My feelings about game 7 are a little bit tempered by the rioting that went on in Vancouver.  I will put up a separate post about that later.  For now, my thoughts are with my friends in Vancouver, like @ryanclassic, @alixiswright, and @alanah1.  I feel bad that they can’t celebrate a Cup win, and that they have to endure the aftermath on the streets.

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None of the Puck Daddy or NBC PHT picked the Bruins to win the Cup. So I will. Bruins taking it all. Book it.

June 1, 2011 4:34 pm via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@Tapeleg

Tapeleg

I tweeted that June 1st.  Hey, they don’t call it blind faith for nothing.  And that’s all I really had, faith.  It wasn’t knowledge, it wasn’t expertise, it was faith in the face of the evidence against, and defiance.  I knew the Canucks could win it, but I never believed the Bruins would lose it.

I’ve told this story before, but I’ll do it again, because it fits.  I was in Boston a little over a year ago, during the Olympics and regular season, and the talk of Bruins fans kept to leaning toward how the Bs had made a huge mistake signing Tim Thomas for as long as they had.  The consensus seemed to be that he was washed up, and the contract was a huge burden.  I told those fans to wait.  I told them you didn’t go from being a Vezina winner to washed up in one year.  Something was wrong, and it was obvious.  Thomas had hip surgery in the offseason, and came back.  A career year, and no real end in sight.

I was a sort of bandwagon fan for the Bruins throughout the playoffs.  I’d been looking for an Eastern Conference team for a long time, and kept coming back to the Bruins.  I tried to make it the Capitals, but that never really fit.  I spent eight months in Boston during the lockout, and learned to love that city (I really like Vancouver, but for all it’s beauty, it loves to take all my money).  Since the Avalanche never had a remote shot at the playoffs (when you hear fans bragging about having the second overall draft pick…), I was free to pick and choose who I wanted to win each round.   I have my own biases (as does every fan of the game), so there were a few teams that would never make it into my favorites, most notably Detroit and Vancouver.  My choices round-by-round were:

Round 1
Bruins
Capitals
Tampa Bay
Buffalo

Chicago
Nashville
Phoenix
San Jose

Round 2
Bruins
Tampa Bay

San Jose
Nashville

Round 3
Bruins
San Jose

Finals
Bruins

In the end, the thing I really wanted to see was Tim Thomas raise the Cup.  If there was a guy in the playoffs who deserved it most, it was Thomas.  While Roberto Luongo won a game or two for his team, he also was the reason they lost at times.  Thomas never lost a game for his team.  You could argue the wrap around goal scored on him eleven seconds into overtime in game two was his fault, as he was way out of position, but there were several things that went wrong on that play.  And in their losses, Thomas deserved more than he got from his teammates.  He got it in games six and seven.

Thomas was the clear Conn Smythe winner even before game seven.  I remember being at game seven in 2003 as the New Jersey Devils beat the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim to win the Stanley Cup – which was where I learned to dislike the Devils – and watching losing goalie JS Giguere collect the Conn Smythe.  You could see how sad he was as he took his shinny trophy back to the room where his teammates sat in defeat.  It’s a great honor, but nothing like the trophy your entire team worked so hard for.  It affected Giguere and his game the next season.  He was a goalie that has always brought his emotions to the game, both positive and negative.  I didn’t want to see the same thing happen to Thomas.  Thomas always seems like calm and collected guy, until you piss him off.  I have been a huge fan of Thomas for a while, and want to see his continued success.  And even though it will never happen, he sure would look good in an Avalanche jersey.

Quick hits:

- Roberto Luongo is going to get blamed and called a choker.  He will, again, be called overrated.  Luongo was a great goalie through most of the playoffs.  He has a few bad games every so often, but he always springs back.  That he got scored on three times in the final game doesn’t make him a choker, it makes him human.  He has his faults, not the least of which is hubris, but he is still a good goalie.  If it weren’t for him, the Canucks would never have gotten as far as they did.  He won them games, and he lost them games.  But he won them a lot more than he lost.

- I took in the game last night at SoBo 151, Denver’s Czech hockey bar, and had a blast.  Wearing my Bruins colored Johnstown Cheifs jersey brought a few fans over to talk hockey and hang out.  Brian Engblom was there, fans of both teams were represented, and the mood was generally jovial.  The Canucks fan next to me was tense for most of the game, but wound up chatting more as the game wore down.  When the Canucks raised their sticks to the fans, the crowd, including the Bruins fans, applauded the team.  I shook a few hands and offered condolences to the Canucks fans in attendance.  The only indication of any animosity was the bottom line on the NBC broadcast, saying that rioting had started in Vancouver.  It’s what hockey should be like.

- Good for Coach Vigneault pulling Luongo near the end down by three goals.  Even if it looked like the game was over, he didn’t give up.  You have to give him credit for that.

- The handshake that happened on the ice was great, and is a wonderful tradition in hockey.  But the handshake on social media sites like twitter was just a good.  Fans that had been thrust together on opposite sides of the game were patting each other on the backs, congratulating and sympathizing, burying hatchets, and generally getting along for the first time in two weeks.

- The Canucks oscillated between looking beaten and being on the verge of taking over the game.  There were several times the Bruins let them back into the game, and they made some good plays along the way.  What took the Canucks back out of the game, over and over?  I really don’t know.

At the end of the season, it’s almost like there should be poetry.  Maybe I’ll try a crack at that tomorrow.  For the moment, wow, what a season.  October can’t come soon enough.

I am still collecting my thoughts on the rioting.  I’ll probably post about it later.

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The Stanley Cup Dead Blog Challenge rolls on for some of us, while others have completed the first part that they committed to.  To those who made it to June 15th, congratulations. You should be proud of your work, and hopefully will continue to write, if not post, daily.  You have a good block of work that you can build on, and keeping with it is the best thing you can do for your writing and your blog.  Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Me, and several others, are continuing on until at least July 1st.

My plans for the night were initially to watch game six with an aquaintance here in Toronto.  I wasn’t looking forward to watching the game in Canada, as I figured it would be fraught with the classic signs of the Canucks fans already tasting silver: the call of the Lou for every save made, complaining that the refs were against the Canucks (which is a suckers argument), and hockey entitlement like you wouldn’t believe.  I put the call out to twitter, asking where I should watch the game, and was invited out by Thomas Drance.  He warned me that he was a major Canucks homer, and he was right.  But it was I cheering him up later on, as the game turned against the Canucks.  Still, I had a great time, and would hang out with him again.  Thanks, Tom!

NOTES FROM THE GAME:

- The media kept asking the players before the game what it was like to have the Cup in the building.  And all of the players blew it off, saying it didn’t matter.  Still, the media pressed.  And you have to wonder, what are they looking for?  I’m guessing a better story than the one they have.  It’s more exciting to write about the players having the jitters.  The classic storyline of the childhood dream of winning it all in game seven will be the next one pressed on the players.  But if they aren’t buying what the media is selling, then quit trying to force an answer out of them.  I’m convinced that half of the reason for some of the jerky quotes is just to give the media something so they will leave the players alone.

-Yesterday, I said this:

I thought about what I would do in the situation the refs are in, and concluded that I would put the first pair of over-actors in the box for two each, and warn the benches that there will be no tolerance for diving or post-whistle antics.

And I didn’t see the refs go to the benches, but this happened:

After this, I saw one fake head-snap.  The diving went down, the douche factor went down, and the play was clean enough.  I didn’t really think Henrik Sedin warranted a diving penalty, but the message was sent.

- Yes, I said the douche factor went down.  But man, Johnny Boychuk, what were you thinking?  I don’t for a moment think that Boychuck meant to injure Mason Raymond, and the check he finished (which he didn’t have to finish, nor make in the first place) didn’t look that hard.  Still, that is no excuse for taking a guy into the boards in an awkward position, and putting more into the check than the simple collision.  That’s how it looked to me, that he shoved harder than he needed to, and Raymond was in a vulnerable position.  It happened fast, and there wasn’t much Raymond could do, after being taken off balance by Boychuk putting his stick between Raymond’s legs and spinning him around.  The fault on this one, even though the outcome didn’t seem like it would be as bad as it is (compression fracture in a vertebrae), is completely on Johnny Boychuk.  The speed of the game, the hitting, all of it adds to the risk of these kinds of injuries.  But Boychuk should be more responsible.

- The Bruins fans were taken to task for chanting at Raymond that he was faking his injury.

Meanwhile, Boston fans shouting "flopper" as Raymond lay on the ice with what sounds like a serious injury: stomach-churning. Low point.

June 14, 2011 5:47 am via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@bruce_arthur

Bruce Arthur

Considering the way the rest of this series played out, and that the play itself didn’t look terribly destructive, I don’t think this was maliciously taunting a player with an obvious injury.  And when you think about how most people watch hockey, they were probably focusing on the puck, which wasn’t near the hit.  Many of the people at the Garden didn’t even see the hit happen in real time.  I doubt it’s anything more than unfortunate circumstances combined with the poor taste of a few.

- What a drop pass by Peverly on the Lucic goal.  It surprised me was how fast it happened.  I don’t think I was the only one.

- Ference scores a goal? Ference?  If that doesn’t tell you the Canucks were snakebitten tonight, nothing does.

- Cory Schneider didn’t have a chance on the goal scored against him in the first.  I’m not sure anyone was going to pick up Ryder in front of the net.  There was nothing Schneider could do on the deflection, though he probably would have stopped the shot if it hadn’t been tipped..

- Hanson celebrating before the whistle was bad enough.  But the puck went past him on the rebound.  That has to be embarrassing for him.  This is why you play to the whistle.

- Everyone got their free penalties tonight.  Neither team got all the calls they probably could have gotten, or even deserved.  They both got their chances, and the calls that were made were valid.

- I didn’t know that Patrick Roy has the best save percentage of a finals series.  Thanks, TSN.  Tim Thomas, third.  The things you get from the broadcast networks when they treat hockey fans as though they understand what’s going on.

- Alain Vigneault has the easiest decision with who to start in goal for game seven, even though that decision could hang him out to dry.  You have to go with Luongo, in my opinion.  He is the guy who got you to this place, on both sides of the coin.  He has lost games for you (and no one else has contributed to those losses as much as he), and he has won games for you.  This isn’t a coin flip.  This is what you do.  Schneider looked great in goal in this series when he has come in, but it isn’t his net right now.

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Game 7.  I can’t tell you how excited I am for this.  I fly home in the morning on Wednesday, unless there are more problems with Air Canada than just a simple strike, and then plan on watching the game at SoBo 151.  See you there.

Last night, I got home from work and turned on the Tony Awards. Yes, that’s right. I rarely watch the Tonys, but there was no hockey on, basketball holds no interest for me, and I am a theater person. It also helped that Neil Patrick Harris was hosting, and Sutton Foster was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical (and won!). I was privileged to tour with her 11 years ago, and she is an incredible person. You can find all the Tony award winners here.

But this is a hockey blog, and a deal is a deal. One a day. Here is what I was thinking about.

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Larry Brooks almost completely nails it in his write-up of Mike Milbury’s taunts towards Daniel and Henrik Sedin. Almost 100%.

Listen, we’ve all heard this sad song before from Mike Milbury, the ugly American who apparently thinks it is insightful hockey commentary to mock the manhood and masculinity of Henrik and Daniel Sedin.

Of course, Milbury was once coached by Don Cherry, the jingoistic Canadian who has spent decades polluting the air by defaming athletes whose first language is something other than English.

Dead on. It’s the Milbury way, and it has it’s roots in what Don Cherry spews every week on the CBC. Remember he works for NESN, the network Bruins games are broadcast on in Boston. He knows who his audience usually is, and who cuts the checks. He was just doing what he always does, playing to the usual audience.

This is the part that Brooks gets wrong:

So the question is, what on earth is wrong with the North American television network executives who make the decisions to hire these people to spew their ignorance?

Brooks should know where it comes from, and he probably does. It comes from the audience, and it comes from the ratings.

Think back to the regular season, and the intermission reports on NBC. On one side of the table, Mike Milbury. On the other side, America’s other hockey talking head, Pierre McGuire. And the excitement of the day was seeing what one person – usually Milbury – was going to call the other. There wasn’t much analysis that you couldn’t get elsewhere, but it was a grudge match. Two people who deserved the barbs and anger they leveled at each other.

Audiences couldn’t wait. They were practically in ecstasy when the first intermission rolled around. After the back and forth dullness of a Versus intermission, NBC was showing flair and guts by putting on this spectacle. NBC knew exactly what they were doing. They were hiring two people who didn’t mind slinging a little mud while tossing in a little hockey.

Like I said, you could get the same kind of analysis online, from a number of sources. If you’re reading my little blog, you probably already find it on other blogs. What you don’t get is the theatrics. It’s the theatrics that people would tune in for, and it’s the theatrics that people want. They want to see the blowhard talk to the jerk, and on a weekly basis, you got exactly that. Read a blog, listen to a podcast, and you will get many different angles on the topic, many of them more considered, more informed, and more interesting that the few minutes you would get from an NBC intermission report.

But it might not be as titillating. It might not have the drama. And NBC, or any sports broadcasting network, wants you to have a reason to stick around for the few minutes of content they are going to show you between commercials at the breaks. If titillation and drama do the job, hire two guys who kick each other in the groin. It works for America’s Funniest Home Videos, and it will work between periods of an NHL game.

Present that argument to Larry Brooks, and I bet he would agree. People tune in to the Brooks / Tortorella show for the exact same reason.

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For those of you doing the Dead Blog Challenge, a quick note: The important part of the challenge isn’t that you write your best stuff ever. It’s that you write, and that you post. Take pride in the fact that you are posting. That’s something worth crowing about. You guys inspire me to keep going. Thanks.