HockeyRhetoric

There’s sadness pretty much everywhere you look now-a-days. Sometimes I find myself feeling a little desensitized when I hear of the latest tragedy even with the Internet making pictures and intimate details available just a few hours later. Then there are the shootings and the bombs and the terrorists. If you care about this stuff too much, it must wear you down, emotionally. I know it would if I paid special attention to every one of them. » Read the rest of this entry «

It took me awhile before I decided to hop on Twitter but I’ve been using it for a couple of months now. I’m up to 460 Tweets. They’re mostly just reactions to what the Sabres have been up to. The rest are about other major current event having to do with sports or stories on the web that I think are cool. I spend about five minutes in the afternoon scanning what my Twitter buddies have tweeted, and then I just keep it in the background while I work. Like most people who were hesitant to get involved with Twitter, I thought the conversations would be dominated by stupid chit-chat like how tasty their meatball sandwich was that they had for lunch. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of people who use Twitter for just that but if you build yourself a community of likeminded people it’s totally worth committing a small amount of time to. Most of the people I follow are Sabres fans and the rest are just Internet celebrities whose perspective I enjoy. If nothing else, Twitter makes it easier for me to keep track of everyone’s content updates. » Read the rest of this entry «

In sports like hockey, winning is what observers use to measure success. Similar to most other competitive endeavors, winning in hockey is relative to its environment and every year the competition changes; players switch teams and grow older; managers and coaches get replaced. But the most volatile aspect of this business – not to mention the one that has perhaps has the greatest influence on success – is in the collective motivation of the players that make up individual teams. The sports industry is about as pure of a meritocracy as there is. Each team is saturated with talent and strong coaching. Eventually what separates the teams that win from the teams that lose is how motivated they are to win. It’s not that the losers don’t care so much as the winners want it so bad, they can’t even finish a bowl of Fruity Pebbles without thinking at least twenty times of their names being engraved on the hardware. » Read the rest of this entry «

Are you a thrill seeker? I think I am. I’ve reached speeds on a snowboard so outrageous that if I were to have slipped and fallen, bones in my body would have broken like popsicle sticks. In physics, they call this terminal velocity. It was my perception, at those moments, that I could not possibly be going any faster. And perception is all that matters for now as I’m about to start talking about relative things like feelings and emotions. But getting back to snowboarding, think about the disconnect I must have had with the world around me to push myself to those speeds. I had no control of what the snow would be like in front of me. It’s ridiculous when you consider the danger I put myself in physically but I don’t regret it. I never actually injured myself while riding a snowboard (badly at least) but even if I had, I don’t think I would trade those memories or experiences or feelings or whatever you want to call them, for anything. I loved pushing myself to my emotional and physical extremes. I loved the rush I felt from reaching those speeds. » Read the rest of this entry «

In Latin the name Felix means lucky, or happy. I like the name Felix. Remember Felix Potvin? That’s a sweet name for a goaltender. Felix the Cat, they would to call him. I think out of all the players on the Sabres, the one who the name Felix would work best for is Drew Stafford. It fits his personality and he’s too enigmatic of a hockey player to have a name like Andrew. » Read the rest of this entry «