Philly Dips

It’s not news that the Flyers went out in six games after the regular season. The second round of the playoffs is now underway and my lads are watching on their smartphones at the golf course. I could stomp and scream and make generous contributions to the swear jar, but even if the visually-impaired ref had made the appalling “I-can’t-believe-it-was-missed” call on Kris Letang kicking the skates from beneath Sean Couturier in the third period, the boys likely wouldn’t have survived a game 7 in the first round. Not against Pittsburgh. Not this year.

This isn’t news either, but a hockey team needs more than one scoring line, otherwise it’s too easy for the opposing team to shut you down, and that’s exactly what the Penguins did to the Flyers. Mind you, Captain Claude was invisible, and Jake Voracek wasn’t worth much, either. The two top point-getters in the regular season did nothing in the post unless you count letting the kids do all the work, in which case you might be inclined to commend them for creating what public servants refer to as “learning opportunities”.

I learned that the next generation has all kinds of potential if Ron Hextall can afford to keep the current roster in place. Nolan Patrick in particular, but there’s a handful of other twenty-somethings who will make Philadelphia a force to be reckoned with in the next few years. And they should give Couturier the captaincy. He more than earned it in games 5 and 6. He was a horse through those two games, and only when it was over did we hear that he’d been playing on a torn ligament and will need surgery this summer. I love Claude Giroux, but come on. It was Coots who played like a captain.

More not-news: I harbour fantasies about the Flyers going the distance each time they make the playoffs; what hockey fan doesn’t? And the same fantasy was harboured this year, though I had no illusions against Pittsburgh, who has three scoring lines and way more experience than the fledgling Flyers. Plus, Sid Crosby is on a mission from God every time he plays his Pennsylvania state rivals. Honestly, his stats against Philly alone are astonishing … and nauseating to a gal who bleeds black and orange. I knew if we could get past him, we’d be all right – but he knew it too, and he used the negative energy of the home crowd to kill the home team in all three of their home games.

Following the non-call on Letang, when the fragile Flyer lead was lost with two quick Penguin goals and my boys were eliminated in the first round, Ter said to me, “I don’t think I can support the Pens after that crappy non-call on Letang.”

“Agreed,” I replied. “I’m going for the western conference team in the final (unless it’s San Jose), and in the east, it’s ‘go, Leafs, go’.”

Well, that was short-lived, too. The Leafs pushed it to game seven, but the Bruins are, well, the Bruins. ʼNuff said about that. And I must admit, I loosed a silent cheer on hearing that the Pens beat Washington in their first game of round 2, so …

$*^&#%

Off to a Boring Start

According to my newly downloaded Flyers app, my hockey team has a 0-1-1 record for the start of the 2015-16 season.

This is what I get for joking with an Oilers fan that everyone is in the playoffs except for the Maple Leafs.

I’m used to it now. Philly has been slow out of the gate for years, but when I see that Florida mopped the ice with them in a 7 – 1 loss on Saturday, I want to weep.

Unless the Panthers’ Aaron Ekblad racked up five points. I have him in the hockey pool, where Ruthie’s Renegades were, at last viewing, in first place.

Claude Giroux has yet to give me a point.

They got the loser point in Tampa Bay on opening night. The Bolts won in a shootout.

$*%#&

As I say, I’m used to a slow start. They’re rebuilding. They’ll gain momentum as the season progresses. They just have to gain it faster than they did last year if they hope to make the playoffs.

I know, I know. It’s too early to talk playoffs. Why do I get ahead of myself? It’s not Zen at all … but then, nothing wrecks my Buddhist-babe mentality like hockey season. Something strange happens over the winter. I become a member of the Roman mob. I want to kill. I want to die. Oh, the drama! My identity is attached to my team’s win/loss record. I get small. Mean. Nasty. Fetal. I spike my buttered rum tea with Captain Morgan. I revert to superstitious behaviour, like wearing my orange jersey for home games and my white jersey for away games, as if anything I do really matters to the outcome.

This is fun?

Well, yeah. Hell, yeah!


(Ed note: the boys won their home opener against Florida 1 - 0 on Monday night. Yay! Now we're 1-1-1!)

Twistin’ By The Pool

my 2015-16 fantasy team

My executive director stuck his head inside my office on Wednesday. “Got a minute?”

“Make it fast,” I replied. “The pool draft starts in twelve minutes!”

He stepped over the threshold and dropped his voice. “I’ve done f*** about my picks. Can you resend me the link?”

I gaped at him. “Are you kidding me? I worked on mine for three hours last night! Oh—and Phil Kessel is with Pittsburgh now.”

My über-boss, who has a framed Leafs jersey signed by Wendel Clark hanging in his office, nodded. “I’ll probably pick him anyway. Just send me the link.”

I flashed it at him, our respective doors closed, and the games began.

A couple of years ago, before he took over the division’s helm, he drafted Claude Giroux before I could. I have not forgotten that, apparently, because when I saw that he had eighth pick over my seventh, I thought, Ha! No Giroux for you, buddy! All I had to do was fret through the first six picks, but I was able to nab my top guy.

We have a couple of rookies in the pool this year. I’m a veteran by now, the first female to join in 2010-11 and now comprising maybe a third of fifteen members for the 2015-16 season. Word has spread—and my old nemesis, the wire-and-fake-fur-Flyer fan, is back in the fold after a brief stint with another ministry. Figures that he drafted Jake Voracek and Ryan Kesler just when I was planning to click the button behind him.

Of course you know that this means war.

Or would do, except that the bulk of my roster features more players than not who made my list the day before the draft. Okay, so Nazem Kadri made it from sheer desperation, though I deliberately gunned for James Van Riemsdyk. I’ve got two young defencemen, one going into his second year which often results in a slump, but I’m hopeful that his talent will prevail. If not, veteran BC boy Brent Seabrook will come off the bench to replace him.

If my top five stay healthy, I have as good a chance as any—and better than the poolie who drafted Martin St. Louis and Daniel Briere. It had to have been one of the rookies. ESPN gaffed by leaving these guys on the list, but anyone following the sports news would have known that both players retired in the summer.

Easy pickin’s? Meh. It’s more fun to watch the stats and participate in the chirping. As I emailed when the draft was done, and in keeping with my reputation for choosing photogenic faces, “May the best-looking team win!”

PHI 7 - TOR 4

Despite the outcome, it was touch and go in the first ten minutes. Toronto sprang into the lead while the Flyers were still getting their game on, and if the Leafs had scored their third before the Flyers got their first, the end result might have been vastly different.

A wild 26 seconds saw the score change three times in Philadelphia’s favour, and after that, the Leafs seemed to quit playing. No complaints here, boy. Suddenly it was all about Jakub Voracek and Claude Giroux, the twin sons of different mothers who, last night anyway, could have given the Sedins a run for their money in the “mesmerizing-the-opposition” department.

What did I do differently? I didn’t wear my jersey and I spiked my buttered rum tea with real rum, though I’m becoming less and less superstitious about my part in how the lads play. You gotta wonder on some occasions, though. They recently eked out a win against Los Angeles, a game that would have been attended by a 26 year old hard-core fan had he not been killed in a car crash the day before. His two buddies draped a towel over his empty seat in the stands. The Flyers knew about him—don’t ask me how—and either they rose to the occasion or he was pulling for them on the other side, or both. You just don’t know.

Anyway, my father called to say well done, with the wry aside that he’d been tempted to call during Toronto’s 2-0 lead until he remembered that these are the Leafs so no counting of chickens until the final buzzer sounds. Wisdom manifests in all manner of ways. And as of this morning, we’re 24^th! Hats and horns!

Hockey All the Time

Such excitement! Under the new deal between Rogers and the NHL, Hockey Night in Canada now features more televised games on Saturday than at any other time in my history! Last night, we had the perennial CBC option, plus four others via various Sportsnet and CITY channels. For the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, the Flyers were my first game of the Saturday night season.

And the buggers lost. Not only did they lose, they blew a 3-0 lead to do it. At home, no less. That takes talent. Montreal beat them 4-3 in a shootout, so they got a point, but no win. No matter how you spin it, that means they lost. For the third game in a row. Just like last year.

Is Craig Berube in trouble? Peter Laviolette lost his job after losing the first three games in 2013/14, but I suspect that Berube is okay for the nonce. Philly is notoriously slow out of the gate, but will pick up momentum as the season progresses. As hard as it is on Basher and me, the 82 game season is a blessing. If this was back the old days, we’d already be out of the playoffs.

Like Toronto, perchance?

And, boy, did Don Cherry go on a rant about the Leafs continually ignoring Canadian prospects and selecting Europeans in the draft. He was so bent out of shape that he got his mords wixed and called two of the Leafs’ picks “a Swinn and a Fede”—which is in no way the players’ fault; they just want to play in the big league. But so do the thousands of kids in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), and according to Grapes, none of them will ever make it to Toronto. He’s a bit of a doofus in other matters, but the man is a patriot and he knows hockey. I must admit, I prefer the Canadian kids myself—they play a sturdier game and seem to be better team players than the flashier Europeans. I think that’s why Russia blew the Olympics. They were badly coached, yes, but all those NHL “stars” jostling for puck possession to be the hero … You really do have to leave your ego on the bench, ’cause the game is as much about opportunity as it is about skill, and if your third line winger is still on the ice but hovering off the radar, get him the frigging puck and settle for the assist. You’ll still get a point in the fantasy pool.

Is this enough ranting, Ru? Not quite …

Game Two of HNIC: the Vancouver home opener, where the visiting Oilers also blew a fast lead. It was a better game than MTL/PHI because the Canucks are trying to resurrect themselves after the Tortorella debacle and they came from behind a couple of times to win last night’s game in a shootout. I hate hate hate that their #17 isn’t Ryan Kesler anymore—they should have “retired” the number for a year to get me over the trade—but it was fun to see the Twedes working their cyclical magic again, and now that Roberto is Luongone, the net is in good solid hands with Ryan Miller. No goalkeeping controversy this year (one hopes).

Let’s save that one for Philadelphia.

Pool Queue



Rufus helping to pick my Flyers

The office hockey pool is now underway. We drafted our players yesterday and here’s how my roster turned out:

Claude Giroux (Phi)

Jonathan Toews (Chi)
Taylor Hall (Edm)
Jakub Voracek (Phi)
Ryan Kesler (Van)
Mike Richards (LA)
Vincent Lecavalier (Phi)
Jeff Carter (LA)
Scott Hartnell (Phi)
Cody Hodgson (Buf)
Alex Pietrangelo (StL)
Mark Streit (Phi)

With bench players as follow:

Jannik Hansen (Van)

Tyler Ennis (Buf)
Shane Doan (Phx)
Jason Garrison (Van)

I’m heavy on Flyers and ex-Flyers, but no Bruins, Islanders, or Devils. If I didn’t get every player I hoped for (Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson on defense, for instance), at least I picked everyone live instead of relying on the system picking for me. That’s how I was able to avoid Bruins, Islanders, and Devils. I’m happy with this gang – totally tapdancing over getting Kesler; now it’s a matter of them staying healthy. This is my third year in the pool. My rookie year I got second place, hit the sophomore slump last year, and expect a better finish than 7^th this time out.

The Maple Leafs are in Philadelphia tonight, the matchup that started me on this crazy road of hockey ho’dom all those years ago. Life is good!!

Everybody into the Pool!



"I get Voracek if you get Giroux"



Monday, September 16, 2013:

San Jose 3/Vancouver 2 - snicker

Philadelphia 3/Toronto 2 (S/O) – sigh

Washington 4/Philadelphia 3 (S/O) – what the???

The NHL games may only be exhibition for the next two weeks, but I’ll take ’em. Sort of. Ter and I watched the Canucks host (and lose to) the Sharks on Monday because we live in BC and are held hostage by the network assumption that all BC residents are Vancouver fans. I go with that because I like specific Canucks, just not the team as a whole.

Speaking of wholes (we’ll get to “holes”, as in the digging of same, during the regular season), Philly has bought enough talent to send two teams into separate rings and still cancel themselves out by winning one game and losing the other in a pair of shootouts. Here we go. Shootouts are fun, but they’re also a cheat. If you can’t win in regulation, then you should get nothing. If the game is tied after 60 minutes, split two points between the teams and move on. Something in me fears that shootouts teach the players that they have 65 minutes to get to the lottery and win on a lucky shot. It’s like handing out participant ribbons in the peewee league – makes the boys feel like they contributed even when they lose. That’s fine for six year olds on an allowance, but professional millionaires should be mature enough to suck it up ... like the fans do!

I miss old time hockey.

I know, I know. Time enough for whining after October 3. The office poolies have begun making noise about the season starting and I received an email on Monday from pickuphockey.com to advise that the online pool manager is now available. Nice of them to notify me, but I didn’t win the pool last year, grumble grumble. The guy who did will be managing this year’s, so while I await word on the office draft, I must wrest the Hockey Pool Guide from the bears and pick my 2013/14 dream team.

Maybe this year I’ll score Claude Giroux before a rackinfrackin Maple Leaf fan can nab him ...