Guess Where I Was Tonight?

Fulfilling a dream, that’s where.  Some friends of ours just so happened to have two extra tickets for Game 2 of the Senators-Ducks Stanley Cup Finals, and offered them up to Heather and I.  Needless to say, we took them up on their generous offer, and I’m still abuzz from the experience.

If you know me, you know that I’ve always been a huge hockey fan, and attending a Stanley Cup Final game was one of the pentulitmate things on my sports-related “to do” lists.  You also know that, as a Kings fan since the late ’70s, I haven’t been too fond of the Ducks, because they represented everything that was an affront to what made hockey great (they were owned by Disney and named after one of their movies, after all).  So, even though it wasn’t necessarily the greatest circumstances going on (read:  it wasn’t the Kings playing in front of me), it was still an unrivaled sporting experience based on the sheer magnatude of things.  I mean, it was a Stanley Cup Finals game!  I don’t really need to stretch out a further explanation, do I?

Anyway, the place was bedlam.  I’ve never heard the crowd at the former Pond as loud, as raucous, as in tune, as I heard them tonight.  Over the years, I’ve criticized Duck fans as being stupid and ignorant about the game.  Well, it seems that a lot of those types have disappeared with those embarrasing cartoon uniforms.  The Duck fans that were there tonight (and a lot of the Duck fans I’ve come across this year) seemed to fall into three categories:  Newer fans that have absorbed as much hockey knowledge as possible since they’ve started following the sport;  older fans who decided to follow the sport and get behind the team during its inception and decided that they really enjoyed the sport despite all of the insane marketing ploys that surrounded the team; pre-existing hockey fans that lived in Orange County, rooted for the Kings because they were the only team in town, and just got burned out of the Kings being a crummy, rudderless franchise, and decided to cheer for the team closer to home.  Just so you know, I don’t fall into any of those categories.  In fact, you don’t know how difficult it was to type those last sentences.  At the game, I was secretly rooting for the Senators in my heart of hearts, but I didn’t want to show up my friends who hooked us up (and were attending the game with us).  So I went to the Pond on Tuesday and watched a taut, enjoyable hockey game, appreciating everything that it was even as I marvelled at where I was.  That said, every time I think of the fact that now the Ducks are just two games away from engraving their names on the Stanley Cup before the Kings ever get a chance to, my heart breaks a little bit more.

As far as the game goes; frankly, the Senators don’t deserve to win a game based on the way they played in Anaheim.  Other than a great fruitless flurry of attacking during a 5 on 3 during the first period, Ottawa has played four consecutive periods of craptacular hockey, in which they have looked any combination of intimidated, listless, afraid, and blase.  They played with all the fire and desire of an exhibition game.  It was that bad.  That, and Mike “Let’s Choke at the Open Net Twice in Ten Seconds” Cromrie should not be allowed to be on a power-play the rest of his career.  In fact, he needs to be hung in effigy by the Ottawa faithful.

NBC Sucks

Seriously, they suck.  How else do you describe a network that pretty much uses their American television power to goad the NHL into showing the Ottawa-Buffalo game on a Saturday afternoon, then kick the game off the network to show the Preakness…pre-race specatcular?  Instead of watching the thrilling end of a hockey playoff game in which one of the combatants stood to have their season end, NBC instead showed Bob Costas and others talk about how Barbaro is still dead.  It wasn’t even the damn horse race!  It was a pre-game show!  I’m especially bitter because I DVR’d the game because I couldn’t watch it live, completely unaware that NBC wouldn’t actually leave a game without seeing the ending through.  Of course, I should have realized that there was a great chance that the NHL would find yet another creative way to be the sporting world’s laughingstock.

Yeah, NBC generates a good chunk of revenue from the horseys.  But NBC of all networks should know that you don’t leave a live sporting event until the damn thing is finished (remember: they were the network behind the infamous “Heidi Game” back in 1968).  To leave it when the only two minutes of horse coverage anyone really gives a damn about was still almost two hours away was just unforgivable, especially since the league appeased them in the first place by giving them the game in the afternoon spot they wanted.  They obviously knew that playoff hockey can go into lengthy overtimes; they should have been better prepared for such potentail situations.

The NHL shouldn’t escape blame on this one, either.  They had to know how much the stupid little ponies meant to NBC, and should have fought hard to not have the game during the day, especially since that’s usually when hockey games are played (they don’t call it “Hockey Night In Canada” because the name is cutesy).  The game should have been shown after the horses, when the only scheduling conflict would have been a rerun of “Law & Order:  An Episode You Can Catch on TNT in a Couple of Months.”  As a result, the NHL still looks like a dumb league run by morons.  It’s a shame, since only the latter half of that sentence is true.  As a side note:  After the game, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s Wikipedia page read thusly:  “You are a F**k.”

At least the NBA’s post-season is completely fubared.  Otherwise, the NHL would look even more stupid.

I Told You I’ll Still Write About Sports…

So I read during a huge column about the NBA that some people think that a Stanley Cup Final between the Anaheim Ducks and the Ottawa Senators would be apocalyptical to the NHL.  This assessment was followed by the NBA getting chatted up even further.  You know, the league that totally screwed up their playoffs this season.

I’m here to say that not only would a Duck/Senator final be great for the league, it also has the potential to grab the attention of more American viewers than the NBA Finals, provided that the horror of a San Antonio/Detroit Final is closer to a reality.

In fact, let’s just assume that the Spurs and Pistons will advance to the last round.  Utah will battle San Antonio but eventually fall to the Spurs’ veteran grit, while Detoit will get bored with Cleveland, let them win a couple of games, and then destroy them when necessary.  When this happens, the NBA will have to try and market the same matchup between to utterly unwatchable teams for the third time in four years.    Sorry, but games with scores like 81-74 complete with players trying to beat teams singelhanded, guys bricking wide open shot after wide open shot, and dudes whining and diving will drive pretty much every casual fan outside those two cities away from the television.  Consequently, “So You Think You Can Dance” will probably slaughter it in the ratings.

Now, I’m fully aware that an Anaheim/Ottawa series puts the NHL in kind of the same boat.  Neither team is a glamour franchise or a team that has scores of fans scattered all over the U.S.  So yes, the casual fan may be turning the TV off, too.  So, if you level the playing field as such, you are left with the die-hard fans of each sport tuning in.  And from what I’ve been hearing, NHL die-hards have been better than their NBA counterparts in doing this of late.  Hockey ratings are up, and basketball ratings are plummeting.  The NHL has started to draw bigger Neilsen ratings than the NBA during the weekend, believe it or not.  Clearly, this time of the season is the NBA’s to lose, and they’re losing.

It’s not hard to see why.  After the debacle that was the Spurs-Suns series, where the entire battle turned in one team’s favor because of some stupid hard-line rule that was so insufferably defeneded by David Stern (who has now reached an all-time peak on the Smug Scale), hardcore fans have cast down various degrees of disgust on the league.  They look at the Spurs as a dirty, classless, whiny team that is impossible to root for in lieu of the league giving them an unfair advantage.  Now they are headed on a collision course with the Pistons, a team that has had that reputation for several years now.  But both teams make up for it by playing basketball that comes across more like torture than actual sport.  With no rooting interest, compelling storylines, or even mediocre hoop to watch, it’s not too shocking why this Final appears has great potential to be watched by 25 people.

A Ducks/Senators Final, on the other hand?  You want story lines?  How about Canada trying to win their first Stanley Cup in 14 years?  Or how about the greater Los Angeles area trying for their first Cup ever?   Perhaps the continuing story concerning the redemption of Dany Heatley?  Sentaor coach Andy Murray looking to stick it to his former team?  Rob Neidermayer finally joining ending his personal anguish and joining his brother Scott in immortality?  If any of that doesn’t intrigue you, consider that these two teams are perfect compliments of each other:  Great depth, incredible team speed, agressive game plans that emphasize attacking as often as possible, game-changing goaltending.  In other words, it’s great compelling hockey that is damn fun to watch.  And there’s no way the die-hards aren’t going to watch it.

Of course, an Ottawa-Detroit series may occur, and that would drag in more casual fans thus making the ratings higher.  But people shouldn’t look at an Anaheim/Ottawa matchup and automatically think it’s a bogus affair that’s detrimental to the league.  On the contrary, it will serve the NHL much better than the inevitable Spurs-Pistons series will help the NBA.

Better, Stronger, Faster? We’ll See

In case you didn’t hear the news, NBC (also known as Sci-Fi Channel 2) announced that they are rolling out an updated version of the cheesy ’70s show “The Bionic Woman.”  Now, at first I thought it was a completely laughable idea, for what should be obvious reasons.  That was, however, before I read that the brains behind it were the same folks who revamped “Battlestar Galactica.” Admittedly, I haven’t watched that show, but I have been told by a decent chunk of people that I am missing out on one of the finest hours on television.  From what I’ve read, I’m pretty sure that I am.  If Jamie Somers can be reinvented with as much awesomeness as Starbuck was (from what I’ve been told), this has a decent shot of reeling me in for at least the first few episodes (meaning that I will then have something like 28 shows to watch on TV — why can’t network programming suck like it did back in the old days?)

But before I make a full committment to a remake of one of the 70’s biggest television icons, there are a couple of demands I feel compelled to make:

1.)  When Jamie moves her bionics, it better have that “na na na na na na na” sound going on, as well as that sonar type noise when her ear is in use.  Since preliminary reports say that she’s adopting Steve Austin’s bionic eye, it better make that “boop boop boop boop” sound, too.  That was what made that show so dang fun to watch.  You knew that when those sounds were going off, some cool stuff was going to go down.  That’s why we all pretended to be Steve and Jamie as kids, right?  To make the cool sound effects?

2.)  Somewhere along the lines, they better bring back the fembots.  Not only that, they need to make the fembots completely bad-ass, like the new Cylons in “Battlestar.”  And if they come back, they had better come equipped with faces that are easy to rip off.  Not to sound mean or anything, but since the fembots terrified the poop out of me when I was a kid — seriously, nothing came close to scaring me as bad during the first ten years of my life as they did — I’d get a sense of schadenfraude knowing that there would be a bunch of little 6 year olds that would get as traumatized by those things as I did.  So Jamie’s bionics better be able to expose some wire and metal noggins, or I’m out.

If they stick to those tenants, I’m in, probably for at least a half-season.  If they don’t, I’ll just wait until NBC re-invents “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.”

Hello

So I’m back, after an extended break from the blogosphere.  The great experiment known as House of Sports Blab has been retired, so you’re now stuck with the good ol’ Windbaggery.  Don’t worry; I will vent about various sports things every once in a while, but forgive me if I’m a little gun-shy for diving back into the sportsworld for a bit (although let me say Go Warriors).

I’m really busy with real-world writing projects (that pay real live money) over the next couple of weeks, so posting here may be scarce in the immediate future.  But I promise I won’t let it fall into a state of neglect like I did for several months.