Next Up, Wilt!

Rather than watch that debacle of a national title game, I decided to watch some hockey.

It has been a pretty good game so far, if you're a Sharks fan, and San Jose is up 6-1 at the second intermission.

What isn't good is the deification of Joe Thornton. Apparently Joe's goal in the second gave him 999 points for the career, almost at the mythical 1,000.

After listening to how great a feat it was for half a period I could only ask myself one question. "Has anyone done more meaningless scoring than Joe Thornton outside of Hugh Hefner?"

Seriously, the highlight reel of big Joe goals in December is long. The highlight reel of Joe's playoff heroics is actually a snuff film that someone is trying to hide behind a fake label.

San Jose has been one of the most disappointing teams in recent playoff memory, melting down repeatedly as a high seed. Bringing Joe over from the Bruins was supposed to solve all that. Turns out San Jose made a mark on Joe, not the other way around.

I put this milestone in the same category as Drew Bledsoe being 9th on the all time passer list, Steve DeBerg being high on the wins/TD list or sabermetrics in general. Yes I see your numbers. They lie. My eyes tell me all I need to know and I'd happily trade all 999 of those points for one decent play in the finals.

Worlds Greatest FAIL

You've got to hand it Gary Bettman. Nobody can turn gold into lead any faster than he can.

Given a gift opportunity to do the NHL a solid by making sure the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes ended up in, say, Winnipeg, Hartford, Toronto 2, Wisconsin, Portland, etc. he decided to find a group of buyers who would contractually bind themselves to staying in Arizona until the end of their building lease. No early outs.

Contraction would have been a better option than this. If Wayne Gretzky couldn't find a way to make the team stable with his name power and a few good seasons mixed in, how can anybody else?

People like Bettman who constantly keep trying to move hockey in the sun belt just don't understand demographics. In large states like Florida or California, you can find enough fans to fill the stadium just because of transplants and sheer statistical probability. Arizona doesn't have quite that many people in it. What kind of people does Arizona have? Only two kinds, Mexicans (not into puck) and unmotivated, clothing averse people.

Seriously, Arizona is the place where good looking people who don't want to act (California) or be prostitutes/club owners (Nevada) go to marinate in the sun. The top majors at the University of Arizona and Arizona State are Stokiology (the science of getting stoked), Sunbathing, Trophy Wifing and Sociology. They are glorified community colleges at best.

The only time hockey could work in the Sun Devil state is during the dead of summer when it's a 105 degrees everyday, then you could at least advertise the stadium air conditioning. The fall/winter is when the temperatures are the most manageable and everybody is golfing, on a boat or just hammer brews on the porch. Why spend a hundred dollars to go sit in a cold stadium when for twenty bucks you can grab a case of Coors and go play beach volleyball with the coeds? Doesn't make any sense.

So sorry Canada and northern American cities, your promise of a rabid fan base and sold out stadiums wasn't enough to deter Bettmans expansionist march into the southland. Maybe when the 2020 NHL All Star game is being held in Costa Rica you can at least get a decent vacation out of it. Not much else for you to look forward to.

Puck Theory

I heard an interesting idea on the B.S. Report the other day regarding the NHL. Simmons said that the NHL should contract to 24 teams with twelve being Canadian and twelve being American. This sounded interesting but contraction is always tricky. Lets see how it would play out:

CANADA:
Current Teams
Montreal Canadians
Toronto Maple Leafs
Ottawa Senators
Vancouver Canucks
Edmonton Oilers
Calgary Flames

Wow, only six current teams left. Sad. It can be done though.
Welcome to the League!

Quebec Nordiques
Winnipeg Jets
Toronto Team #2

To get the last three you need to rely on rabid Canadian fans to fill the arena.

British Columbia team #2. Needs balance with Vancouver. In Victoria maybe.
Halifax. Nova Scotia has people, needs a team and is on the East coast.
The last team has be in either Ontario or Quebec province. I would like to see it in Waterloo just to see how many over dramatic Waterloo lines the media could come up with. Don Cherry might just explode.

United States:
Chicago Blackhawks
Detroit Red Wings
Philadelphia Flyers
Boston Bruins
Pittsburgh Penguins
New Jersey Devils
New York Rangers
St. Louis Blues
Colorado Avalanche
San Jose Sharks
Minnesota North Stars
Hartford Whalers

Tough choices. Here's the explanations.

Washington Capitals - D.C. just doesn't feel like a hockey town, maybe not even a sports town. The Skins, Nationals, Bullets (never Wizards) all have been poisoned by D.C. and now suck. Besides, why should all of America subsidize Canada's national sport in our capital?
Carolina Hurricanes - A mistake that needs fixing. Easy call.
Buffalo Sabres - Heartbreaking, they fall prey to there being too many teams in New York and the Hartford mistake being fixed. New York's loss is Connecticut's gain.
Tampa Bay Lightning - Tampa is still in Florida right?
Florida Panthers - See Tampa.
New York Islanders - tough call but NYC doesn't need three teams within 4 minutes of each other. If you want to kill off the Rangers or Devils, I'm willing to listen.
Atlanta Thrashers - please.
Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings - All the pacific is going to be represented by San Jose which has a good fan base with money. Nobody cares about hockey in Los Angeles when Gretzky isn't there and nobody cares about Anaheim, period. If you don't believe me just ask yourself why the MLB Angles had to add Los Angeles to their team name.
Nashville Predators - Mistake from the start.
Columbus Blue Jackets - Good market but a newbie caught in a numbers game.
Dallas - You stole it from Minnesota and don't deserve it.
Phoenix - You stole it from Winnipeg and then went bankrupt so go screw.

I think this could be a viable plan. A Canadian city only needs 70,000 people to support a team so some of those small markets could work out well. Contraction would make all these teams better as well with less diluted talent pool. Awesomeness ensues.

Nature's Cutest Animal Rules the Ice

It truly is a miraculous night! The underdog Penguins managed to defeat the much hated Detroit Red Wings 2-1, in Detroit no less. This would have been an even more amazing occurrence if a lighting storm hadn't knocked out NBC on my local DirecTV feed with about 6 minutes left. Not the other 380 channels, just the NBC and local PBS stations. Awesome. Either way, just the knowledge that the highly smug Red Wings were given the boot was enough to make me forget about the stunning failures of the Avalanche (regular season) and Sharks (playoff meltdown). Not that this should be a surprise to anyone, the epic failure was foretold previously in the day by the UK Telegraph. Apparently, the government has decided to, or is at least exploring the possibility of, bulldozing parts of cities suffering deep declines as a way to revitalize the city by returning parts of it to nature thereby leaving less urban area to police, provide utilities, etc. They base this off an independent study that decided that none other than Flint, MI would be better of if 40% of it were destroyed. Whether or not this is a good idea is a debate best left for a political or economic study but much like C.C. Sabathia getting on a scale or Nick Anderson being the motivation for an underdog championship contender with free-throw issues, having a major city in your state being the role model for the "We're Out of Ideas Get the Bulldozer Plan" is a sure sign that the tide of divinity has simply turned against you. The poor Red Wings should just be thankful that the Joe didn't get repossessed by the Government mid series.
Signing off for the 2008-2009 NHL season, it's been great as always,
Viva Hartford!