Flashback: Stortini vs. Sarich

Because I need a good laugh today and maybe you do too.

The problem with my NHL/MLB teams is...

...that this time of year I can get walloped with a double let-down in twelve hours as easy as that.

It got me thinking about the cycle of the seasons though. There's something about difficult losses that feels just that much worse at the beginning or end of a season. The middle is when all might still be possible, even more so than the beginning, because at least in the middle you've settled in with the team, you know them, and you can tell yourself wonderfully convincing stories about how they'll bounce back tomorrow. At the beginning of the year, early catastrophe can seem like a portent of the season to come, quite irrationally.

And at the end, late catastrophes leave almost no wiggle room for hope. Almost.

Opening Day or more of the same?

I settled in today to watch the Red Sox/A's season opener from Japan on ESPN, and discovered I'm rusty on watching baseball. I'm timing trips for coffee and meals badly, and having trouble keeping track of outs. Thanks, hockey.

But before I succumbed to any level of disorientation, it became surprisingly easy to regain my bearings. After all, the announcers kept going on and on about some player named Crosby, and the game couldn't be decided in a regulation frame.

Now this, I know.

Goilers, GoSox.

Fasten your seat belts

I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I'm not sure if the Oil will kill me or make me stronger. Maybe it will be a wash. My blood pressure and anxiety, I'm certain have gone up. But I've had so much nervous energy I've taken up running again. My beer consumption has also gone up. But my nervous eating is causing me to nosh a lot more fruit and veggie pieces during games.

I have a tupper full of red and green veggies and fruit for tonight, so I will be consuming my enemy symbolically.

Let's hope the NHL's youngest Sam Gagner, Sweatercoat, Dyle, and the rest of the boys can beat the Minnesota Christmas Elves with more calm than I think I'll be capable of all day. I'm toying with liveblogging, but that might interfere with beer.

Steve Holt!

I've never been a Phaneuf fan and tend to assume the worst of him, but this was hilariously unexpected. You tell me: at about 0:59 of this clip (sorry about the quality, best I could find) of last night's short-handed goal, is he pulling a Steve Holt and shouting "Phaneuf!"?




I say yes.

Is this a parody? I can't tell.

This is either a brilliant parody of Crosby-mania, or um, wow.



Make no mistake, I'm not bashing The Kid. Despite having every reason to have malfunctioned impressively by now (youth, fame, money, fawning attention beyond Pierre Macguire) he seems to have kept a solid head on his shoulders. I'm just sad the Cult of Crosby is distracting from the simple joy of watching a really talented kid play.

I leave for ten days and what happens?

Shamefully and miserably, I have been utterly absent from the Oilogosphere for ten days: no reading, posting, or commenting, and given what's been going down in those last ten days I have no hope of catching up, other than tipping my cap to Stan Weir and his prolific friend lowetide.

Have I been hiding under the couch, unable even to watch or think about the deranged playoff hopes of our hockey daycare club? Well, yes, mentally, but I have been watching games, and screaming and crying, and despite my femaleness, cursing like a sailor fairly continuously. All other waking hours, I had a very poorly timed dissertation deadline to meet and had to go actually do the writing I was supposed to be doing .

But um, how about dem Oilers? They seem pretty determined to kill us with hope, no?

Also, screw having Hemsky or Pisani's lovechild. I want to surrogate for theirs.

I'll say it: The Kids are Alright

The last couple games have been of the sort that were fun to watch and hard to blog. They weren't snarkable or moan-able catastrophes, nor were they masterpieces of inspirational puck-handling wonderment either. They were what they were: a bunch of kids working really hard, making mistakes, and recovering well, and I feel better about the longterm prospects of this team than I have in quite awhile. Cogliano is looking sharper than he has all season, and everyone looked like they're actually having fun--which I suspect is a key to success for this team. We'll see what tonight brings, but I'm feeling optimistic that I won't be hiding my face in the sofa cushions for more than 40% of our remaining games. Which is downright awesome compared to quite recently.

There has to be a silver lining somewhere

Well, we were pwned last night.

You know a game isn't going well when the announcers keep saying desperately cheerily, like promising a treat to a kid after he gets stitches, "And now we go downstairs to Gene Principe!" (And how it rapidly became clear Gagner was both the first and last active player interview he'd get that night.)

It's also ominous that opposing players seem to be starting to find Stortini as comical as I do. He was having a hard time getting his fight invites taken seriously last night, methinks.

However, in the midst of the trainwreck that was last night, let us remember that it was fantastic to see Shawn Horcoff come in and give an interview in good spirits and great optimism about his shoulder. His prognosis seemed to amount to "better than ever" and I'll sure take that.

Gee, Thanks.

(Go ahead and click the image for high-resolution misery if you must)

Behold the cover of the shopNHL.com catalog that landed in our mailbox yesterday. The soft Northern light, the disconsolate, warmly-clad youth, staring hollowly across the ice, haunted by a giant spectral Anaheim doofus--who shall not be named--brandishing a Cup mockingly.

This could be taking place almost anywhere in NHL-land, right?

Sidney CROSBY is playing RIGHT NOW!

Oh and some kid, Sam Gagner, friend of Dyle Bridziak, won NHL Rookie of the Month.

The Edmonton Oilers, who are not the Pittsburgh Penguins, are playing Nashville (Also not Pittsburgh) tonight.

But I think we can agree the real story tonight is Crosby. The Tampa broadcasters are breathless as they incant Crosby over and over again. And again. Say it with me. Crosby. There he is. Doesn't that just feel better? Oh yeah.

All snark aside, welcome back sincerely, Sid the Kid. Glad to see the leg looks pretty sound. Stay away from Pierre Mcguire. And maybe the rest of the sports media.

Things no one knew

Welcome to the Oilers' newest player, Dyle Bridziak. Mr. Bridziak did not play so awesome tonight, but thankfully that was not necessary for our exciting overtime win. The Oilers will never be boring, I suppose. Just ask Sam " ref killer" Gagner.

Flu night in Texas meets Hockey Night in Canada

Not a long post, as I've been down for the count with the flu since Wednesday* so I'm totally out of the loop--though I was quite happy to hear that the win I thought I saw Thurs night wasn't just part of my fever--but I wanted to share three things.

1.) Alert reader Abby sent me a link to deadspin's snuff pictures of the Penguins' zamboni from last Saturday, which is more impressive carnage than I would have imagined (though still NOT an explosion, I hasten to remind you).

2.) The same Penguins' announcers who last week claimed Crosby was powered by some sort of internal motor, today declared hockey to be "The fastest non-motorized team sport in the world." Is this because his Crosbiness is still out?

3.) Even with my total flu deafness and a fog of various medications, I can still tell Don Cherry is yelling, and oh, how I wish he would stop.



*I know I'm doing poorly when I can't even read my way around the Oilogosphere from my sickbed...