Posts Tagged Under ‘Sports’

Steelers: At Least the Other Guy Is Pittsburgh Too

I’m reserving judgment on how I feel about this potential Steelers sale until I know more. But whoa, big changes potentially ahead.

Too Big, Too Experienced, Too Osgooded

What a bummer. They went down fighting to the very final seconds–I did the two-handed hair-grab and futile stare at the sky as the puck rolled past Osgood and across the goal mouth–but Detroit has just been too overwhelming this series. I haven’t seen stifling defense like that since the New Jersey trap era.

Props to you, Penguins, for a mad phat season and for never giving up. And please re-sign Brooks Orpik and anybody else you can. Orpik played his ass off and we’ll miss anybody else who goes.

Also, Zetterberg for the Conn Smythe is ridiculous. I would have chosen Osgood, Franzen, Holstrom or Lidstrom first.

Now back to our regularly scheduled non-sports blogging until football season rolls around.

Game Six. What.

You know, I was all set to write the Pens’ obituary, and yet I should not have given up on those Frenchies Maxime and Marc-André. And, of course, Sykora with calling the goal. The whole thing was the shiznit.

Now they need to avoid coming back and blowing Game 6 by 8-0 or something.

And sorry to my new neighbors for bringing the celebratory ruckus.

Slow Clap For This Man For Keeping The Penguins Alive Single-Handedly

I can barely even watch this, dudes. There are a few too many spectacular saves for comfort.

Pens Back in Business

The crowd enthusiasm coming through tonight was amazing. I wanted to jump through my TV screen and beat up an octopus.

Settled (Mostly) in Chicago

We’re up in the new place after our three-leg, two-vehicle, 921-mile journey out to Illinois. Things are mostly unpacked, but more than anything I’m glad the moving part is over.

I managed just fine with the U-Haul truck. The testosterone highlight of the trip for me was when one of the movers asked me, “Who backed that [truck] in? You? Nice job,” when looking at the narrow alley behind our building. (That was without any guidance, thank you. I am pure steel.) About an hour later another of the tenants had to move her car out of the garage, requiring me to move the truck. I drove it down an alley nearby, thinking I could just drive straight through, but instead spent ten minutes turning the thing Austin-Powers style around a corner before I got out. Thus ended my truck-driving high.

While I now feel good about my own Teamster skills, I don’t get how U-Haul can rent bigger trucks than that one to the general public. A 26-foot moving van? A dude was driving one this weekend through Lakeview–he took a corner too widely, almost hit a bus, then had to back up in the middle of a six-way intersection. I thought cool over-one’s-head-on-the-road stuff like that is only supposed to happen in Third-World countries and New York City’s Chinatown-bus system.

Overall it was an unusually smooth move. The only things that broke were a cat-food container that fell out while I was unloading some extra boxes and a one-inch refrigerator magnet. I’m a little freaked out by how little went wrong. Apparently my payback has been the two games in Detroit. The less said about those, the better.

3-0!

One more and it’s on to Detroit. (Sorry, Kuper, but things just aren’t looking good for your boys.)

Penguins-Flyers Game 2

Back for the second time this weekend:

• As much as I love seeing a Penguins goal, watching the Flyers get angry and frustrated is even more rewarding.
• I can see now that neither team is going to physically overpower the other on the way to victory, and that the series is really going to turn on turnovers and injuries. (How much does Philly miss Kimmo Timonen right now?) While they have some bruisers, I hadn’t thought of the Penguins as a roster-wide band of tough guys, but they’re all hanging right in there with one of the league’s biggest and toughest rosters.
• I have a new respect for Tyler Kennedy after watching him completely whale on Scott Upshall. It’s rare to see a guy throwing punches that fast in an NHL fight.
• Both Biron and Fleury are playing on some crazy, ethereal-goaltending tip.
• It was a little less ethereal, though, when Biron got away with pulling a goal back out of the net.
• Ian Altenbaugh: I agree.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Penguins-Flyers Game 1

Ron Cook is being a little too optimistic in his Post-Gazette column today, but I agree it was a dominant performance by the Pens last night. I have to give it up to Evgeni Malkin, who not only had two goals (including that blistering slap-shot from about ten feet) but put a big hit on Braydon Coburn and jumped right in when Derian Hatcher tried to get a fight going. The guy is unquestionably the Penguins’ playoff MVP and seems only to be improving. It’s still par for the Flyers course to lose Game 1 in these playoffs, so we’ll see.

An odd moment of the night was when one of the announcers was talking about RJ Umberger growing up in Pittsburgh in the ’80s. “Growing up around here in Pittsburgh, idolizing Mario Lemieux in Lemieux’s greatest days — man, it’s unimaginable what that would be like.” Yes, what Pittsburgh native between the ages of 20 and 35 could ever imagine what it would be like to live in such a fantasy land.

Hillary, Penguins, Romantic Comedies, Fruit, Moving

It’s been a while since something substantive. So here you go:

• Hillary’s defeat in Indiana and North Carolina is, as previously mentioned, a Pyrrhic victory for the Obama camp. I can’t predict if she’ll quit early–I personally think she won’t, and will ride it out to the convention’s bitter end–but it almost doesn’t matter. Things that happen early in the campaign are dug up and kept around until the end–anyone remember “I voted for it before I voted against it?”–and Hillary has beaten up enough on Obama already that there’s little left unsaid. I do think McCain’s proxies will bring back the secret-Muslim thing because it’ll play a lot better with Republicans in the sticks than it has so far with Democrats. Despite Hillary’s “He’s not a Muslim, as far as I know,” statement, the Indonesian childhood and Kenya photo really haven’t been hammered too much. The funny thing about that will be that Obama’s taken so much flack for being too close to a Christian pastor, and now he’s about to be hit for not even being Christian. The fun of election season!
• I think Hillary’s surprise effect on Obama was that he came into the race expecting the negative stuff to come out only in the general-election phase, and that he could actually use the negativity against the Republicans. (”Same old G.O.P. character-assassination shit while they let the country die,” etc. etc.) But then when Hillary started throwing kitchen sinks, he couldn’t very well take the line that, “This party is no good for you; look how negative they are.”
• For people who liked my Crosby piece, or people who didn’t, here’s what I think about the series:
  1. I like the offense’s chances against Biron. Biron has faced significantly more shots–an average of 32.91 shots per game in the playoffs, vs. Fleury’s 28.44 average–but he hasn’t played against a team with as much line depth as the Pens. Washington and Montreal both have great players, but not as much consistency across multiple lines. Eventually a goalie is going to get weary of being sprayed with pucks, and after two rounds that might be now.
  2. Kris Letang, Georges Laraque and Brooks Orpik are going to be the big factor in beating up (perhaps literally) Derian Hatcher and protecting Crosby and Malkin. I think the Flyers might have things in toughness, though definitely not in talent. (Though I would take Briere on Pittsburgh anyday.) Big Georges (that’s singular), you are the man, but please tell your web guy that your site needs an update reflecting the six years since the 2001-02 season.
  3. I thought about buying tickets to a game in Philly, being that it’s so close, but then I do value my life. Seriously, Philadelphians: I have never not picked up an incredibly angry vibe while traveling through your town. You don’t have to be stuck on how you became a has-been town once the 1770s ended. People call Pittsburgh a has-been town all the time, but you don’t see us throwing batteries and snowballs. (Except at Dave Parker.) For real: it’s time to find a new, friendlier identity.

• Today the Mrs. went to see Made of Honor, starring Lucius Vorenus and Dr. Octagon of “Grey’s Anatomy”. Fortunately I had to work, so I was spared the trip. I was later informed that the movie was a great example of what I hate most about romantic comedies: the innocent victim.

  The innocent victim is exactly what he (usually a he) sounds like: somebody who does absolutely nothing wrong, but gets dumped (often at the altar!) simply because he’s not the star. Lucius Vorenus’ character was apparently smart, handsome, successful, athletic and considerate, yet he still got dumped right in the middle of his vows so some reluctant lurker could come along and steal the show. Then the movie ends, and we’re supposed to be happy that some homewrecker ran roughshod over the type of dependable dude who keeps this great nation running. (This MSNBC article does a good job of illustrating this.) “But he just wasn’t right for her,” the ladies are saying. So? How do you know he realized that? Even Patrick Dempsey himself played this role, in Sweet Home Alabama (ugh). Other famous examples are Bill Paxton in Sleepless in Seattle and that other “Grey’s Anatomy” dude playing a weird Italian guy in The Wedding Planner (a really, really, really awful movie). Life is unfair, but these movies want us to cheer when this is demonstrated to us yet again. F that.

• And to any dudes who won’t accompany the ladies to these movies because it’s “gay”: have fun dying alone.
• Fruits, in descending order of great-tastingness:
  1. Watermelon
  2. Cherry
  3. Blueberry
  4. Grape
  5. Apple
  6. Pear
  7. Orange
• Finally, I’ve buried the lede here, but we’re moving to Chicago in two weeks. I’ll be there this summer before Michigan, then plan to find a job there again in 2010 after graduation. I forgot to inform the readership that I will once again be based in the land of Vienna Beef and US Cellular Field. Word to Sean Connery in The Untouchables.

Hockey Piece on Slate

My piece on Sidney Crosby and hockey’s TV fix just posted today to Slate. Go check it out if you’re into the NHL, and even if you’re not, there’s stuff in there for you too.

87 Is the Loneliest Number

Bring on the Rangers

NHL.com informs me that the Flyers just won Game 7 over the Capitals in overtime tonight, 3-2. I had to check that online because the game is inexplicably blacked out here in DC. It was a home game, so maybe it didn’t sell out. But I can’t find any explanation online, so if I were a Capitals fan, I would sure be mad pissed.

What really matters is the Penguins defeating the Rangers, and particularly fashion maven Sean Avery. I’ve watched this about ten times and still can’t believe your boy thought to do what he did:

Avery already has a history with Crosby, too.

I can’t think of some clever fashion-industry diss on Avery, but I’m sure one is out there somewhere — the web is a large place. Go Pens!

One More Business-School-Weekend Tale

Here’s a good one for all my NU buds:

One of the career panel discussions featuring Michigan alums had a panelist who had attended the University of Wisconsin as an undergrad. When they opened the panel up for questions, I asked another panelist what he thought about the consulting vs. general management track at Ross, then added a jokey question for the Wisconsin dude in which I asked, as a fellow Big Ten undergrad dealing with similar issues, how it felt to be in a conflicted football-fan state for grad school. My question got a chuckle from the panel and the audience, prompting the panelist to ask me which Big Ten school I attended for undergrad. When I answered “Northwestern”, the whole room laughed at me and at least one dude shouted, “That doesn’t count.”

Go ‘Cats!

Pens - Sens Game 1 and Other Playoff Predictions

4-0 = the shiz.

• That goal by Petr Sykora to go up 2-0 gets eight phats for pure two-on-one perfect-shot goodness.
  
  
• Marc-André Fleury’s performance gets fourteen phats.
  



• Multiple fights? Surprising!
• Martin Gerber gives up too many rebounds. Ray Emery mostly beats people up, so his goaltending value is dubious, but he does know how to keep the puck under control. And Gerber has a plain goalie mask: unless you’re Dominik Hasek, that’s a recipe for failure. This sure isn’t the Stanley Cup finals team from last year.

And now for my quick predictions:

Eastern Conference
Pittsburgh-Ottawa: 4-1 Penguins

Montreal-Boston: 4-2 Canadiens

Washington-Philadelphia: 4-3 Flyers

New York-New Jersey: 4-0 Rangers (sadly)

Western Conference (which admittedly I barely follow)
Detroit-Nashville: 4-1 Red Wings

San Jose-Calgary: 4-3 Flames

Colorado-Minnesota: 4-2 Avalanche

Anaheim-Dallas: 4-3 Ducks

Olympic Protests

The Olympic torch relay has already been disrupted in two countries, first by Reporters Without Borders in Greece and now by assorted Tibetan-rights protesters in London. I also saw a big group of protesters chanting outside the Chinese embassy on Saturday. This news is the hotness.

My uncle worked as a major planner on two Olympic torch relays, so I feel for his counterpart in this Olympics who must be flipping out right now. But this choreographed parade of Olympic-torch happiness is just like the 2008 Olympic organizing effort itself: a papering over of serious issues that directly contradict the Olympic brotherhood-of-mannish spirit. As a result, I think it’s great to see these real problems brought to the forefront at the same time that China and the world that’s participating in its Games are going with the “We love everything!” theme.

I worked at the 2002 Olympics, and I think the Olympics are great, but being there you really get a sense of just how over-the-top the whole thing can become. There’s an amazing amount of money flying around; it’s good that this is used to celebrate humanity coming together, but it’s a bummer that none of it is used to recognize the challenges we need to fix. If protests have to get this into people’s headz, then bring it.