Hockey, Holiday Thoughts
Posted by jtbourne on January 5, 2010 · 15 Comments
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Major thanks to Ms. Conduct for yesterday’s great entry - always nice to change the pace up a little bit over here at Bourne’s Blog, and lord knows featuring Vesa Toskala does that.
Walk-off home run by Sturm
I haven’t had the chance to blog about the Winter Classic yet myself, so sorry this is a little late… but wasn’t that amazing?
Dude, I cried like four times. Not even sure why. It was like watching The-Masters-style montages about pond hockey, all those people, outdoors, toques everywhere, just the whole damn thing… I dunno…. the game has just done so much for myself and my family. From my Dad’s living to my own, we all owe a great deal of what we have to this sport, and to see it honored the way the Winter Classic does just tugged at my heartstrings. I could cry again. Moving on.
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Just watching the NHL Network here, as I tend to do in the mornings - not sure who ”Scott Cullen” is, but he apparently does a power rankings list (like the rest of the hockey watching free world, including me). He has the Canadiens ranked 11th and the Penguins 12th, which is backed up by neither stats nor logic. I am continuously befuddled by analysts insistence on placing originality over common sense.
So lemme ask… You buying the Canadiens right now? Their goaltending has been great, but still, I can’t imagine another cusp-playoff squad I’d want my favourite team to go up against more than the Habs. I’d be way more scared to see Atlanta or Philly in that eight seed if I’m in the top spot.
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What are you supposed to say to people around January 1st, Happy New Year or Happy New Years?
The Seinfeldian discussion I had with my buddy established this – the holiday is “New Years Eve”. Thus, wishing someone “Happy New Years” (as is the most common form, I think) is wishing for them to have one good day. “Happy new year”, then, blankets the whole year, and doesn’t need the event capitalization. So, happy new year to you.
These people should be beaten mercilessly.
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Christmas lights: You can have other colors than the staples of red, green and white, but not on their own. You can’t go with just an all-purple strand on your house, can you? You can do every colour, mashed together, but the isolated non event-themed strand? What are you trying to achieve here??
Also, I have no words for people like this ——->
On a related note, go take your lights down. It’s over.
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Keepin' it classy.
That Santa, boy. He’s one special cat. Apparently, I made the ”nice” list this year, because check out the latest edition to the Bourne abode on the left.
Oh by golly have a holly jolly Christmas – this yearrrrr.
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Who thanks who on the way out of a restaurant?
Should they be thanking me for my business, or should I be thanking them for their service? There has to be some “your welcomes” at some point, I think. If it were a big, mutual happy experience we were both benefiting from, we’d dine out all the time. It’s expensive, so we don’t. Thus, I believe (as does my heavily re-tweeted friend Dave) that as a customer, we pay for the service we get in tip form, so the “thank you” is taking it too far. Cash or thanks, your call, restaurants. I will now commence “your welcoming” thank you’s.
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I’ve noticed that every time a team gives up a huge number of shots, people automatically heap praise on the goaltender.
If our back-up goalie went in at any level, he always did better for himself if he saw 50 shots over 20, no matter how many actually went in. We tend to act like giving up three on 20 is so much worse than four on 50, but I’ve gotta believe that’s not always the case. I think we all agree that sometimes it has to be harder to play the 20 shot game, and, giving up three is better than four everytime.
The tendency for beat writers and analysts is to forget the most important fact: context is needed for every evaluation of goaltender performance. Just because a goalie makes 46 saves doesn’t qualify it as a well played game. Just because a goalie gets over the coveted 90% save mark doesn’t mean he played well either. It comes down to “should he have stopped that shot”, each one as an isolated incident. On any given night, maybe the answer to all 50 shots taken is “yes”.
The ONLY thing that matters is that context. A guy can give up four goals on 16 shots, but if he faced eleven breakaways and a two-on-one, he’s the first star. Maybe he went post-to-post for six minutes of 5 on 3 penalty-kill time without seeing a shot, but still managed to discourage players from pulling the trigger. The point is this: quit lavishing goaltenders with praise for performances based on scrolling ticker stats like ”stopped 46 of 50″ without doing a little actual processing of the game played.
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Thats all for today! Hope your new year is off to a great start.
I'm a hockey player turned writer. After playing for Alaska Anchorage in the WCHA (NCAA), I carried on with an NHL tryout (New York Islanders in 2007) before spending a couple seasons in the AHL/ECHL (last year was 2008-09). My father, Bob Bourne, won four Stanley Cups with the Islanders in the '80's, as did my fiancee's dad, Clark Gillies. I'm now the web editor for theScore's hockey blog "Backhand Shelf."
On the restaurant “thank you” question;
We work in what has to be the most competitive business for consistently being able to put the squeeze on peoples hard earned dollars. When you are lucky enough to have a steady business you should be grateful for it and should be the ones dishing out the “thank you” at the end. If you are lucky enough to have a great regular clientel(#14!), a gratis beer every once in a while should accompany that show of appreciation.
You’re right about the tip, it is the customers way of saying thank you and if a server or bartender gets a verbal thanks, it must mean that the service was above the usual standards!
Give my Canucks the Habs in the first round and I would even say nice things about Mike Milbury! Is he one of the biggest Douches out there, not only for his complete destruction of your Isles, but the fact that when he opens his mouth all logic within a 300 mile radius gets sucked into a black hole!
The restaurant should be thanking you for your patronage — there’s tons of places to eat out (probably more than there “should” be, if the speed of restaurant turnover and the number of special deals available on any given night is any indication), and a limited supply of customers.
Oh, and I’m with you on the Winter Classic. It’s truly a special game, and especially the pregame show gets a bit tear-inducing. Pretty good game this year, too, nothing like going into OT (or should we just call it “extra innings?”) to add to the excitement.
It’s “Happy new year.”
We say “New year’s eve” – using an apostrophe – because it’s a possesive. The eve “belongs” to the new year.
There is no reason to throw an random “s” on the new year.
And don’t get me started on random apostrophes.
Great pics with the article today! Especially the picture of the Griswold house. I think we can all agree that if your Christmas decorations can be seen on Google Earth, you have gone too far.
When the people that know us best buy us drinking related gifts, is that a sign of a problem? I would lose sleep over this if I didn’t get those gifts.
On the goalie thing:
50 shots a game is less than one a minute per game. But, honestly, a lot of those shots come in on sustained pressure. Granted the entire game doesn’t get played in one end but the goalie has to be paying attention for most of the game. Players get to hit the bench and not worry about being responsible for anything until they hit the ice again. Fifty is two and a half times as many shots as twenty. (word problems!) If they are all easy shots it’s 2.5x the possibility for a human error.
How many critical situations is the typical player in per game? Situations where your individual performance can have a very real impact on the game? Tap ins, interceptions, pokes out of the zone, that really sweet pass to the hack that’s going to take all the credit for that goal? All those things that you do individually that really have an impact on the game. Are there 20 or 50 a game? (not completely rhetorical, I just thought this up and I’m curious if anyone can help quantify it, is it quantifiable?) Every stop a goalie doesn’t make changes the score. Everyone else on the ice can makes some mistakes and get bailed out by the other guys on the ice. Goalies don’t have that luxury with an SOG.
Dude, I’m coming to your house for a drink – that’s a rockin’ mini-bar/end table!
Glad to hear that I’m not the only one who cries at things like the Winter Classic – sporting events do that to me *all* of the time.
I have a 7 year old cousin who’s just taking up goal…and Timmy’s acrobatics in the last few minutes of the game didn’t help. The 7 year old is thrilled because it just *looks*so*cool* and he can’t wait to try it. I’m shaking my head cuz that boy is so out of position that he has to throw himself across the crease in order to stop that last rebound.
Good thing they scored shortly thereafter, takes the pressure off
On the other hand, I couldn’t have stopped some of those even if I was in perfect position – so who am I to point fingers!
The mini bar is awesome, the fact that it has good Tequila in it even better. Though for cool bar gifts, I hold my rotating bar butlers most dearly.
Re the Christmas lights. Every street has a Griswold house.
You’re last point on goalies is brilliant. Just thought you should know.
Um USA beat Canada…can I get an amen? Carlson goal at the end was amazing…no looker in OT. Just saying
Too bad USA won, I thought we played a decent game, and the fact we pushed it to OT was awesome.
I’m sure Bourne will post on the WJ game, but I thought USA was a better team. Player for player I think Canada was better (and the 8 best Canadian juniors are in the NHL) but Canada forced plays, made bad passes, and fell off their gameplan every time things went south for 5 minutes. In contrast, the U.S. played smart, counterattacked like demons, skated their balls off (fastest team in the tournament, imho), and outplayed Canada in both games. Sweden was outstanding and the U.S. thumped them. Honestly, I was watching OT and telling my girlfriend that I really hoped the U.S. was gonna win when the winning goal was scored, I love my hockey and I love my Canada, but it would have been sickening to steal that gold medal after being outplayed twice (and then hear everyone talk about how great team Canada was for the next two weeks). It was nice to get er into OT so the U.S. couldn’t say they thumped us
Not that it affected the outcome of the game enough to matter, but once again, the IIHF demonstrated their refs don’t have a clue what they are supposed to be calling when two North American teams play each other. That blown icing call at the end of the second period might be the worst line call I have ever seen. Sour grapes, maybe, but the right team won imho.
Justin,
The NHL Power Ranking “guru” (?) on TSN.ca is Scott Cullen. I check out the rankings each week, being an Avalanche fan, and one of the sites I do check is TSN.ca. Scott Cullen has a formula for determining the rankings, part of which is the theoretical question as to which team would win a 7 games series. As a result he is constantly placing the Vancouver Canucks way up in the ranking, because of Roberto Luongo. Now as you mentioned on your blog at some point, Roberto vomited on the Canucks fans last year in the Chicago series. Each week I continue to wonder how and why Mr Cullen does his rankings the way he does. My thought is that the rankings should be based on the actual results and not some theoretical suppositions.
Isn’t that the truth – the Penguins are the defending Cup champions, with the same goalie that has been to back to back Stanley Cup finals, Crosby, Malkin etc. They’re ahead of Montreal in the standings by like, 7 or 8 points with a similar amount of games played, but yes, Montreal is doing better. Or will do better. Or… wait, why are they ahead again, Scott?
Scooped again! Thankful for the link and shout-out though. I also, will now be commencing heavily rotated “you’re welcome” s!