Near Eve

I used to spend more time with the hockey video games, playing at least three or four complete seasons each year in college, editing every single player in the revelatory NHL 2k3, and conducting weekend "legends" tournaments alongside my regular season in ESPN NHL Hockey.

EA's NHL 10 is the best, by far, of all of the hockey games I've ever played, and I've barely made it past the second period of about 12 games so far. Such is the world of parenthood.

Thanks to the Internet, and some finely honed Geeking skills, I've popped in some pretty good sliders, found the "ultimate" rosters (although ultimate sometimes means John Tavares is centering the Isles' first line), and enjoyed what I can to this point. This afternoon, with the day off from work and the boys sleeping, I managed a 0-0 draw through 37 minutes with the Oilers, only to have a wrist shot hop over Rick D's (I'll probably do the properly sim/dork thing and start Biron to start my "season") shoulder at the exact moment a bedroom door opened and "good morning!" echoed through the house.

Tonight, I will get the bastards back, at least for a period or so ... .

As realistically non-realistic as NHL 10 is, it can't really tell us anything about the state of the Islanders, although my lack of finish on the sticks draws an eerie parallel to the boys in royal blue (I never, never use the "new" jerseys, always sticking with the soon-to-be mainstream alternate). Still, it's fun to think my trance-like repose in front of the sorely out-of-date SDTV might give us some glimpse into the coming season.

A few things I've noticed.

1. The Isles can skate with just about any team, but not Evgeni Malkin.

2. No Finnish. Even the probably-overrated-estimated-we-just-don't-know Tavares CAP can't bury anything but wide-open chances. Thankfully there's Mark Streit and a generous deflection engine.

3. We're going to lose every single fight this season. Or, I need to practice this new fighting system, which makes no sense to me right now.

4. The Ramones will bring the Isles out onto the ice at the newly named "Long Island Arena" every home game. Or not. (wishful thinking)

5. We. will. get. Dion. Phaneuf.

Saturday Night

Because sometimes the stars align even for one of the world's least-connected people, me, the Mediocre One and I have managed to get ahold of some veddy goot tickets for the home opener. No liveblogging, but I will get back on Sunday with the full report.

I haven't been this excited for a hockey game since I went to a bar in Ithaca to watch game five of the 2002 playoffs against the Leafs. I spent the whole night standing under a tiny television, crowding a table full of college students watching basketball on the "big" TV, clutching a series of beers, and yelling at some poor college kid who had the nerve to come down from Cornell to watch the game alone and root for the Leafs in my presence on that fateful, stupid night.

I'm pretty sure I told him he had "personally disgusted me and ruined hockey for at least five years in one fell swoop with his sickening display of ignorance, cockiness, and stupidity." And I'm pretty sure that was in reaction to one muted fist pump when the game finally ended. And then he ran out and my friends roped me into playing pool while I bitched and challenged them to "man up!" and play bubble hockey.

Beetches.

Here's the songs my kids demand to hear when the snow starts to fall.







See you Saturday.

Mark Streit: not Dion Phaneuf

Jaffe doesn't like it. But he didn't skate away like little Celine either. (see what I did there?)

Hey, we have a blog

First, good to have hockey back. I spent an hour yesterday watching fights, reading about NHL 10, and looking for Google images of the Broome Dusters.

We're off to a quick start
"Keep your head up, or something," said the hockey fan. We hear that 15 to 20 times a year now, as we sort through the wreckage of another hit to the head. Dion Phaneuf hit Kyle Oh!poso last night, in a game you likely didn't see, but have been reading about all day if you're sick like me and not doing a shit's bit worth of work. Puck Daddy is dissecting.

I'm going to ignore most of the central debates because they've been covered pretty well by Puck Daddy, by the more lucid reader's comments, and by other voices in the web-o-sphere. That said, I think it was a legal hit of a defenseless player, and it should have been answered with a crosscheck to Phaneuf's forehead.

Phaneuf is garbage, but some Isles fans are delusional
Chris Pronger does this shit. Phaneuf does this shit routinely. Lesser names do the same shit hoping they'll get paid the same as Phaneuf or Pronger. It is part of the game.

But so is this: fighting.

Phaneuf is garbage for backing out of the fight with Morency. He's not dumb, he's just garbage. And if you've already written somewhere on the web that you think it's shit when a "clean hit" is answered with a fight, you're garbage too.

When the fuck should players fight? Because "when you're angry because someone just laid out a teammate" seems like a pretty fucking good time to fight to me. I think it's a lot better time than "when you're bored" or "when your team is losing and you haven't played in 22 minutes." Blatant cheap shots and borderline massive hits that leave people semi-conscious or knocked out cold (which usually look like cheap shots in the heat of the moment) are, I would think, the most ideal times of all to drop the gloves. So kudos to Morency, and fuck you, Phaneuf.

I'm going to jerk off to Elisha Cuthbert tonight. And that's the crudest thing I can think of right now. I need some coffee.

Isles fans: stop
"I'm growing to hate Scott Gordon and Garth Snow for not having a goon. This would have never happened with Cairns on the ice!!!!"

What?

Dion Phaneuf is 6'3", 214 lbs. He hits the shit out of people, albeit sometimes when they're being checked by two of his teammates, one of whom already crosschecked him from behind. And sometimes he even fights. He gets paid millions of dollars to do this.

Do you really, really think having Don Brashear on the bench would have stopped Phaneuf from blindsiding Oh!poso? Motherfucker wouldn't even fight Morency, who (ok, he's a bit of hopeful fighter, but still) checks in at 5'10", 196 lbs. And he didn't have to. Brashear comes over the boards and Phaneuf would skate until the ice melted.

This team needs to get good at hockey. They will do this by bringing in good players. If those good players exhibit some toughness, that's wonderful. And they are auditioning some middle/upper-middle weights.

You don't need a full-fledged heavyweight in the NHL. Most of the guys taking cheap shots at your best players are shitheads like Phaneuf, or other middleweights who a) get some ice time, or b) think they're "pests." Pests run away from heavyweights. You keep a couple of mid-level guys around to punch Sean Avery and, I think, that's enough.

Anyway, welcome back hockey.

Here's to hoping Kyle O is 100 percent. Go Isles.

Already?

Didn’t take long for the New York sports writers to jump on the Tavares train… And run it off the rails. And it wasn’t just Tavares, they went after the second pick also. Here’s some recent headlines:

“Fans, Keep the Tavares Expectations Realistic”

"Analysis: Will Isles' decision not to add Kassian backfire?"

“Michael Jackson: The Wounds, The Broken Heart”

These were all from Newsday, by the way. Even the Post didn’t take any shots at the Islanders.

The top headline includes a list of players that Tavares definitely will not and probably won’t be as good as. This includes Crosby, Ovechkin and Malkin. Fine, I can deal with that, but the list goes on to include Zigmund Palffy and Steven Stamkos. I’m not saying that JT is going to be the second coming but let’s not kill the poor kids before the week is out. And other than the top three picks, it’s a crap shoot. I did some looking back at previous draft years and even the 1st round is a “Who? WHO?” list of also-rans.

Arthur Staple goes on to say that the Islanders "didn't have a clear-cut star to take at the top of the draft." Having the top Canadian junior league change the rules because of you and then to turn around and smash "The Great One's" junior scoring record counts as being a star, just so we're all clear.

Garth seems to have made some smart decisions that I can definitely live with as much as at the time I may not have been impressed (Bailey, Streit). So I’m going to put aside my negativity until it's proven that the Islanders made some bad mistakes.

And as for Tavares’ future—what the hell do I know about scouting? I'm just looking at the numbers and going with what everyone has said about the kid. And I haven't seen a reason to go negative yet.

Thanks to tomcuthbert.wordpress.com for the picture.

Happy Days Are Here Again

And breathe out...

The Mediocre One and I arrived at the Coliseum around 6, with the hazy sun beating down. After we were inside for about a half-hour, we stepped out to the concourse and saw this:



Not a good sign. My stomach started to churn a little more.

There were lots of people milling around the Coliseum floor, so we didn't stay there too long. We had some brief thoughts of buying some cheap merch (until I realized the line was way too long to wait on, especially for a Shawn Bates nameplate and a Dave Scatchard shirt) and taking a locker room tour (until, again, it was hard to justify waiting in a line that long just to gaze upon Tim Jackman and Dean Chynoweth, especially since I'd seen the locker room during last year's draft party debacle, where there were no lines at all). Instead, the Mediocre One grabbed a beer and I took some atmospheric photos.

Nice touch, putting the organ on the floor:



Here's Disco Chris King:



And, for Howie, a nice posed photo of Billy Jaffe:



Mike Bossy in the house:



There were plenty of jersey fouls to be seen:





And the relaying of word from Washington:



Then, we sat down and prepared for whatever the hell was coming. TMO called up Rev. Zamboni, who relayed the information that Colorado seemed convinced the Isles would take Duchene. This did not bode well for our safety, as every time Duchene appeared on the big screen, boos rained down (Hedman got his fair share too, but he at least seemed to have some supporters). We made note of the nearest exit.

As 7:00 drew nearer, I began to develop that feeling I get in the pit of my stomach prior to almost every Islanders-Rangers game. It is the feeling that something completely horrible is reasonably certain to happen, and when it does, there will be endless rounds of mockery that follow. TMO stated that he was feeling a bit uneasy, too.

After Bettman's standard long-winded introduction, it was go time. With TMO keeping the Rev informed over the phone, I was in charge of capturing the moment of euphoria/dismantling of the Nassau Coliseum. And it was exactly like this (sorry for the bad sound, but I think I captured the spirit of the thing):



And all was right with the world.



We stuck around to see if the Tavares interview was forthcoming, but I had a train to catch (thanks for the lift, TMO), so we bolted. I shared the good news with the LIRR ticket taker on the Hempstead train, and then another ticket taker broke the news that the Isles had traded up, which didn't surprise me. By the time I made it to Connolly's in NYC to see my friend's band (10 minutes to spare), the Isles had traded up again and selected a guy I'd never heard of (though, based on my knowledge of college and junior hockey, that's not such an amazing feat). I still don't know much about Calvin de Haan, or why the Isles were so high on him that they were willing to let so many picks go, but I'm not gonna think too much about it.

Why? Because for one night, things went as they should for the New York Islanders. Ten thousand Islander fans (their estimate...I'd place it a little lower) celebrated a happy occasion (I'd think even the Hedman supporters--and the Duchene backers, assuming there were some--were somewhat happy). People who'd been waiting for a reason to erupt finally got it.

And that's enough for today.

We Live In Hope

We hope that our team doesn't move to Kansas City.

We hope that Rick DiPietro plays a full season someday.

We hope that Kyle Okposo and Josh Bailey turn out to be superstars, or at least not Dave Chyzowski and Brett Lindros.

We hope that Alexei Yashin is sorry for what he did (or, rather, didn't do).

We hope that we can one day hold our heads up high and not be the punchline to every joke.

And we hope that when all the clouds of secrecy disappear, Garth Snow and the Islanders step up to the podium and pick John Tavares tomorrow night. Not necessarily because he's the best player (though he probably is). Not because Victor Hedman and Matt Duchene are much more inferior players (by all accounts, they're probably not). But because it is what must be done.

If the scouts are to be believed, Hedman and Duchene will both have long, successful careers in the NHL. And I wish them the best (unless they find themselves on the Rangers at some point in their careers). But, for the Islanders, and the fans who will gather at the draft party Friday night (you can say the draft party has no impact on the decision the Isles make, Garth, but you'll be whistling a different tune when the fans start beating Sparky the Dragon with sticks), the choice has to be Tavares. It is the safe choice. It is the best choice. It is the right choice.

Please, Garth, please.

The Palm Isle will have representatives at the draft party. I'll be there until right after the pick is made, at which point I have to dart to the train to get back to the city to see my friends' band play (bros before Snow, that's how I roll), but I believe The Mediocre One will be staying a bit longer. In any event, one or both of us should have a recap up over the weekend.

[ADDENDUM: I do not speak for our most celebrated Palm Isle denizen, The Rev. Zamboni, who has declared himself a Hedman supporter. Of course, he will not be in the Nassau Coliseum at 7:15 Friday night, so his declaration is understandable. I just want to live to see 33.]

A Brush with Fame

To all our loyal readers, you probably saw my twitter experiment. I'm a very lonely person. None the less, about a day after signing up for the account, none other than the New York Islanders twitter account was following me! (To the uninitiated, this was the cyber version of the Islanders picking me up at the airport or helping me move into a new place) All I could figure out is that someone from the Islanders organization actually takes this blog seriously enough to check up on regularly. Well, to make a long story short, they quickly stopped following me and I am now being followed by Ranger scum, "Uncle Greaseball." Play me off, kitty...