HockeyRhetoric

I’ve been thinking a lot about Lindy Ruff these past 24-hours. Before I get into this, I think it’s worth mentioning that my idea of how professional hockey should be played is absolutely formed around Lindy’s. The effect of my proximity to his success and my emotional investment in his teams can’t be ignored. I have a soft spot for Lindy. He’s been the coach of the Sabres for as long as I’ve been a real fan. » Read the rest of this entry «

In a 7-game playoff series, the first four games are usually the get-to-know-one-another games. Ideally, you come out of them with a little bit of a buffer so that if something fluky and weird happens in a clinching game, you get another try. If you’re the higher seed and the favorite, the worst you should do is split the first four games. Obviously the Sabres didn’t do that against the Bruins so they started game-5 having to win out in order to move on in the tournament. Boston, at that point, could afford a few lapses and mistakes. They had two do-overs in case things don’t go their way. » Read the rest of this entry «

Let’s get right to it. The play that Recchi made on Kennedy to set up the Bergeron goal pretty much perfectly crystallized the nature of this game. The Sabres are made up of too many Kennedy characters and not enough Grier characters to match the Bruins size and willingness to finish their checks. Kaleta clearly isn’t healthy to the point where he’s capable of being a real physical force and Gaustad for whatever reason is just a not the same player he was earlier in the year. It was tough seeing the Sabres get pushed around and generally abused like that. » Read the rest of this entry «

What’s the antonym for egoism? This isn’t a trick. Do you know it? I’ll tell you in a minute if you don’t.

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After the game finished, I hung back for a minute just to get a look at the faces of the people leaving the arena. It was not surprisingly an assorted grab bag of people all shape, size, and age.

Most were wearing blue and seemed happy to the point of delirium. I just smiled, texted my friends, drank my beer, and watched. People always use fluffy words like unity in connection to the community when local sports teams achieve some degree of greatness. I’ve been around great sports teams before but I never really gave a shit about the whole unity idea until last night. » Read the rest of this entry «

As my attention to sports analysis has grown, I’ve noticed something pretty irritating. More and more it seems like some of the focus is being taken away from what’s happening between the lines to how fans are reacting to the events occurring between the lines. I hate this.

It’s the columnists that bother me most. This is a group of people whose job it is to string together a couple hundred words once or twice every week. I’m not suggesting this is easy, just that what they produce is comparatively so few in number that it should be pretty easy to stick to topics like players, coaches, games, et cetera. » Read the rest of this entry «