Winter Classic 2009: Solid, But I Liked Last Year

I tuned in for periods 2 and 3 of today’s NHL Winter Classic game, which saw Chicago get destroyed by the Red Wings in a comeback victory. (The Red Wings are always pulling this garbage against my favorite teams. Jagoffs.) The game didn’t have quite the finish that last year did, and I naturally wasn’t as invested without the Pens playing, but the ‘Hawks have long been my second-favorite team (years before I had ever thought of going to school in Chicago) and so it was good to see the game played just a mile up the road from our place.

In any event, I’m mad geeked about the fact that the Winter Classic is turning into the first hockey success story in years. This year gets an A for weather and an A for the matchup and team effort, but a B- overall because the Penguins weren’t playing and Detroit won. Those are both ridiculous reasons to downgrade the game, but then this blog exists at my beck and call, so you’re out of luck in your efforts to hate on my conclusion.

Bonus Sarah Palin note: I meant to write during the election that while the G.O.P., the American populace and the human race didn’t get much out of the idea of hockey mom Sarah Palin as VP, the NHL certainly did: For the first time in a nation where no-talent sportswriters have made hockey the go-to sport of ridicule, the same voters who treat sports that aren’t baseball or football as pastimes for gay foreign terrorists were defending hockey with all their American-purist might.

While I’m glad Palin has turkey-trotted off the national stage for now, I really miss that brief period when even Southern rednecks were touting hockey as a game played by Real Americans™.

And now, back to obscurity.