The New 52

Well, I've made it to another milestone, turning 52 today.  I had a wonderful day, starting with Vicki joining me for my Tuesday yoga class, and ending with the two of us watching one of the last House M.D. episodes together on Netflix (just 3 to go, now).  In between those two thrills, I also got homemade brownies, a new hoodie and T-shirt, take-out fish & chips for dinner, another awesome viewing of The Avengers on Blu-Ray and even a Rangers win over the hated Islanders (which I could've watched on TV but opted for the movie instead).  I don't think the day could've been any better, really, thanks to my lovely wife.

The Final Jar

Nearly 6 years ago Vicki and I spotted a cache of Bick's Dill Pickles with Garlic in the 1.5 L size, a rare bird which had long since gone extinct in these parts.  We excitedly bought as many jars as we could carry home by foot.  In the end, after more than one trip to the Superstore, I think we had stockpiled roughly 20 jars.  And I was in Heaven.

Today I'll begin enjoying the final jar of that stash.  When the NHL playoffs began two months ago, I decided I'd crack open the sole remaining jar once the Rangers were eliminated, as a small form of consolation for another disappointing year.  Little did I know that the Blueshirts would actually make it to the Finals, coming up just 3 wins short of capturing the Cup.  The postseason wrapped up late last night with another heart-breaking overtime loss, but today I'll get my reward on the 20th anniversary of the last time they actually didn't fail in their pursuit of the utimate glory.

This is also the 2nd anniversary of Jonesy joining our family, another event for which I'm extremely thankful.  And yet, even he's not getting any of the precious contents of that jar!

So Long, Torts!

Another one bites the dust in New York!  Tortorella had a respectable regular season record with the Rangers but a lousy postseason mark.  I guess we'll just have to wait to see how the next guy does, as always.  The Blueshirts have looked better on paper than they have on the ice for most of the last few seasons, so that's either an indicator that the coach couldn't get much out of them or that they just don't play well with each other.

The New Setup

A beautiful sight!  Everything looks better on plasma, I guess.

Pink Floyd - "Moonhead" 1969

This little gem is downright surreal:



Read more about it here, if you're so inclined.

Whenever I watch video of moon walks, I'm always terrified that one of the astronauts is going to rip a hole in his suit, despite the fact that I know that nothing like that ever happened. Sort of like the way I get nervous watching my DVD of Game 7 between the Rangers and Canucks from 1994.

All Hail King Henry!

New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist finally won his first Vezina Trophy tonight! He had to post 8 shutouts over the 62 games he played - better than 1 shutout every 8 games! - and lead his team to the top of the Eastern Conference in the regular season to get it, but he did it!

He also backstopped the Rangers all the way to the Conference Finals this spring (and recorded another 3 shutouts along the way) before the team ran out of gas against the Devils, who would eventually lose the Cup to the Kings in six games. All in all, a very impressive year for King Henry and his teammates, even if they did come up six wins short of the ultimate prize.

Why I Don't (Very Often) Watch Rangers Games On TV

For some strange reason (presumably something to do with Canadian content), the vast majority of the New York Rangers' first 9 games of the season have been televised across the relatively basic TV channels that we subscribe to. By my count, at least their games against Los Angeles and Anaheim (both from Stockholm), Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa have been on TSN, Sportsnet or CBC so far, along with (possibly) the one versus Winnipeg. That's 7 or 8 of 9 games... for an American team that's not even one of the premiere Cup contenders these days!

Today was pretty typical of what happens when I try to watch a Rangers game. I checked in during the 3rd period, to see the Blueshirts up 4-1 on the Senators. Just as I was digesting that fact, however, Ottawa scored to make it 4-2. Then several minutes later, 4-3. And of course they tied it up before the period ended, sending it to overtime and eventually to a shootout... where the Rangers would lose.

So for those who wonder why I don't watch more Rangers game? There's your answer.

Boneman's Bruins Are Gonna Play For The Cup!

In a very exciting Game 7 tonight, the Boston Bruins claimed the 2011 Eastern Conference Championship by edging Tampa Bay 1-0! They'll begin what should be an epic Stanley Cup Final against the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night, marking the first time Boston's been there since 1990, I believe. As for the Canucks...

Well, if my memory serves, it was 1994 the last time Vancouver vied for the Cup, and they came very, very close to winning it that year. I seem to recall a Game 7 then, as well... Fortune smiled on us long-suffering Rangers fans on that historic Tuesday evening, indeed, and we got a Game 7 for the Ages! Maybe Boneman will be equally blessed by the time the dust settles on 2011's big matchup.

Stars And 'Canes Defy All Logic And Break Their Fans' Hearts

I did a pretty good job of not following the NHL this season - I didn't even know about the new tie-breaker rule that was implemented this year until Boneman mentioned it to me a couple weeks ago - but that same Bone fellow dragged me back in when he claimed the Rangers were 9 points up on a playoff spot with about 6 or 7 games to go. It turned out they were only 7 up, but even that looked reasonably safe, so late in the season. Then the team chasing them for the 8th spot in the East - Carolina Hurricanes - proceeded to win just about every game they played, and it set up a nail-biting final weekend for the Rangers, for the second season in a row. Last year they lost a shootout to the Flyers on the final day, and missed the postseason by that small of a margin. This year they needed to beat the Devils on Saturday afternoon and then hope the red-hot 'Canes would be unable to win against the Lightning later in the day. Tampa Bay had nothing to play for, as they were already in and couldn't move up or down in the standings.

The Rangers pulled off their part, downing the Devils 5-2 to finish with 93 points. I would've bet a fair amount of money that Carolina would be able to win their game, considering that it was a "win and you're in" scenario. Instead, Rangers coach John Tortorella's old team from Tampa did him a huge favour and pummelled the Hurricanes 6-2, sending the Broadway Blueshirts back into the playoffs after a one-year hiatus.

It boggles my mind that Carolina would come up short in that situation, but then lightning (pardon the pun) struck twice more! First Chicago had a chance to secure a playoff spot by earning at least a point against Detroit this afternoon, but couldn't do it, losing 4-3 in regulation (in a game that featured a fantastic finish). That was surprising but not shocking, as the Wings are an excellent team and probably relished the thought of keeping the Hawks out of the postseason. But this set up the Dallas Stars for their game against Minnesota tonight, knowing that a victory against the golf course-headed Wild would propel them into the postseason at the expense of the defending champion Blackhawks... and they lost 5-3! How crazy is it to have one weekend where three teams choke that badly against opponents that couldn't possibly be playing as hard, or have nearly as much on the line, as they do? I would never have thought to see it. At least Chicago's fans lived to see their team play another day, as it were.

And now back to that tie-breaker rule... the NHL changed the first tie-breaker condition from most wins to most wins in regulation or overtime, thereby nullifying the value of any shootout victories beyond the 2 points that they carry with them. This set up a situation where, had Carolina beat Tampa last night, their 41 wins (and 93 points) would've been considered better than the Rangers 44 wins (and 93 points)! The Rangers had the misfortune to get 9 of those 44 victories in the shootout whereas Carolina was only 5-5 after overtime. I hated that rule change as soon as I heard about it, and I hate it even more now that it almost cost the Rangers a playoff spot. I really hope they get rid of it, even if that means eliminating the shootout and going back to awarding ties (if you get through the O/T without a winner). A double standard, as the rule provides now, just shouldn't be allowed.

(An Almost) Happy Birthday To Boneman

It had all the makings of a very special 41st birthday today, when he found out that he had to travel to Tampa with his boss on business at the same time his beloved Bruins were visiting the Lightning. Sure enough, they got tickets and headed out to the game tonight... what a great birthday present!

I first knew that things weren't going well when I got a text reading "This game blows" (which I initially mistook as coming from Julie, my usual texting-buddy, making me wonder just what game she was watching!). After being down 3-0, the Bruins pulled a little closer but the game ended 3-1. As I texted him back, that's the kind of game I usually get when I make the mistake of watching the Rangers live: they get behind early and never have a lead! Oh well... at least he got to the game!

How Are The San Francisco Giants Like The Philadelphia Flyers?

It occurred to me today that the Giants, who will shortly attempt to win their first World Series title since moving to San Francisco in the 1950s, have something in common with the NHL's Flyers of 2010: both teams are playing for the championship after making the postseason on the final day of the regular season!

In the Flyers' case, they won a last-second shootout last April (against my hapless Rangers), catapulting them into the first of four rounds of playoffs before finally falling to the Black Hawks. For the Giants, they needed a win against Western Division rivals San Diego Padres in their 162nd game to avoid facing a tie-breaker scenario in order to make the postseason.

Put another way: fans of both teams went into the close of the season facing the very real possibility that each franchise might miss the playoffs entirely this year, only to both avoid disaster and eventually vie for the ultimate prize. Talk about a dramatic turnaround!

Nice To See Some Rangers Team Doing Well!

It's too bad that it's the team from Texas instead of the one in Manhattan, but congratulations nevertheless to Nolan Ryan's Rangers for making it to their first ever World Series this year. They had to beat the most storied franchise in baseball to do it, and that's a nice way to make the big time.

Tomorrow - or possibly Sunday - we find out whether they'll be playing the Giants or the Phillies. Vicki thinks it'll be the former. Me? I'm done predicting!

Texas Vs San Francisco In The World Series? Really?!

OK, so maybe it's a bit premature still to be assuming it'll be the Giants vs the Rangers for the 2010 Major League Baseball championship, but things are definitely leaning that way at the moment. SF has a 3-1 stranglehold on their best-of-7 National League Championship Series against the Phillies and can advance to the World Series with a home win tonight, while the surprising team from Texas is up 3-2 on "the stinking Yankees" (as Boneman calls them), with both remaining games in that series (if two are necessary) set for Arlington over the weekend.

Prior to this postseason, Texas had never even won a playoff series. The Giants, along the same lines, are still awaiting their first championship banner after relocating from New York more than 50 years ago. In other words, these are not perennial favourites by any stretch. The two teams they may end up knocking out, on the other hand, are: New York won it all last year, and Philadelphia took home the trophy in 2008! So it would be quite the shocker if those two end up coming so close, and yet so far...

Oh, and I can't believe I've gone this far into the current ALCS matchup without mentioning that it's the "New York/Rangers" series... Well, it is!

16 Years Ago Tonight

It's always tougher to celebrate the anniversary of the Rangers winning the Cup on this date in 1994 when the modern day equivalent has missed the most recent playoffs - as happened this year - but maybe, in a twisted sort of way, that just makes the significance of that bygone day all the greater.

I also think that, had you told me 16 years ago that I'd still be marking the anniversary of that victory every year since, I'd have taken some satisfaction from it. While it's nice to dream of what it would be like to have so many championships that I can't remember the details of each anymore (hello, Red Wings fans?), at times I prefer the specialness that comes from having just one... one perfect, President's Trophy-combining championship that had a whole nation watching it. Not bad at all, that.

Put Away Those Brooms

Much to Boneman's dismay, the first 2 rounds of the 2009/10 NHL Playoffs will feature no sweeps. The last time all 12 series in the Conference Quarters and Semis went at least 5 games was 2001/02 (not all that long ago), and it's certainly a lot more common to see at least some lopsided results across that many matchups. Not this year, though.

Detroit and Philadelphia, the only 2 teams to head into a Game 4 in 2010 down 3-0 (so far), avoided the brooms in diametrically-opposed ways: Detroit took a 5-0 1st period lead over San Jose last night and eventually won 7-1, whereas the Flyers needed overtime tonight to avoid elimination at the Bruins' hands.

It figures that the Rangers would miss a playoff year where no one got swept... although I suppose if they'd made it in this year, then that particular statistic might not have held up anyway!

That Can't Be Right... Can It?

On TSN just now, they said that the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers are meeting in the playoffs for the first time since... 1978?! How could two Eastern Conference teams who make the postseason on such a regular basis possibly go more than three decades without encountering each other in the playoffs? That's pretty weird!

In the first year that I followed hockey - 1973/74 - my Rangers played in a thrilling 7-game Semi-Final series against the Flyers in which the home team won every game (unfortunately the Rangers only got 3 home games). Game 7 finished 4-3 for the Broadstreet Bullies and featured one of the most exciting final few minutes I've ever seen, with the visitors doing everything but tying the game up.

The victorious Flyers then went on to meet Boston in the Cup Final, and took home their first of two back-to-back championships (their only ones, to date). It's hard to believe those two teams had not matched up against each other since a mere 4 years after that memorable playoff season. And yet here we are.

Was It An Historic Upset Last Night?

I hate the fact that the Montreal Canadiens overcame a 3-1 deficit in their first round series against Washington this year and advanced to the 2nd round of the NHL playoffs. Absolutely hate it! Can't stand that team, period.

But, I have to admit that there's some small sense of satisfaction in seeing the Capitals suffer the same ignominious fate (losing a best-of-seven series in which they led 3-1) that they themselves inflicted upon my Rangers just one year ago. Ha! Looks good on you, Caps!

But there's more to it than that. Washington allowed the biggest playoff comeback in history (measured by team seeds), as someone pointed out to me this morning. This is the first time a # 8 team in the conference has been down 3-1 to a first-place seed and come back to win the series. So that's pretty embarrassing, if you happen to be a Washington Capital. (It's just so very sad that it had to happen to Montreal, of all teams, though.)

Even worse, however, is the possibility that this is the biggest playoff upset in NHL history. Now, it all depends on how you measure such things, I suppose. Point differential at the end of the regular season, between the favoured team and the underdog, for example, would be one way to go. Here, that differential was 33 points (Wash = 122 pts, Mtl = 88 pts), which might or might not be big enough to take the prize. However, another way to consider "upsets" is to look at where the teams finished the season in terms of overall seeding. Washington took the President's Trophy with the # 1 spot (best team in the league!), whereas Montreal finished nearly in the bottom third of the league with their 19th place season. (8th in the East, but 19th overall.) What are the chances of a 19th seed even making the playoffs each year? Well, somewhat long but nowhere near unheard of (it all comes down to how balanced the two conferences are). But then to knock off # 1? Has it ever happened... before last night, that is?

Anyway, I'm disgusted with the performance of Ovechkin and his teammates over the past week, because it failed to eliminate my most-hated team from the postseason. But it's possible that they feel even worse than I do right now, and that would at least be a little consolation!

First Round Of Playoffs Rolls Along

A week and a half into the 2010 NHL playoffs, here's what we know about the first round:

• there were no sweeps
• only one series finished in 5 games (Phil over NJ)
• at least three series will end up 4-2 (Pit, San Jose and Van all winning in 6)
• at least one series will go the distance (Det and Pho tied at 3-3)
• three series will go either 6 or 7 games (Bos, Wash and Chi all lead 3-2 at the moment)

Not long ago, I blogged about the incredible parity demonstrated at the start of the postseason this year. While that tight start let up a bit as we went along, both in terms of series results and individual game scores, we've still seen a lot of overtime periods and empty net goals lately (both indicative of close games).

If we compare what we know about this current first round to last year's results, we see that there were three sweeps in 2009 compared to none this year, which is certainly not offset by the fact that no series finished in five games last year while one did this time around. There was a total of 44 first round games in 2009, and we can count on a minimum of 48 before we're through to Round 2 this year, with the possibility of as many as 51 games. In other words, the proceedings have unquestionably reflected more parity this year than last.

I've watched some portion of all 44 games so far this round, and very few of them have failed to provide good entertainment. If hockey fans in general aren't excited about the playoffs right now, then I'm not sure they really deserve the label "fan"... and I say that as someone whose team isn't even in the festivities, so that's hardly an excuse for Leafs, Oilers or Flames followers!

Extremely Tight Start To The Playoffs

As I write this, 14 games are in the books to start the NHL playoffs (with one more game still to come later tonight). That's six series that have played a pair of games already, and two that have only completed a single game so far. All of the former are tied at 1-1, with the other two (obviously) sitting at 1-0. So that's pretty tight!

But now consider that, of those first 14 games, only one of them (Detroit vs Phoenix, Game 2) went into the final minute of the third period with a team holding more than a one-goal advantage! (And that one exception stood at 5-4 Detroit with just over two minutes left!) Think about that: 13 of the 14 games were either tied or featured one of the teams up by a single goal as the game went into the last minute of regulation! That's a pretty amazing situation, if you're a fan of close hockey games... as I generally am, when the Rangers aren't playing!

I have to think there are some hockey fans out there who have probably nibbled their fingernails down pretty good by now! And we're only four nights in...

[Update Sun, Apr 18/10: Make that 14 of the first 15 games, as last night's Vancouver/LA Game 2 went into overtime. Since the Kings won it, that means seven of the eight series are now tied 1-1, with the remaining matchup still 1-0 for Nashville at the moment.]

[Update 2 Sun, Apr 18/10: Well, all series went to 1-1 after 2 games, but today saw 3 different games (Det/Pho, Pit/Ott, Chi/Nas) which weren't extremely tight into the final minute, as each one featured a 2-goal lead at that late stage. So the series are showing lots of parity but the games are starting to loosen up a bit.]

Stick A Fork In Them

It took 82 games, including an overtime period and a shootout in the final one, but the highly-paid New York Rangers managed to just miss the 2010 playoffs. With their 2-1 shootout loss to the Flyers this afternoon, they end their four-year streak of making the playoffs, finishing 9th in the East with 87 points this year.

In other words, after starting 7-1 in their first 8 games of the season, they couldn't even manage to go 0.500 the rest of way, posting a 31-32-11 record the rest of the way. How pathetic is that? Pretty damned pathetic!!

Congratulations to all the fans of all the teams that actually finished in the top 53% of their respective conferences this year. Too bad I'm not one of them!