Lets keep winning games. Please.

I always thinks it's really funny to look at which games get picked up by Versus and NBC and then ask "why?" Like last year, when the Devils had to deal with at least two Versus feeds a month because Versus desperately, desperately wanted to be the ones to broadcast Martin Brodeur's record-breaking 603,478,021st win.

I mean, nobody came out and said as much, but it couldn't have been a coincidence. I don't love Versus, but I put hockey on as background noise, whatever the game, and every week, like clockwork, there was Doc talking about how New Jersey was holding its own while Brodeur was on the mend. (Their plan failed, but they dropped everything to show it anyway. And by "dropped everything", I mean "interrupted a Wings game".) No, not a coincidence.

Sort of like I doubt that it's a coincidence that Ken and Mickey aren't calling either of the games the Wings play against the Pens this season.

No, seriously. There's another one in March, on a Monday, picked up by Versus. The league could have scheduled one of them on a Friday night. Instead of playing into NBC's plans to break the network record for most utterances of the words "rematch" and "rivalry".

But I don't care about rivalries or rematches right now. Sure, if the knowledge that they're about to play the Penguins riles the team up into a higher level of play, if the chance at retribution helps them to win, then I want them to play the Penguins every night.

But I'm not playing in this game; I'm watching (or, more accurately, listening, because aside from not particularly wanting to watch the NBC feed, I'll be driving back up to Grand Valley for the better part of the game), and as much as I want to care that it's the Penguins my team's about to play, I don't really care who the Red Wings are playing, if it's the Penguins or the Panthers or the Olympus Mons Dust Mites, which are a fictional team I just made up who play in the Martian Senior League - I just want the Wings to win.

I could change my mind about that tomorrow, when I catch NBC humping Sidney Crosby's leg before I hit the road and switch over to Ken Kal. But as I type, I'm watching Calgary rape Edmonton as they bump us out of the eighth spot in the west, so fuck Crosby - my mind's on those two points.

Also, the entire team has the flu.

Tonight there's a game against Boston. I'm not sure I have much to say about it, except to note that the team needs the points (I think we're 11th place out of 15 in the conference right now. I think, if I have any grasp on the sport at all, that we need to aim for at least 8th. Right? I'm not hallucinating that, am I?) and to spend another ten pages bitching about how much I hate Versus.

Which I should really stop. Granted, there's a lot to bitch about. There's no denying that. Especially in these trying times, where, if I have to watch my team lose consistently, I want everybody on the channel I'm watching it on, from the regional producers down to the lowliest interns to at least pretend to be ragingly unfair, completely biased homers. It just makes it easier when you feel like the color guy might be hurting right along with you.

But I feel like I've been too hard on Versus in the past. At least they're trying. At least they're a nationally broadcast cable network in the States airing hockey games across the country on a regular basis. Sure, they're not perfect. Sure, their commentators don't always kiss the ground that Ken Holland walks on like I think they should. Sure, Brian Engblom's hair looks like he scalped MacGyver and then decided to wear his mullet as a trophy headpiece but MacGyver's head was a little smaller than his so the mullet didn't quite fit right so he had to put it on little mullet stilts on his head so it would stay there*.

(*MacGyver's mullet wouldn't stay there. MacGyver's mullet would steal three paperclips and Kieth Jone's pen and use them to escape.)

But at least they're not NBC, who forbids teams from holding playoff viewing parties, makes us spend every intermission hoping Mike Milbury will finally just kick Pierre MaGuire's ass but he never does, and has a disconcerting anti-Swede bias, which I wouldn't even mind if my team didn't have more Swedes than Ikea had chairs, but it does, so I do mind, quite a bit.


I'm sorry, I'm sitting here rationalizing the legitimacy of the existence of Versus, where I should be doing my job - which is making myself feel better about a potential loss tonight by making fun of the Boston Bruins.

Sadly, all I have to give you is this video of some bears playing hockey:



I don't remember if we'd already posted this. Aside from the obvious ethical PETA/ASPCA questions I have... I just want to know how much fish paste and tranquilizer you have to use to teach bears to skate.

Probably more fish paste than it took to get Zdeno Chara to strip naked in front of a camera. (Don't worry, it's... tastefully... posed...) The good news about that picture is that if it struck you blind, you don't have to see Brian Engblom's hair at all tonight. Awesome!

game 6 jitters

I'm not sure if I'm excited or pukey right now. It's sort of how I felt last year. Understandibly.

I hope you haven't jinxed things by making personal celebratory plans, because this thing isn't over yet. Out of five Stanley Cup finals games played at Mellon Arena during the last two years, the Red Wings have only won 2. None of them have been in this series. I don't want this thing to go to seven games, but I'm not going to make the assumption that it won't.

Still... it could be over tomorrow. And if it is, I want to see how many Pens fans stay to boo Hossa.

I don't know where you'll be watching the game, but I can tell you where you won't be. You won't be at Joevision being treated to awesomeness like last year. Two quotes from the Free Press article sort of stuck out as douchey to me. "...the NHL asked NBC and CBC not to allow the Wings to broadcast the game," and "...one of the league's contractual agreements with NBC is that clubs will not hold viewing parties in their arenas".

So, if you weren't sure before, there's your proof that NBC is Satan and Gary Bettman is the antichrist.

Lindsay and I are going to go tye-dye at midnight to keep from worrying about where we may or may not be in 24 hours.

Well that makes me feel better about life

for the time being, anyway.

If you're reading this, I'm sure you know what happened. And you probably feel a little better about life too.

Granted, the Penguins were in a position where I'm not completely shocked they were bowled over. That doesn't matter. I still feel better about life.

12:30 is a god-awful time to start a hockey game. And on a Sunday. Do you have any idea what time I stay up on Saturday night, NBC? No, of course you don't. Because only old people watch network tv, and at 12:30 on a Sunday, old people are just getting back from church and/or Denny's and are ready to spend three sedentary hours watching a professional sport.

My bleary, sleep-deprived eyes didn't matter - the entire city of Pittsburgh told me with riotous boos when Marian Hossa got anywhere near the puck. The sound made me happy to be alive.

It's four in the morning now, and I don't have anything else intelligent to say. Here. Laugh at this picture of Sidney Crosby looking put out:

That is not a happy face. But at least it's a clean-shaven one. I was a fan of many things concerning the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs, but Sidney Crosby's pedo-stache was not one of them. For one, to be able to grow a pedo-stache you should be reasonably old enough to warrant the 'pedo' moniker. Sidney was not. For another, I am a girl and my playoff beard was coming in less patchy than his was.

So... is Ozzie our backup goalie again? I'm cool with it; if he's going to play better with a little of the pressure taken off him, then by all means Tyfus* for starter. I would just, in a world where people make podcasts about the playoff goaltending situation in the first week of February, like it to be given to me straight. It won't shatter my world or anything. I'm one of those insufferable little fangirls who would support Chris Osgood if his GAA were higher than your school's valadictorian's GPA and he got sent down to the ECHL by the farm team, but if Conklin's our starter for now, I'm willing to pretend I've never looked at his playoff record and roll with it. I am not, however, willing to listen to five different anylists and 10 different bloggers a night try to find some sort of mystical pattern in Mike Babcock's 'wait what's going on here?' goaltending rotation. That just makes me want to hit things.

(*I realize that Typhus is a terrible, contageous disease spread by parasites, which has killed uncounted people over the centuries, but that's what Lindsay's been calling Conklin for the past six weeks or so, and I've sort of grown attatched to it. Tyfus it is.)

Dear NBC,

While I greatly appreciate the potentially seizure-inducing effects of this video, if this is your attempt at convincing people from Detroit to watch the "Game of the Week", you failed.



Unless the demographic you were aiming at was the fifteen crazy fools who think it's fun to be reminded of that horrible game back in November, and in that case, good job. I, however, already hate having to listen to Pierre McGuire and Mike Milbury argue about Detroit's "goaltender situation", and it will only be made worse hearing them yell at each other about which team gets their revenge: Detroit for losing that game at the start of the season, or Pittsburgh for losing in the Finals. I, however, will continue to hope that one day Mike gets sick of Pierre and beats him with his own shoe live on the air.