So I sent my fourth tweet ever today. While I had my tweeting-software fired up I noticed that the Calgary Flames were selling used equipment. I perused the list, and there are a few interesting things there. But nothing that matches THIS:
Ferland Goalie Jock @$39.99
Size: SR
Uniform/Color: N/A
Used/New: Used
Final Cost:$20
Quantity: 1
Remember, those are Canadian dollars, so it’s an even better bargain!
As I write this, I’m watching a girl in hot-pink ice skates take instruction from a portly woman who moves like she never takes her skates off. The girl is doing well, arms held so, feet working the drills, and my instant assessment is that this kid can be pretty good.
But, honestly, not great. I hope she’s in the whole figure-skating game for the right reasons: because she loves the challenge, the discipline, and feels great when she gets the toe-thingie just right.
Once upon a time (was it Vonnegut who first pointed this out to me? Maybe. Probably not.) a pretty-good singer could be the pride of a village. “She has the voice of a nightingale,” her neighbors would say. They would ask her to sing at all the village events, and she would, without any compensation beyond the appreciation of her friends.
It was electricity that broke this relationship. Curse that devil’s magic! The villagers could hear the broadcast from New York, then buy records, and before long our village chanteuse is being compared to the best in the whole damn world.
But it didn’t end there, especially in sport. First there’s a tournament in town. The winner of that goes on to face the winners in the nearby towns. That winner goes on to face a group from farther away. Somewhere on this sleigh-ride our hero loses. All the heroes lose but one, out of thousands. Tens of thousands. “He lost at regionals.” “She lost at state.”
OK, that’s an exaggeration, there’s plenty of celebration when a local athlete gets to state. But as the world gets smaller we just can’t let someone be a local champion.
And so, back to the girl on the pink skates. She’s working hard, dong things slowly that seem like they’d be easier fast. I hope she’s having fun. (I think back to trumpet lessons when I was a kid. I wanted to be good, but honestly the lessons weren’t fun. That’s about me, not the teacher. I wasn’t hungry.) I hope there’s a village where Miss Pink-Skates can be the best, but even if there isn’t, that’s not a disaster. The worst part about being the best in the village is the sudden arrival of the world outside.
If you follow hockey at all, you’ve heard of the five-hole. It’s the space between a hockey goalkeeper’s legs, and it’s a popular place to shoot at.
All NHL goalies that I know of use the ‘butterfly‘, a ligament-stretching move in which the knees are pushed together and the lower legs are parallel to the ice, forming a solid barrier to any pucks skidding along the surface. Why shoot for the five-hole, then, when it is so easily turned into an impenetrable wall? It’s all about time.
When a player slaps the puck toward the net, the time it takes a goaltender to close the hole is limited by the acceleration of gravity. Even after he recognizes the threat his body must fall into position, and no amount of strength or conditioning can make it happen faster.
I just watched in slow motion as the Rangers goaltender let a puck through his five-hole, and I had to cringe. You see, a lot of five-hole goals are preventable, and pretty easily, too. As the goalie collapsed into position, his stick was off to the side, pointing directly at the shooter, and completely useless. Had he simply kept his stick in front of him as he went into the butterfly, the goal would have bounced harmlessly away. His sloppiness might mean his team will not compete for the Stanley cup this year.
This failing is frightfully common. I often see keepers lift their sticks as they move down, and while that will get their legs into position a couple of milliseconds earlier, they lose their most important interim defense. It is a completely natural reaction to throw your arms up to get your body down faster. Don’t do that!
So, kids who want to be the next great net minder, when you’re practicing dropping into the butterfly long into the night (you are practicing long into the night, right?), always, always have your stick and always keep it in position. Watch video of yourself or have someone watch your stick as you work, and watch your GAA go down. I don’t think there’s any more easily correctable habit in all of hockey that can make such a difference.
I’m hanging out at a local drinkery, waiting for friends, and on the TV is Tiger Woods, who is doing pretty well in the latest tournament, but not great. As usual. THIS IS NOT NEWS!
I don’t follow golf, but even so I get all sorts of breathless “Tiger was in the middle of the pack!” articles before I can click through to actual sports. Tiger is in the middle of the pack. It’s not news anymore. Move on.
I’m trying to get all the little pieces of my Web application working together, but I’ve adjourned to a venue that also has hockey. I just saw a pretty sweet play that will not show up on the stat sheet anywhere, or even in the highlights, but I have to mention it, even though a bad guy did it.
Picture a guy skating into enemy territory, the puck on his stick. Two defenders close in on him. He skates on. Yet he knows he’s got a teammate behind him, so as he skates into the valley of death he leaves the puck behind. That’s a drop pass. The first guy skates ahead, drawing the defenders, leaving space behind him for his wingman to do some real damage.
Tonight I saw maybe the best drop pass ever. The first guy in didn’t just leave the puck for his buddy, he pulled back and swung as hard as he could — over the puck. Every defender reacted as if he was shooting, crashing toward the net. First Guy’s stick passed harmlessly over the puck and he drove to the net, and his trailer could have set up a picnic in the space left behind.
Happily the bad guys did not score. Still, I give them credit for the best drop pass I’ve ever seen.
* He’s the guy who inspired this screed. He fought his way past the guy with the ball to get into open space so the enemy could get a basket. Don’t ask me who he was; he’s not exceptional. This is how they play the game.
Side note to Memphis: Your yellow shirts and dark green shorts are the Worst Uniform Ever, in any sport (except maybe the Padres and Astros in the ’70’s). The awfulness is amplified by your total disregard for your team identity. Grizzly? Hardly. How much did you pay your marketing team? I’ll do better for half as much.
I just saw an ad for a movie that featured Daniel Craig, and it took me back to my time on the set of Casino Royale. Though the action was theoretically in Miami, we were in Prague in February.
Daniel Craig was a total pro. Easygoing, just another member of the cast, doing his best.
There’s a lot of time between shots in a project like this, and during a break Craig was sparring with his coach (or was it his on-screen adversary? facts are skitterish). Maybe he was working to keep warm, maybe to make the fight scene better.
He hurt his wrist. Not a big injury, not the sort of thing that slows down a pro. When he reported the setback he seemed a little embarrassed about the attention his discomfort brought. I wasn’t in his head at that moment, but I think he might have regretted bringing it up at all. But he’s a pro, and a pro tells his director if there might be a weakness in his game.
Which is totally the opposite of soccer, which I presume through national profiling is Craig’s sport of choice. Can you imagine what a soccer (football, according to Craig’s people) player would do with a minor wrist injury? Lie on the field and cry like a baby, that’s what. Aaaaah! how can I kick a ball with this terrible pain in my wrist?
Note to proponents of the game: get up off the grass and play and maybe you’ll convince me.
There are sports where the ability to shrug off a minor tweak is still valued, but when it comes down to being embarrassed about being hurt, about not wanting to make a deal of it at all except how it might affect your team, then we’re talking hockey. That’s where Craig was that day on set. He was a hockey actor.
How many of you out there can ask your significant other, “What day does hockey season begin again?” and fully expect him/her/it to know the answer? Because I totally can.
Note: My sweetie is not so fortunate — I’m not so good with facts — but she doesn’t need anyone to tell her when the first puck drops.
I am surrounded by TV screens, all showing things that resemble sport. In soccer, a Mexican team is playing a Spanish Italian one. I have to say I was pulling for Guadalajara over Seville or wherever Juventus comes from. [Um… Turin, actually.]
I didn’t see the goal, but I did see a few supposedly macho men lying on the grass crying. Not as many as I expected, which just goes to show you how far this league is from earning my respect. Only four episodes of babyism in the second half? That’s progress! I’d like to think the boys from North America spent less time on the soil than the Europeans.
Meanwhile, my left eye and right hemisphere have been absorbing X-Games. I watched an event where kids rolled their bikes down a ridiculous slope, up a ramp, through the air (tricks ensue) and then, if they land, they have a chance to do one more trick. I’d say maybe 30% landed the first flight. Probably less. These kids fell a long, long way, sometimes with a bicycle in the crotch, and when things came to a rest they took a deep breath and walked off, trying as hard as possible to NOT look hurt. A nice departure from the soccer.
And yet. Does the double-front-flip or the backflip-with-the-bike-spin score higher? That’s for the judges to decide. Ultimately most of the events in the X-Games are slightly-more-dangerous figure skating. Contestants do stuff and someone else decides who wins. Interesting, occasionally entertaining, but not satisfying from a sporting point of view.
When does hockey season begin again?
The other morning, as my consciousness was dancing a merry reel along the fuzzy line between sleep and wakefulness, I had a dream about cross-country croquet. I remember a few details, like how the croquet mallets slowly morphed from odd, foot-long aztec-looking croquet-ball flingers into fairly typical (if low-quality) backyard mallets. I remember that fuego was playing, along with some of the others I’ve played cross-country beer croquet with over the years.
There was also an older guy, who it turns out was a teacher. He had to leave when a student called for him.
I woke up and chuckled over the dream, then realized something: The ‘older’ guy In my dream was my age. It seems my self-image may be lagging reality.
Not that there aren’t plenty of reminders these days. Some of the signs are subtle. At work, when I wash my hands, I linger with them in the flow of the hot water. That’s probably arthritis heading my way.
When I was younger, life was not without its aches and pains. Back then, pain meant “stop using that part of your body until it stops hurting.” Now, there’s a new category of pain: “get used to it.”
It’s important to be able to distinguish the two. My knee hurts, all the time. It’s not getting worse, but it’s not getting better. I need to have a doctor look at it, but in the meantime I ice it after I exercise, and if it does bother me particularly I skip the elliptical trainer.
A fun side note: A few years back I learned from a friend, one of my peers who was faster to the “get used to it” type of pain than I, that frozen peas make a good ice pack. So, when it came time for regular applications of cold to my knee, I knew what I needed. I asked my sweetie to pick up a bag of therapeutic peas next time she was out shopping.
She was at the local CVS, a pharmacy/sundries store, and she checked the freezer section for peas. No luck. As long as she was there, she decided to look in the sports/first aid section*, where she found a gel pack made for knees, filled with little frosty pellets. The product name: “Peas”. It works pretty well, and the cold feels great, but I wish it would stay cold just a little bit longer.
In my dreams I’m still a young whippersnapper, but, like most dreams, reality has a different story to tell. Still, there’s a part of me that believes in the dream. All I have to do is lose a little weight, stretch a little more, and my knee won’t hurt and I’ll be able to play all those games I used to play, without worrying about my hamstring blasting out the back of my leg.
In other words, I didn’t stop dreaming when I woke up.
* Many years ago my friends and I marked the transition when visiting the sporting goods store went from gravitating towards the racks of exotic softball bats and fun toys to making a bee-line to the section filled with knee braces and padded clothing. Now “sports” and “first aid” are nearly synonymous.
The Sharks are about to take the ice against the Detroit Red Wings. They won the first three games of the series, then lost the next three. Tonight the series ends, one way or another.
Honestly, I’m not sure I can watch.
Hey! Let’s make this a live blog, as long as I can stand it.
6:11 – whoever that was singing the national anthem was awesome. Nothing too fancy, just nailed it. I got a little misty
6:15 – strange circumstances – puck in the corner, neither team wanted to touch it first. Not sure why. A shark touched it and the whistle blew, a face-off ensued.
6:16 – My pizza arrived. Looks good!
6:22 – a couple of big hits, including an open-ice check, have the crowd going.
6:26 – a break in the action. Neither team has looked dominant so far. Goat cheese pizza is working well.
6:34 – here we go! Sharks’ first power play!
6:35 – had a good shot, but Miller (Red Wing’s goalie) could see it all the –
6:35 ! ao! oo! Goal! Good guys take the lead!
6:37 – Bullshit! totally bogus penalty against the Sharks.
6:38 – aggressive kill – Sharks get a line change! Looking really good.
6:39 – almost a short-handed goal! Hard to tell its a power play.
6:41 – and when the power play ended, things got scary. Detriot was tipping the ice pretty dramatically. I found myself hoping for another San Jose penalty.
6:42 – Type not fixed intentionally: Detriot.
6:47 – Good guys having really trouble getting the puck through center ice… oh wait now they’re attacking well. Live-blogging hockey is tough.
6:48 – Goal! Rookie Logan Couture shows once again that he can friggin’ skate!
6:50 – end of first period. Sharks 2, Red Wings 0
— Intermission —
6:53 – I’m not sure whether this live-blogging thing is worthwhile. My main goal is to keep myself a little more detached from the game, but I’m not really coming up with any insights that might encourage readers to follow in real time or relive the game later. I’m thinking interesting stuff, but until I master stream-of-couscious no-look typing I think that hockey blogging might be outside my skill set.
6:55 – I will say that Rookies makes a pretty good pizza. I had the Kelly’s Goat, individual size, and it’s was mighty tasty, and much larger than what usually passes for an individual pizza around here. Amazingly, with the place packed to the gills, the service actually doesn’t suck tonight.
6:57 – The Sharks were the better team in the first period, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some scary moments. That’s one of the things I like about Hockey — even when a team is dominating, a careless moment can carry an enormous cost.
6:59 – watching a replay of the first goal – it was a perfect pass. Thornton held the puck for an extra half-second before sending it to Setoguci, and that made all the difference. Another thing I like about hockey – the assist is almost as big a stat as a goal. Even the stats emphasize team play. (Brief moment to contrast with soccer.)
7:02 – I think I will maintain radio silence for the second period. We’ll have to wait and see about the third.
7:11 – except to say this: the Sharks are disorganized and sloppy right now. I’m watching the seconds tick by, waiting for the hammer to fall.
7:48 – end of the second period, happy the bad guys only scored one. I don’t want to know how much time the puck spent in each end; by the time the Sharks got it out of their zone all they could manage was a line change. Then the game was right back in front of their net. The last ten minutes of that period were rough to watch.
8:02 – still intermission. I’m at my own little table, and the group next to me doesn’t have enough chairs. The man standing has his back to my table. While I feel for a sports fan with no place to sit, the guy is very tall. My table is also tall, but not tall enough. The dudes ass is right here. I wish one of his shorter friends would offer to stand for a while.
8:05 – come on, Sharks! Play like you’re behind!
8:08 – Here in the bar, the cchant is on: Let’s go Sharks! It’s getting loud. Let’s go Sharks!
8:09 – shot off the pole! Aaaaaargh! (the best sound in sports)
8:11 – whoever wins this game plays in Vancouver on Sunday. I wonder who the Canucks are rooting for.
8:19 – Danny Boy(le) with the penalty kill hit of the game. Sweet!
8:22 – I didn’t see a penalty there – I think Detriot just got rooked. The good news for them: San Jose isn’t penalty killing anymore.
8:28 – hard to think in here right now. Sweet goal set up be Setoguchi. 3-1 Sharks.
8:30 – ah, shit. How many times have I see all the sharks on the same side of the ice? 3-2 game, six minutes to go.
8:39 – here it is. Detriot empty net. It’s on!
And I can breathe again. Sharks win. The final minute in a close hockey game is the best minute in sports. No timeouts, the guys down by one pull the goalie and throw everything they have on offense. A lucky bounce and it’s anyone’s game. make that game seven in the playoffs, and the intensity is that much more. Fans of both teams are having heart attacks ever fifteen seconds or so. This game was no different. As the clock ticked inexorably down, the Red Wings had their chances.
It’s far more fun to win a nail-biter than a blowout. When the Sharks cleared their zone with four seconds left, at last we could cheer.
This might be the last game for some great hockey players. Detroit is getting long in the tooth, and their captain and several other stalwarts may hang up their skates after this season. The kids will be all right, though.
Which leads me to wonder: Who will hate the Sharks? They are a young franchise, so they don’t have those ancient, traditional rivalries. They’ve knocked Detroit out of the playoffs two years in a row now; it would be a sign that they’ve arrived if Red Wings fans started saying “I hate the Sharks!” Is there any other fan base you’d rather be hated by?
I think that’s all for me tonight; I’m supposed to be writing right now. The downside of the good guys’ victory: more thursdays of hockey instead of internal exploration.
