Partly because I have recently taken a shine to Japanese poetry and theatre (what?), and partly because it will be much, much easier and quicker this way, I have decided to preview the season for each conference in the ancient art of haiku. All teams will be covered in the order in which I believe they’ll finish. Yes, these are meant to take some thought.
Partly because I have recently taken a shine to Japanese poetry and theatre (what?), and partly because it will be much, much easier and quicker this way, I have decided to preview the season for each conference in the ancient art of haiku. All teams will be covered in the order in which I believe they’ll finish. Yes, these are meant to take some thought.
(Ed. note: Can you believe neither the AP nor Reuters had a picture of these three from tonight’s game?)
The Lead
It’s entirely likely that none of the three will be in the NHL by the time the puck drops on the real live NHL season. But over the last few days, Brian Burke has gotten a real good look at what could, within a year or two, develop into a very, very good scoring line and, unlike pretty much every line in the entire NHL, could be composed entirely of young players that went the college route.
The trio of Tyler Bozak, Christian Hanson and Viktor Stalberg, all of whom gave up some NCAA eligibility to join the Leafs, have been absolutely magic together, combining for four goals in the three games during which they’ve played as a line. Stalberg, a product of the University of Vermont, got the Leafs on the board tonight with assists from Bozak, who played two years at the University of Denver, and Hanson, who skipped his senior year at Notre Dame to go pro.
And there it was, the first gigantic hit of the hockey season. Dion Phaneuf on Kyle Okposo.
But given the time of year, this hit has already sparked a good amount of debate (covering several topics) among the Twittering and Facebooking and Messageboarding folks that care far too much about this stuff.
(Ed. note: As with Monday night, there were no pictures from this game immediately available, so here’s some crap I made in Photoshop very quickly. Love the smudge.)
The Lead
It’s not very often that the first preseason tilt of a team’s campaign tells pretty much the whole story for the remaining games, but the Toronto Maple Leafs came pretty close tonight against the Boston Bruins.
For one thing, they lost 3-2 and you get the feeling that, given the relative quality of the Leafs’ roster as it’s currently constituted, that seems just about right for the majority of the season, doesn’t it? Not that Brian Burke is at fault in this; he was handed a pretty awful team to begin with and has made some shrewd moves to improve it. Enough to make the playoffs? Probably not. But enough to keep Leafs fans entertained? You know it.
It has been four months and one day since the 2008-09 NHL season wrapped up with Sid Crosby raising the Stanley Cup above his head and while Gary Bettman wept with unbridled joy, wiping away his tears with $100 bills that would later be earmarked for use in the purchase of the Phoenix Coyotes.
But with tonight’s tape-delayed game between the Islanders and Canucks from some inland backwater in Northern British Columbia — there was SNOW on the ground! — NHL hockey began its 103rd “official” season.
I seem to have gone over the handlebars and careened into an endless abyss of stupidity, because this latest post at FlamesNation, about the NHLPA coup that went down on Sunday, just ended up as a bizarre mixture of odd references that, I hope, made some kind of cogent sense.
Notable things referenced: T.S. Eliot, the Cuban Missile crisis, the Simpsons, Georges-Pierre Seurat and the late-19th century pointillist movement, Dr. Strangelove and Bobby Holik’s contract with the Rangers (though not in that order).
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