelphia. If not, the Devils are toast. Flyers in six.

**

The Caps are in many ways the biggest surprise of the second round. I didn't think there was any possible way they could get past the Bruins' depth and team defense. Except apparently when Nathan Horton got injured, that depth vanished. When David Krejci's line, including the supremely overrated Milan Lucic - less Cam Neely than Chris Simon - failed to produce, so did the rest of the team. What looked like tremendous forward depth last year now looked like a bunch of overpaid third- and fourth-liners. In other words, the Bruins looked like the Capitals usually do. Brayden Holtby was tremendous in goal; Tim Thomas slightly less so.

It's beyond sad that the tightest series in NHL history should end in an outbreak of racist tweeting by disappointed Boston fans.

They'll be going up against the Rangers, who unsurprisingly beat the Senators but surprisingly took seven games to do it. Shockingly, I have to pick the Caps to win. While the Caps beat the defending champions, the Rangers struggled to defeat the Senators; Holtby has played better than Lundqvist; the Caps' offensive potential is better than the Rangers'. Who knows, maybe Alex Ovechkin will show up. Unless something bizarre happens, it'll be a close series.

Canada, hockey and heritage

Exhibit A: The Ottawa Senators and their Stanley Cup banners

This is what's been hung from the rafters at Scotiabank Place:

And they're all lies. The teams that won those cups were never called the Ottawa Senators; that was just their nickname. The name of the team was the Ottawa Hockey Club, or Ottawa HC for short. And anyway, whatever they're called, the franchise that plays in that arena hasn't won a single Stanley Cup. They have no connection whatsoever to the team that did, except that they've taken the earlier team's nickname and made it their name. They have as much right to those Cup banners as I do.

Exhibit B: The Winnipeg Jets [sic] and their logo

The Winnipeg Jets [sic], of course, aren't the Winnipeg Jets; the Phoenix Coyotes are. The "Winnipeg Jets" of today are the Atlanta Thrashers. It's incredibly disrespectful to the original Jets for the Thrashers' new Canadian owners to simply steal the name of the old team, especially since the Coyotes are the only ex-WHA team that actually commemorates their WHA heritage.

And the logo? What's that even supposed to be? I'm told by the Jets' Wikipedia page that it's an F/A-18 Hornet, as used by the Canadian air force. Except it isn't. Here's the Jets logo:

And here's a Hornet:

What's going on at the back of the Jets' jet, where the Hornet's exhausts are supposed to be? There's, like, a spike? So in addition to stealing the old Jets' name, they play with a logo that defaces the equipment of the Royal Canadian Air Force. The old Jets had a portrait of her Majesty the Queen in their arena; the new Jets mock her military.

And anyway, if the new Jets were any kind of patriots, they wouldn't have a US jet on their logo, but the Avro Arrow, as far as I'm concerned.

It's often said that hockey is a very conservative sport. In the day-to-day political sense of the word, i.e. hating people who are different than you and being angry a lot, I suppose that's true. But as for respecting your past and your heritage and everything like that? In Ottawa and Winnipeg at least, not so much.

Flyers Fan...

Honestly, is there really anything you need to say about this picture?  He just looks so angry.  He is putting more energy into flipping off Jordan Staal and the Pens than either Flyer goalie put into stopping a puck during the game.

My real question is why he is dressed in a sports jacket and white polo shirt?  You mean to tell me he was at work and decided to come over to the game?  I would think if you went out and got tickets for the game, you would at least take an orange shirt to work, maybe a jersey.  He looks so out of place.

2012 NHL playoff picks

We've done some playoff and World Champs picks before, and they've never gone particularly well. We remain undaunted.

Eastern conference

1. NYR - 8. OTT

Nobody even thought the Senators would make the playoffs, so they've already exceeded expectations by getting this far. If I hadn't seen the Caps-Rangers game where Lundqvist and the Rangers defense couldn't stop a beach ball, I'd have no qualms whatsoever calling this one for the Rangers in five. I'm still picking the Rangers, though.

2. BOS - 7. WSH

Maybe Dale Hunter has actually spent all his time and effort in training the Caps to play devastatingly effective playoff hockey: a solid team defense and top-notch special teams. You know, the stuff they didn't have in the regular season. Unless Tim Thomas goes berserk from the sheer proximity of the federal government, this should be easy for the Bruins. As much as Jack Edwards and Don Cherry make me want to see the Bruins lose horribly, they're unlikely to do it here.

3. FLA - 6. NJ

Kudos to the Panthers for making the playoffs and making the Leafs the only franchise to not make it to the post-season once after the lockout. While I'd like nothing better than to see the Panthers win the East, it's hardly likely they'll make it past the Devils. A solid performance will give them something to build on, even if they lose.

4, PIT - 5. PHI

After five regular season head-to-head games, I would've said Philadelphia. After the feeble, lackluster performance the Flyers phoned in last Saturday, I'm tempted to say Pittsburgh. On the whole, I don't think Philadelphia had the team defense to succeed in the playoffs, but that's what I said when they made it to the finals. I'm betting on Pittsburgh and hoping to lose.

Western conference

1. VAN - 8. LA

I want the Kings to win this series so bad. Full disclosure: I dream of a Panthers-Kings final. I doubt I'll get it. When the Kings hired Darryl Sutter, it was said that he wasn't the right guy to get the Kings the offense they needed; it's that lack of offensive power that's going to sink them against the Canucks. Even Jonathan Quick, who I think should win the Vezina, can only take them so far.

2. STL - 7. SJ

Man, I wish I'd seen more Blues games. The Sharks aren't going anywhere and should have been blown up long ago. Blues in six.

3. PHX - 6. CHI

Five or so years ago, nobody would have believed this was a real playoff series. I can't figure Chicago out: some nights they play like Cup champions, some nights... not. They'll win this one in five games, though.

4. NSH - 5. DET

The Central Division's really been something this year. The Wings and Preds split the season series right down the middle, so this one's anyone's guess. The big question marks are on the Wings' side: will Johan Franzén show up? Which Henrik Zetterberg turns up, the dominating post-season veteran or the useless turnover machine? How will whoever they put in goal do? I'm saying Nashville in seven after a Red Wings choke-up reminiscent of their last trip to the finals.

Mike Milbury and Sidney Crosby

So this happened:

CBC: Mike Milbury calls out Crosby for role in Penguins-Flyers brawl

Speaking on Sports Radio 94WIP Monday, Milbury ripped Crosby for his role in instigating a game-ending line brawl in Sunday's game between the Penguins and Flyers. The chaotic scene resulted in 52 minutes in penalties being assessed between the two teams.

The fighting was touched off in part by Flyers forward Brayden Schenn's cross-check to Crosby.

"Little goody two shoes [Crosby] goes into the corner and gives a shot to Schenn. Schenn was late to the party, he should have turned around and drilled him right away, but I guess better late than never," said Milbury, who is an analyst on CBC and NBC.

"So you know, Crosby gets cross-checked, big whoop. He said after he came back from his 35th concussion, 'I'm not going to do this anymore, I'm not going to get into this scrums, I'm going to stay away from that stuff.' He couldn't help himself because there's a little punk in Crosby.

Let's get two things out of the way. First of all, making fun of concussions is just stupid. Do remember Chris Pronger. Secondly, Milbury's remark about Pittsburgh coach Dan Bylsma's "skirt" is stupid and reprehensibly sexist. He deserves to be censured for it, but his employment at CBC is probably secure, given the kind of people they employ on their hockey broadcasts. It's really not too hard to see that Milbury's main motivation in all the nonsense he gets up to is to secure his position as Don Cherry's successor to Crazy Loud-Dressing Shouty Bigot's Corner. He's going to need to amp up the wardrobe, though. Not looking forward to it. Frankly, I shouldn't have called Crosby "Cindy" either; it was stupid and sexist of me and I apologize. It's tough to not lapse into sexist language when talking about sports, especially about the most homophobic and misogynist major team sport of them all. I shall try to do better.

Having said all this, there are two larger points that shouldn't be overlooked. Firstly, as this blog has maintained for years, Sidney Crosby is, on the ice, a disgusting punk. He slashes and cross-checks other players, takes monstrous dives when someone as much as touches him, and cries about it to the media afterward. They, having enshrined him as the Messiah of Hockey, lap it all up. Milbury knows what he's doing when he goes after Crosby; he can only raise this big a shitstorm by attacking the Anointed Next One. So in my opinion, apart from the stupid concussion remark, Milbury is right on the money about Crosby.

Not too long ago, Milbury was still drinking the same Kool-Aid as the rest of the media, because just last year he called Crosby "the perfect face of the league". Either he's come to his senses, or this is just a publicity stunt. Funnily enough, Don Cherry also doesn't have a very high opinion of Crosby. He may be a bigoted nutcase, but at least he's called Crosby out on diving and crying to the refs. The dive Crosby takes on Schenn's cross-check is vintage Sidney.

The second point is that although talking about Bylsma's "skirt" is appalling, the point Milbury is trying to make in his particular knuckledragging caveman idiom is that by the standards of hockey, Bylsma's no innocent. Sending out your fourth-liners to go after Danny Briere like that is asking for a fight, and Bylsma must know it. The Penguins have lost the game, and Bylsma's using his last change to get the fourth-liners out there to injure the Flyers' stars. That's just not cricket, and Bylsma deserves to be called out on it. Philadelphia has completely outplayed Pittsburgh this year, and Bylsma's resorting to dirty tricks to get a leg up in the almost certainly upcoming playoff series.

So on the whole, if Milbury hadn't delivered his message in such a classless, sexist and plain dumb way, I'd completely agree with him. But I suppose he really is gunning for Cherry's job, and so there's really no other way he could have delivered it.

Weekend Preview

Try not to be too jealous, but Lindsey and I have a three day weekend.  Before you ask, yes, we did sacrifice a few goats to Satan in order to make that happen.  The real question though:  what do we have planned?

We are heading to Pittsburgh with Imler, who just happened to pick up Gideon from the airport.  That is correct!  Gideon is making his way back to Pennsylvania.  Exciting times.  I expect fun times to be had by all.  Anyways, tonight we are going to the Pens game and then after that, who the hell knows.  You should probably get a hold of one of us to try and meet up.  Do it early though, most likely will not be sober for long.

Last time Gideon and I got together was a pretty awesome time.

I just hope I can find a cool balloon hat like that again...

Pittsburgh Sports Stuff

AJ Burnett and the DH Debate
As most of you know, Burnett injured his eye socket during a bunting drill and will probably miss some time.   Last night, I heard one of the guys on 93.7 The Fan saying that if the NL had the DH, then this would not have happened.

He made a good point that it seems like MLB will probably push towards a DH in both leagues over time, especially now that there is expanded interleague play starting next season.  He kept saying that owners want the DH because they do not want their investments hurt doing something that is not necessary for them.  Although, what if Albert Pujols trips over first base after hitting his first home run with the Angels, destroying his knee and missing the entire season?  Wouldn't we find it ridiculous if the Angels owner started saying that running the bases after a home run should be removed from the game?

This got me thinking about the DH and whether or not I would actually care if the NL started using it.  Then I had a brilliant idea:  at the beginning of the game, have a coin toss, the manager that calls it correctly gets to choose whether or not they will use the DH.  Before you laugh, think about the strategy for a second.

-If you are playing against a team with a dominant ace, say Justin Verlander, you may want to elect not to use the DH.  That way if it is close, the Tigers might have to pull him earlier than they would like in order to pinch hit.

-You can force a team to make a tough decision about their lineup.  Using the Tigers again, they may have to keep Fielder on the bench in order to have a stronger defense behind them.  Or if they do go with Cabrera at third base, a team could try and take advantage of a weakened infield.

-If a team has a pitcher with a little pop in their bat, they may want to elect to allow him to hit.  Zambrano (back in his good pitching days) comes to mind, or maybe Micah Owings.  I especially like the idea if a team has a monster hitter who really cannot field.

-There would also be major strategy changes in building a team.  Obviously there are not enough elite power hitters to go around for every team.  I think you would start to see teams employ more one-dimensional players who just crush balls or strikeout.

If Bud Selig decides to institute a league-wide designated-hitter, then I hope he stops by here to read this and use my coin-toss idea.

Hines Ward
The Steelers decided to part ways with everyone's favorite wide receiver, Hines Ward.  I honestly wish he would just retire, but instead he will go to another team and most likely play about half the season before being cut.

One thing I will never understand though is the way some Steelers fans never see any fault in Ward.  The guy has been voted the most dirty player in the league by his peers a few years in a row, yet Steelers fans say that he is just hard-nosed.  If a Raven played like him, they would hate that guy.  I guess that is the way it is with all teams though.

The other big question is whether or not Ward deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.  I am going to say yes.  I think he gets in, but it takes a few tries.

Greatest Games
On Mike and Mike this morning they were discussing Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game.  They were asking the question if that was the greatest single game ever.  They mentioned Don Larsen's perfect game in the World Series as probably the greatest performance in a game ever.  I actually cannot argue with this one.

Unfortunately, they started naming other great things and they immediately went outside of team sports.  They never once mentioned hockey.  I am sure there have been some amazing hockey game performances.  the one that came to mind immediately was Mario Lemieux's five goals in different ways (shorthanded, full strength, power play, penalty shot, and empty net).  I just think that one is cool.

I can imagine Gretzky had some amazing games as well.  Or what about some goalie performances?  It just boggles my mind that ESPN does not even try to pretend to care about hockey.

Current NHL Eastern standings with alternative points systems

Yesterday's anti-"loser point" blog post over at Holik on Hockey annoyed me, as it's just completely backwards. The post seems to imply that the NHL's introduction of a "loser point" distorts the league, and uses the relative standings of the Habs vs the Panthers as an example of the problems of the current system.

Thanks to nhltruestandings.com, I bashed this together to show the meaning of the loser point, as well as the change that would come from switching to a real three-point system (3 pts for a regulation win, 2 for an OT/SO win, 1 for OT/SO loss).

Current stats:

NYR 29 W, 4 OTW, 3 SW, 5 OTL / 54 GP, 77 pts, 1st
BOS 27 W, 1 OTW, 6 SW, 5 OTL / 53 GP, 70 pts, 2nd
FLA 23 W, 1 OTW, 3 SW, 11 OTL /55 GP, 65 pts, 3rd
PHI 26 W, 4 OTW, 1 SW, 7 OTL / 56 GP, 69 pts, 4th
PIT 23 W, 2 OTW, 9 SW, 5 OTL / 56 GP, 69 pts, 5th
NJ 19 W, 3 OTW, 3 SW, 4 OTL / 55 GP, 66 pts, 6th
OTT 19 W, 4 OTW, 5 SW, 8 OTL / 58 GP, 64 pts, 7th
TOR 22 W, 3 OTW, 3 SW, 6 OTL / 56 GP, 62 pts, 8th
--
WSH 22 W, 5 OTW, 1 SW, 5 OTL / 56 GP, 61 pts, 9th
WIN 20 W, 3 OTW, 3 SW, 6 OTL / 57 GP, 58 pts, 10th
MTL 19 W, 2 OTW, 2 SW, 9 OTL / 57 GP, 55 pts, 11th
TBL 17 W, 5 OTW, 2 SW, 6 OTL / 55 GP, 54 pts, 12th
NYI 16 W, 3 OTW, 4 SW, 8 OTL / 55 GP, 54 pts, 13th
BUF 17 W, 2 OTW, 5 SW, 6 OTL / 55 GP, 54 pts, 14th
CAR 19 W, 2 OTW, 0 SW, 11 OTL / 57 GP, 53 pts, 15th

No loser point (i.e. OTL discounted):

NYR 72 pts
BOS 65 pts
WSH 56 pts (+6)
PIT 64 pts (+1)
PHI 62 pts (-1)
NJ 62 pts
TOR 56 pts (+1)
OTT 56 pts (-1)
--
FLA 54 pts (-6)
WIN 52 pts
TBL 49 pts (+1)
BUF 48 pts (+2)
MTL 46 pts (-2)
NYI 46 pts (-1)
CAR 42 pts

Proteau system (3 pts reg. win, 2 pts OT win, 1 pt SO win)

NYR (87+8+3) 98 pts
BOS (81+2+6) 89 pts
WSH (66+10+1) 77 pts (+6)
PHI (78+8+1) 87 pts
PIT (69+8+1) 78 pts
TOR (66+6+3) 75 pts (+2)
FLA (69+2+3) 74 pts (-4)
OTT (57+8+5) 70 pts (-1)
--
WIN (60+6+3) 69 pts (+1)
NJ (57+6+3) 66 pts (-4)
MTL (57+4+2) 63 pts
TBL (51+10+2) 63 pts
CAR (57+4+0) 61 pts (+2)
BUF (51+4+5) 60 pts
NYI (48+6+4) 58 pts (-1)

Three-point system:

NYR (87+14+5) 106 pts
BOS (81+14+5) 100 pts
WSH (66+22+5) 93 pts (+6)
PIT (69+22+5) 96 pts (+1)
PHI (78+10+7) 95 pts (-1)
FLA (69+8+11) 88 pts (-3)
TOR (66+12+6) 84 pts (+1)
OTT (57+18+8) 83 pts (-1)
--
WIN (60+12+6) 78 pts (+1)
MTL (57+8+9) 74 pts (+1)
NJ (57+12+4) 73 pts (-6)
CAR (57+4+11) 72 pts (+3)
TBL (51+14+6) 71 pts (-1)
BUF (51+14+6) 71 pts
NYI (48+14+8) 70 pts (-2)

There's yet another alternative here, which gives you the standings without the shootout or "loser point" (i.e. pre-1999). In them, the Panthers are still a playoff team.

**

As you can see, no system we can adopt will make the Habs a playoff team, and in fact, only the in my mind slightly contrived "current system with no loser point" option will drop the Cats from the post-season. Florida's dramatic drop with the changes is a feature of the divisional system, not the points system. In fact, it's the New Jersey Devils who benefit most from the current system, as under either three-point system their inability to win in regulation would drop them below the top eight. Making an overtime or shootout win equal to a regulation win distorts the statistics far more than the "loser point".

As for parity, the 14th team in the East is currently five wins short of a playoff spot. In either three-point system, they're four wins out. The main difference would be that unlike in the current system, it would be easier to make headway in the standings by winning games in regulation. I've been saying for years that the problem with the current standings isn't the "loser point", it's the equivalence of SO/OT wins with regulation wins and the resulting three-point/two-point system.

I wonder if I could persuade my co-blogger to work out the same tables for the Western Conference? I'm thinking that Anaheim would be making better time up the charts with a system that actually rewards winning.

A real three-point system would give teams a real incentive to try to win games in regulation, and maintain parity in the standings while allowing teams to make headway or fall based on their play. This discussion has been going on ever since the shootout was introduced, and I still haven't heard any real arguments against the three-point system. Sheer conservatism has the NHL stuck with a pointless hybrid scoring system that makes the standings into a logjam.

Brad Marchand's hit on Sami Salo

Brad Marchand got a whopping five-game suspension for his hit on Sami Salo, and yes, when I say whopping, I'm being sarcastic. Marchand is a repeat offender, and he's either deliberately trying to injure Salo or playing so recklessly that he doesn't care if Salo gets injured. Here's the hit:

The video is labelled "hip check", which is nonsense. That's clipping, as defined in the rules and as explained by Brendan Shanahan in the suspension video. Some Bruins fans are, unsurprisingly, complaining about the suspension, insisting that it was a hip check and comparing it to some of the hits the Canucks threw in the finals. Here's the most common comparison:

The Hamhuis hit is a hip check, the Marchand hit is clipping. It's really as simple as that. I'd even opine that if you can't see the difference between Marchand's hip check on a player with the puck and Marchand's clip, you may need to try some mental exercises, like swapping the players' jerseys in your head as you watch the videos. Even if you thought that Marchand's hit was a hip check, Salo doesn't have the puck when he's hit.

For Bruins fans to believe that they're somehow being constantly and horribly mistreated by the league is perfectly understandable, as they're constantly exposed to the lunatic hallucinations of the most repulsive play-by-play announcer in hockey, Jack Edwards. NESN broadcasts don't define reality for the rest of us, though, and those of us outside the Bruin bubble might wonder at the fact that the suspension was only five games. That, combined with the incredible non-suspension of Milan Lucic after running Buffalo's Ryan Miller, makes one more inclined to think that on the contrary, the Bruins are getting specially lenient treatment from Brendan Shanahan. Overall, though, THN's Adam Proteau is almost certainly right in believing that the whole system is simply ineffective.

**

Whenever there's a suspension on a dirty hit, let alone talk about stricter enforcement of the rules, someone who may or may not play an imaginary piano on Hockey Night in Canada pipes up about how "they're trying to take hitting out of the game". In one sense, they're absolutely right: there are people trying to take hitting out of the game. Here's one:

USA Today: Boston Bruins Team Report

But coach Claude Julien knows Marchand can take it too far. And that's what happened Saturday, when his clipping major and game misconduct led to two goals that helped the Canucks post a 4-3 win over the Bruins.

Asked to assess whether he player stepped over the line on that hit, the coach said, "The last thing I want my players to do is get hit and then end up with a concussion, and they have to protect themselves. Whether it's the right way or the wrong way, it'll depend on how the league looks at it.

"I'd rather have a guy take a two-minute penalty than turn his back to the play, stand up straight, and then get his face knocked into the glass and be out for maybe the rest of the year with a concussion, or maybe end his career like (Marc) Savard. So I think we have to really look at those kinds of things.

"In my opinion, if guys start protecting themselves the way Marchand did, maybe guys will stop taking runs at other guys because that's the consequences you end up paying for taking runs at guys, too. Who knows where we're going to go with this. I know we're all trying hard to fix that part of the game, but it's still there, and it's still not fixed."

Wait, what? Taking runs at guys? Never mind that Salo is trying to play the puck, not "take a run" at anyone. Even ignoring that, what Julien's saying is that he's fine with his players clipping an opponent to avoid being hit. By no stretch of the imagination is Marchand trying to protect himself from a hit; he's trying to injure the other player. To bring up Matt Cooke's hit on Marc Savard as some kind of justification for Marchand's actions is borderline insane.

Overall, Julien's comment is the latest example of a bizarre line of thinking that seems to maintain that NHL players aren't allowed to deliver bodychecks on the ice. That's what he's saying: he's fine with his player making a dirty play and injuring an opponent to avoid being hit. This is the same philosophy that leads to the idiotic after-the-whistle scrums and fights when a "star player" gets hit: coaches and players who believe that no-one should be allowed to hit their players. Julien goes an extra mile in trying to justify a blatant attempt to injure another player.

It's especially telling that the suspension video includes an example of Sami Salo and Brad Marchand making contact in a similar situation, where Marchand seemingly becomes irate after a completely clean hit by Salo. Clearly he feels that Euro punk has no business hitting him, and teaches him a lesson next time. It's ludicrous to imply that Marchand was so frightened of a Sami Salo bodycheck that he was trying to turtle down to protect himself. On the contrary, I believe he deliberately set out to injure Salo for having the gall to throw a bodycheck on him. These are the only people trying to take hitting out of the game.

Just for added value, here's Brad Marchand doing exactly the same thing to a Sedin last year:

I suppose Claude Julien would argue that he was so frightened of being hit and concussed by one of the Sedin twins that he had to protect himself.

If you want me to express things in the heteronormative way that imaginary-piano players prefer, I'd say that Marchand needs to man up and take the hit, not try to hurt the other guy. It's rats like Marchand who draw the ire of people like Brian Burke, even if Burke's notions of the players policing the game are rubbish. Julien defending Marchand's actions is reprehensible, and putting forward the astonishing notion that he was trying to protect himself from Marc Savard's fate is ridiculous. Like his players, he seems to have no class at all. From retired veteran Mark Recchi badmouthing the Canucks after winning the final to the antics of young players like Lucic and Marchand, the Bruins are turning into an organization as repulsive as their TV announcer.

As far as I'm concerned!

2011 in review

Another year gone by. What did we get up to in 2011?

* We did our best to promote Goblin Camp, with a let's play kind of thing and a bunch of other posts. The game is still a going concern, and although there hasn't been an update for a while, I'm assured there will be. Eventually. Back in February, I put together really epic camp. The website is here; if you haven't tried it, do.

* There was an election in Finland, that led to no noticeable changes in Finnish politics. We have some really good-looking athletes, though.

* They killed 'Usāmah; I was skeptical about that being the death-blow to terrorism. Sadly, terrorism took a different turn shortly thereafter with the senseless attacks in Norway, the background to which we discussed. Steve Jobs also passed away, and we felt that his eulogies went too far.

* Throughout the year, we were alarmed by the police, as despite the death of "Osama", new threats to our precious bodily fluids continued to emerge. To combat these, we got everything from American police UAVs and the German police going all Gestapo on the German Pirate Party to the Finnish police hacking your phone. I also lost faith in Radley Balko, of The Agitator, for hithcing up with the Kremlin's propaganda machine, and my post on the topic inspired a TV show host to discuss my underwear.

* There was a lot of Minecraft. At the beginning of the year, I was still hanging around Epic Island, and we were impressed by music. We also weighed in on the Mojang - Zenimax legal battle.

* Apart from Minecraft, we liked Harms Way, but were disappointed by Mass Effect 2 being a sexist white supremacist game and by EA's various antics. The future looked bleak. In other media, we liked Detroit 1-8-7 and Sucker Punch, as well as the fantastic Robot.

* We all enjoyed some excellent music!

* Some memes were participated in, and scientology was addressed. We also started a series of posts on the Bible.

* There was, of course, a lot of hockey. At the very beginning of the year, the wrong guy was made MVP of the World Juniors, and later on Winnipeg got an NHL team. Sadly, our favorite NHL player called it quits. However, there were the world champs. In my preview, I had a good feeling about Team Finland, and even though Mats Sundin assured us it was impossible, Finland actually won. We were a little disappointed by the overblown coverage given to one particular goal, though.

Sadly, in the words of Jonathan Toews, the summer of 2011 was the worst ever for hockey. Not only did three NHL players pass away during the summer, but the plane carrying the KHL's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team crashed, killing the whole team. Earlier this month, the New York Times published a series of stories on Derek Boogaard, an NHL enforcer who died last summer. I highly recommend reading them.

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Maybe that's a bit of a sad note to end this post on, but as the new year comes around, it won't hurt to take a moment to remember those who aren't around to see it happen. Having said that, though, I'd like to thank everyone who read this sorry excuse for a blag over the past year, and wish you all a happy new year! See you in 2012.

The 2011 Brooks Orpik Hypocrisy Award

It's that time again: we award our blog's annual award for the most dishonest and hypocritical public statement made by a professional sportsperson. The selection is rather obviously biased toward the sports we follow most, and those tend to be ice hockey and F1.

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We already mentioned McLaren's ridiculous hypocrisy about team orders last year, citing the 2008 German Grand Prix, where then-McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen was ordered to let Lewis Hamilton pass him. Hamilton won the title that year, and in 2010, told the BBC that there are no team orders at McLaren, and:

"I personally would not want to win the championship other than by winning it fairly."

Hamilton won the 2008 world championship by one point. Arguably, had Heikki not let him past at Hockenheim, he wouldn't have won that race, and that might have cost him the championship. There is, of course, the additional matter of the incident at Singapore; had the results been amended and Alonso disqualified, as he should have been, Massa would be world champion.

I don't generally like these kinds of what ifs, but I like hypocrisy even less. So given that Lewis's championship stands on the Singapore incident and the team order at Hockenheim, we're still waiting for him to relinquish his world championship.

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Another excellent candidate would be Milan Lucic, whom I've previously maligned on this blog. Earlier this fall, he hit Sabres goaltender and reigning Olympic MVP Ryan Miller, who's been out since with a concussion.

Lucic still isn't much of a tough guy. While visiting NESN, Don Cherry called Milan Lucic "a disgrace to the Bruins" for hiding behind the linesmen in a fight:

It's priceless how uncomfortable Mike Milbury is. Last season, Lucic punched Atlanta's Freddy Meyer while he was being restrained by a linesman, keeping up the trend. In addition to being a dirty player in general and having been suspended by the league before, Lucic deliberately hit Miller and only got a two-minute penalty for charging. There's fairly wide consensus that he sohuld have got a five-minute major and a suspension, but NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan dropped the ball and, incredibly, said he believed Lucic's ridiculous lie that he didn't hit Miller on purpose.

As TSN's Dave Hodge said, "in the end, it was easier for Lucic to avoid a suspension than to avoid Miller because he tried to avoid a suspension." Because of his behavior in general and the incredible hypocrisy of claiming he tried to avoid Miller, it would be tempting to give this one to Lucic.

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Neither of them, however, win the award this year. In fact, this year the Brooks Orpik Hypocrisy Award returns to its roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And we're going after the cigarette-smoking Next One himself.

Over the past year, no single instance of ridiculous hypocrisy has struck us as more over-the-top and sanctimonious than Mario Lemieux's diatribe against fighting. You can read the whole thing here. He was supposedly so disgusted that the New York Islanders got into fights with his Pittsburgh Penguins that he contemplated leaving hockey. This from the man whose organization employs one of the dirtiest players in the NHL, Matt Cooke, and the guy whose back-breaking antics brought about this very award. Also, his team was tied for second place for most fighting majors in the NHL regular season that year. So apparently, in Super Mario's books, his team gets to fight as much as they like and go headhunting for their opponents' stars, but when others do it, it makes Baby Mario cry. Disgusting.

So the runaway winner this year is Mario Lemieux, of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

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The Brooks Orpik Hypocrisy Award is given by the writers of this blog to the athlete who makes the most preposterously hypocritical comment of the year.

Previous winners:

2010 - Lewis Hamilton, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, F1
2009 - Brooks Orpik, Pittsburgh Penguins, NHL

Jenny McCarthy and autism

Okay. I'm going to write about Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, but before I do, there's something I have to get off my chest first. Namely, Jenny McCarthy. She got the role of Allied superagent Tanya in C&C:RA3, thus stealing Kari Wührer's job.

This is a little hard for me, because Jenny McCarthy has a place in my heart. She's the first woman whose pictures I remember searching for on the Internet. It wasn't called googling then, because Google didn't exist yet. One particular picture from one of her Playboy shoots, which I can't post here but features her in a bath, is actually the first piece of pornography I ever remember seeing. So in my books, she's really hot.

So I was troubled, to say the least, to learn that she'd taken up the cause of Andrew Wakefield. As near as I can tell, Wakefield is a fraud, who was struck off the UK medical register for dishonest and irresponsible conduct. To make a long story short, he fabricated research results to prove that a vaccine was causing autism in children, planning to make millions from related patents he held. Unfortunately for him, the hoax was blown.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, he's managed to attract a rabid, cult-like following. Finnish readers can avail themselves of an excellent text on the topic, and English readers can consult the New York Times, who give us this soundbite:

Andrew Wakefield has become one of the most reviled doctors of his generation, blamed directly and indirectly, depending on the accuser, for irresponsibly starting a panic with tragic repercussions: vaccination rates so low that childhood diseases once all but eradicated here — whooping cough and measles, among them — have re-emerged, endangering young lives.

Wakefield has almost single-handedly revived the anti-vaccination movement. He and other anti-vaccination propagandists have managed to cause several moral panics against vaccinations, all of which have led to significant health problems. It's ironic that these anti-vaccination campaigns are providing us with some of the clearest evidence of the efficacy of vaccines. Similar concerns were raised earlier this year over Michele Bachmann's moronic comments on the HPV vaccine.

Despite this, Wakefield has created an anti-vaccination cult. Here's the New York Times again:

“To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one,” says J. B. Handley, co-founder of Generation Rescue, a group that disputes vaccine safety. “He’s a symbol of how all of us feel.”

Since losing his medical license, Wakefield has depended on his followers for financing and for the emotional scaffolding that allows him to believe himself a truth-teller when the majority of his peers consider him a menace to medicine. The fact that his fans have stood by him through his denunciation may seem surprising, but they may find it easier to ignore his critics than to reject their faith in him. After all, his is a rare voice of certainty in the face of a disease that is, at its core, mysterious.

My impression of Wakefield is that he's a ruthless profiteer exploiting the distress of parents who have autistic children. I use the word "cult" advisedly, because from where I'm standing, Wakefield is behaving like a classic cult leader. It's interesting to note that the journalist who led the way in exposing him as a fraud disagrees.

You could read Deer’s collected body of research on Wakefield and come away with the conviction that Wakefield was an underhanded profiteer who exploited parents and abused their disabled children with invasive tests for the sole purpose of capitalizing on parents’ fears about the M.M.R. vaccine. (He applied, for example, for a patent for a diagnostic kit that could test for measles virus in the intestines.) But Deer does not think Wakefield was solely motivated by profit. He compares him to the kind of religious leader who is a true believer but relies on the occasional use of smoke and mirrors to goose the faith of his followers. “He believed it was true,” Deer says of Wakefield’s theory of M.M.R., but he was also willing to stretch the truth to get more financing for more research. Deer theorizes that Wakefield’s maneuverings were all rationalized by his conviction that he was right: “He would prove it next time.”

Crusading academic or medical cult supremo, what's unquestionable is that Wakefield's stand on autism isn't currently supported by science. He's taken the conspiracy theory route, claiming that his detractors slander him, falsify research results and even lie about non-vaccinated children's deaths to discredit him because they're in the pay of a giant conspiracy by the medical industry. As Cracked.com has noted, pharmaceutical companies are one of the most popular "evil corporation" strawmen out there today. Even if that weren't the case, believing Wakefield's conspiracy theory requires the same leap of faith that all of this "the truth is being suppressed" nonsense demands: taking the word of one discredited researcher and his personal following over just about everyone else who's ever studied the topic. Sorry, Mr. Wakefield.

The foreword to Wakefield's book Callous Disregard was written by Jenny McCarthy, who's been very active in promoting Wakefield's views in the US.

McCarthy claims that her son had autism, but was cured by chelation therapy, a medical procedure that removes heavy metals from the body. Hockey fans might remember a goalie called Steve Passmore, who had chelation therapy to overcome severe heavy metal poisoning he had from drinking contaminated well water as a kid.

It's been claimed that mercury poisoning can trigger autism, although the scientific consensus is that this is untrue. Some experts have speculated that McCarthy's child may well have had Landau-Kleffner syndrome, a rare childhood consition often misdiagnosed as autism. Certainly McCarthy's claim that chelation therapy cured her son of autism flies in the face of medical science. In fact, chelation therapy is actually dangerous if used on patients who don't have heavy metal poisoning; it can cause hypocalcaemia; one 5-year-old autistic boy was killed by chelation therapy through hypocalcemia.

Despite the scientific evidence, McCarthy continues to promote the link between autism and vaccines. Her activities earned her James Randi's Pigasus Award for "the performer who fools the greatest number of people with the least effort in that twelve-month period". Earlier this year, Salon.com called her "a menace", and given that her continuing anti-vaccination campaigning is clearly having a detrimental effect on public health, it's hard to disagree.

McCarthy is unfazed. As recently as this past January, she defended her stance in a column for the Huffington Post, in which she claimed the decisive debunking of Wakefield's work was "one dubious reporter's allegations", and appealed to her authority as a mother. In her worldview, her conviction that her knowledge as a mother, and the determination of innumerable parents of autistic children to find someone to blame for their child's condition, trumps medical research. That's a truly monstrous idea.

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So you see my problem. I think she's gorgeous, and I remember seeing her smoking hot Playboy pictorial at an impressionable age, but she really is a menace to children's health care. I don't imagine that what I post in this blog makes the least bit of difference to how the world works, but as a point of personal ethics, I'd feel it would be wrong of me to post pictures of her online without saying something about her misguided, downright dangerous personal crusade against science. She's wrong, and should realize that what she's doing is hurting and even killing children by persuading their parents to leave them unvaccinated.

She's still hot. I just wish she'd actually think about the children, and maybe a little about science. Then I could enjoy pictures like this one with a clear conscience.

Jari Kurri's number

Now that the NHL premiere is in Helsinki, hockey fans in North America can once again see Hartwall Areena, the current home of six-time Finnish league champions Jokerit. NHL.com ran a couple of stories over the past week, and here's an excerpt from one:

NHL.com: Selanne adored as a national hero in Finland

Jari Kurri's No. 17 hangs from the rafters at Hartwall. Twice in fact -- once for his exploits with Jokerit and the other for his contributions to Suomi with the national team. Kurri was the first Finnish player to become an NHL legend, and Selanne is the second and his No. 8 will surely be there soon after he retires.

The funny detail is that while it's true that Jari Kurri used the jersey number 17 in the NHL and in the national team, he never used that number in Jokerit. Before his NHL career, he used #11, and during the 1994-95 lockout, he wore #71. Speaking as a lifelong Jokerit fan, it's just stupid that they've retired the number 17 for Jari, who never wore it in Jokerit.

An even more questionable retirement is Esa Tikkanen's #5. Tikkanen is a great player and a five-time Stanley Cup champion, but he only ever played 43 career games for Jokerit. In fact, his junior team was next-door HIFK, an elite Swedish-language yachting club. By rights, that's where his number should be.

Confusingly, while Tikkanen wore #10 in the NHL and #5 in Jokerit, Jokerit chose to retire his SM-liiga number, but in Jari's case, they left his SM-liiga number and retired his NHL number. That just doesn't make sense.

The worst summer ever for hockey

According to his Twitter account, when THN writer Adam Proteau broke the news of the plane crash that killed the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team to Chicago's Jonathan Toews, Toews said: "This is the worst summer ever for hockey."

It's hard to disagree. On May 13, New York Rangers enforcer Derek Boogaard was found dead in his apartment in Minneapolis. He hadn't been able to play since December 2010 due to a concussion, and died accidentally from a combination of oxycodone and alcohol.

On August 15, Winnipeg Jets forward Rick Rypien was likewise found dead in his home. After a ten-year battle with depression, Rypien had committed suicide.

Just a few weeks later, former NHL enforcer Wade Belak was found dead. According to the Star, he had hanged himself.

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As if all this wasn't enough, this Wednesday the Yak-42 passenger jet carrying the KHL's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team crashed on takeoff, killing the entire team except one forward, Alexander Galimov, who was in critical condition at the time of writing.

This was the third plane crash to hit a major hockey team. On February 13th, 1975, a plane carrying Frölunda players crashed near Gävle in Sweden, leaving seven players injured. In 1950, a Li-2 transport plane crashed near Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union, killing the whole Soviet Air Force hockey team.

Among the dead in Wednesday's crash are one of the four first Russian players to ever win the Stanley Cup, assistant coach Alexander Karpovtsev, also a 1993 world champion.

Coach Brad McCrimmon, a Stanley Cup winner with the Calgary Flames.

2005 world champion and 2006 Stanley Cup champion with the Carolina Hurricanes, Josef Vašíček.

2006 Olympic gold medalist and world champion Stefan Liv.

2010 world champion and two-time inline hockey world champion Karel Rachůnek.

2010 world champion Jan Marek.

2000 Lady Byng Memorial Trophy winner Pavol Demitra.

2003 Stanley Cup finalist and NHL veteran Ruslan Salei.

NHL veteran Kārlis Skrastiņš.

32 other players, coaches, staff and airline crew also died in the accident.

I was planning on writing a season preview for the NHL, but I ended up having to write this. This has to be the most tragic off-season and beginning of the new season ever in hockey. It's simply terrible how many people have died. Our thoughts and condolences are with the nearest and dearest of everyone who passed away.

Sports Silliness

The last few days have provided some funny sports stuff.  Let us take a look at a few of them.

Haha, very classy Rice!  Probably the only thing I will remember about them all season.

World-class athlete...running is hard!



Seriously, what the hell is Morgan thinking?  Does he really want a piece of Pujols?  That man would destroy him.  Also, I would love to see Fielder and Pujols fight.  Plus, if Morgan was so serious about fighting, how is it that Prince Fielder is able to lightly jog run full speed over to grab Morgan?  That was one of those:  "oh shit, I hope someone grabs before I get my ass beat."

And then Morgan decides to go to twitter...

Calling Albert Pujols a woman...wow.  Very clever Nyjer!  I also see that spelling is kicking your ass, especially "where vs. we're."  What a joke...



Things I learned from the Sidney Crosby press conference:
-His brain is like a Ferrari
-The etymology of the word concussion...it comes from Latin!
-Christmas is a celebration
-90% is better than 89%
-Sid needs to buy polo shirts a size bigger...he looked like he was about to explode out of that and start screaming "SID ANGRY!!! SID SMASH!!"
-According to the ladies, Sid is still sexy.
-Vestibular perception
-Sid is not retiring.  Or at least, do not bet on that.

Wow, just wow...these uniforms look like something you would see in Grant Morrison's Invisible.

The NHL is back in Winnipeg

TSN: TRUE NORTH BUYS THRASHERS, SET TO MOVE TEAM TO WINNIPEG

Fifteen years after the departure of the Jets, the city of Winnipeg has arrived at a triumphant moment that many thought would never come.

NHL hockey is returning to the Manitoba capital.

The True North Sports and Entertainment group announced on Tuesday that they have completed a deal to purchase the Atlanta Thrashers and move them to Winnipeg in time for the 2011-12 season.

The whole mythology that's grown up in Canada about NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is laughable, and it should really be properly documented for posterity. There seems to be a huge bunch of people who genuinely believe that he's evil, and that he hates Canada and hockey. In this lunatic view, the reason that, say, the Jets moved to Phoenix is because Bettman hates Canada. In their view, this relocation is a victory for Canada, because Bettman's evil plans have been foiled and another franchise is moving to Canada, where hockey "belongs".

What few people seem to want to remember is that the Winnipeg Jets became the Phoenix Coyotes because they couldn't make the franchise work in Winnipeg. Here's a snippet from the TSN article:

The team will play out of the MTS Centre, which opened in 2004 and has a capacity of just over 15,000 seats.

With a population of 762,600, Winnipeg will be the smallest market among the 30 NHL cities.

It's also the smallest arena. It remains to be seen if the new Winnipeg franchise is going to be any more successful than the previous one. There doesn't really seem to be any reason why it would be.

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Another thing that gets lost in the conversation is the overall reason why hockey franchises have been established in the southern parts of the US in the first place: only by bringing hockey to new markets will the sport expand. Hockey in California has been a success, with Anaheim bringing the Cup home and the Sharks strong contenders. On the other seaboard, Tampa made a great run for the Cup this year and already have one under their belt. Dallas's ownership situation is currently in flux, but when it's all worked out, there's another strong "southern" team with a Cup win.

By being in new markets and succeeding there, these teams are doing what no franchise in Canada ever can: bringing hockey to a whole new audience and broadening the game's markets. There's value in that for the whole hockey community, which the league recognizes in its franchise location policy that Bettman implements. That Canadian fans won't recognize this just speaks to the ridiculous parochialism that is Canadian hockey culture. The whole notion that hockey "belongs" somewhere is moronic in itself, but placing this kind of jingoism over a sensible market strategy is just madness.

Let me make clear that I'm not against relocating teams to Canada. However, I'm also not against relocating teams to the US either, or even Mexico if someone wants to give it a shot. It's a free market, so anyone who wants to put their money on the line, goes through the proper motions and has some kind of sensible plan is, in my opinion, more than welcome to buy an existing franchise and move it somewhere else.

A few years back the Islanders' owner was teasing the idea that the Isles would move to Kansas City, which has long been in contention for a new franchise. As it was, the move was likely just a PR strategy designed to get the city of Long Island to invest in a new arena. Given the Isles' abysmally low attendance record, though, I'm not sure it wouldn't actually be a really good idea to move. If I'm not wrong, that would be the first time a Cup-winning team in the modern era relocated after the win; the Montréal Maroons tried to relocate after their win but it didn't work out. The Maroons, by the way, are also the only Cup-winning modern team to become defunct.

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As a final point, there's a push to have the Thrashers renamed the Jets when they land in Winnipeg. I have to say that I strongly dislike the idea, because the Jets franchise is still around; it's just called the Coyotes now. Sure, we've had two separate franchises both called the Ottawa Senators, but they were separated by over half a century. As the Thrashers were named after the state bird of Georgia, a name change seems reasonable enough, but really, in my opinion they should come up with their own name.

At the very least, it's going to be weird if there's a Winnipeg Jets franchise in Winnipeg, but the old Winnipeg Jets' retired numbers are in Phoenix. It's not the same franchise, so it shouldn't have the same name. It's that simple!

This isn't the first time Atlanta has lost an NHL team; in 1980, the Atlanta Flames relocated to Calgary, where they remain today. Incidentally, that team apparently took its name from when Sherman burned Atlanta; I'm not sure what was burned in Calgary. Calgary was a much smaller market than Atlanta, but the Flames' financial situation in Atlanta had been very poor and their lack of a TV contract had made it very hard for them to compete with the other teams in town.

Relocation isn't always a great success, though, even when it's a move north: the Kansas City Scouts only spent six seasons as the Colorado Rockies until relocating a second time to New Jersey. As I said, I don't see any compelling reasons why the new Winnipeg franchise would be any more successful than the old one, so even though the deal is for 15 years, we'll wait and see.

World champions 2011

Here's some pictures I took of the world championship celebrations in Helsinki on Monday. Unlike most pictures on my blog, these ones I actually took myself, so they're covered by the same CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license as the text. Enjoy!

Even Helsinki's biggest department store got in on the act:

The flood of people started on Aleksanterinkatu...

...watched over by black helicopters:

For any foreign readers, I should explain that Finnish people don't do this kind of thing. In my lifetime, I only remember two other times like this: the previous world championship in 1995 and when GWAR won the Eurovision Song Contest.

They must have done pretty well on those Finnish flags.

Like I said, this isn't exactly normal for us. There were people on top of tram stops:

Kappeli restaurant:

Kauppahalli:

Traffic signs:

And traffic lights!

You could easily pass this one off as a picture from a revolution in Helsinki.

We're being told that there were nearly 100,000 people present.

Despite appearances, I don't think that's actually a neo-Nazi rally on top of a collapsing roof.

There were fireworks, somewhat pointless in the bright sunlight...

...which did cover the Orthodox cathedral in St. Paulesque smoke.

Even the crane operator got in on the celebrations.

And here it is: the world championship trophy. That's as good a look at it as we got!

And finally, on what could be construed as a nauseatingly patriotic note, a powered paraglider. It isn't; that just happens to be a perfect picture to end this post with.