There's a Heath Post from 1985 or 1986 in which I suggested on the op-ed page that our high school should quit playing interscholastic basketball and instead turn the gym into a hockey rink and launch a varsity team. Now I can't believe I ever said that out loud. I don't remember even considering how it might've made the basketball players and coaches feel, and, in fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't consider it, because there's no way I would've written it had I considered it. That sort of qualm would pretty much end me with journalism about 10 years later, but I guess I hadn't yet aged into thinking about stuff like that in 1985 or '86. I was just saying things that I sort of believed and that I thought would get me attention.
Anyway, I have always liked hockey. It's solidly my fourth-favorite sport to watch, and hockey is a goodly bit closer to being third (ahead of baseball) than it is to being fifth (behind golf, curling, racing or whatever catches my fancy in a given season). And then a few months ago, I decided I needed to start watching more sports because I really do love that. I realized in the last couple of decades that I actually love playing sports more than I love watching them, but I do still love watching them, too, and, so, a few months ago, I decided to start watching them more again. And so I've watched a lot in the first months of 2025--most of the Masters, almost all of UK's basketball season, some baseball, a bunch of NBA and probably more NHL in a two-month span than I'd ever watched.
Playoff hockey is, of course, famously great, and, for my money, the reputation is deserved. And I say that having actually missed the phenomenal ending of the Blues-Jets series last night. I was rooting for St. Louis because I've always loved their uniforms and because the Blues were always my late brother Kurt's favorite team. In Game 7 of their series last night, St. Louis jumped out ahead of Winnipeg by 2-0. Then the Jets close to 2-1, and then the Blues, at the very end of the third period, got back out by 3-1.
At this point, I quit watching. Our daughter went back to school yesterday afternoon, and things have been cuckoo in the comings and goings of my wife and me these days. I know plenty of families who have it a lot cuckooier all of the time than we do, so maybe it's just that we are babies. But, whatever, for my wife and me, this period has been supremely cuckoo. And so by 9 p.m. or so when those great uniforms went back out by two goals with only one period left to play, I decided to quit paying attention to sports and instead focus more of my attention on my wife.
That was the right move, but, man, oh, man, did I ever miss a finish in Blues-Jets! Winnipeg scored with about a minute to go in the third period, and then they scored again in the last couple of seconds to force overtime. And then the Jets won in the second overtime.
That gets us to down to the conference semifinals and eight teams vying for the 109th awarding of the Lord Stanley of Preston Cup:
- Carolina Hurricanes of Raleigh, N.C., United States
- Dallas Stars of Dallas, Texas, United States
- Edmonton Oilers of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
- Florida Panthers of Sunrise, Florida, United States
- Toronto Maple Leafs of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Vegas Golden Knights of Paradise, Nevada, United States
- Washington Capitals of Washington, D.C., United States
- Winnipeg Jets of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
I'm interested in the NBA playoffs, too (hooray the Warriors won last night!); the amazing Athletics have lit the whole sports world on freaking fire (19-16!), and I'm starting to go nuts about the new Dolphins (I've got to remember to take a flyer on Ollie Gordon II in our Yahoo! league). But I think I'm going to plan to HP the rest of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Capitals are my favorite, of course, but I could get pretty excited about any one of five or six of these eight teams winning the whole deal.
The Maple Leafs beat the Panthers last night, 5-4. This time, I gave up watching with Toronto up, 4-1, and Florida nearly made me pay again. But we are into the Ken Burns country-music series, and it's just fantastic. Every so often, he's putting maps up on the screen when people are talking about radio stations, and it just grabs me every time.
ReplyDeleteThe Maple Leafs have won 13 Stanley Cups, the last one coming in 1967. The Panthers have won one Stanley Cup, that one coming about 10 months ago.
There is so little scoring in hockey that it's weird how often you can actually see goals scored if you pay attention at all. I guess soccer is probably like that, too, though it feels more random to me. But, with hockey, even if you're no more knowledgeable a fan than I am (and I'm not very knowledgeable at all), you really can kind of tune in for five minutes here or five minutes there and feel whether there's going to be a goal scored based on seeing the relative activity of the players of the ice and hearing the tone of the crowd and the announcers.
ReplyDeleteWe did the first hour of the second (great!) Ken Burns country-music episode last night, but I checked in on the Capitals-Hurricanes about when I thought the overtime period was about to start. Almost immediately, I had a sense of disappointment and knew not to turn away.
Sure enough, within seconds after that feeling set in, Carolina executed one of those hockey plays where they take a shot from way out but have a player with his back to the goal closer in, and that guy slightly redirects the fast-coming puck just enough to confound the goalie: Canes 2, Caps 1.
The Hurricanes were founded as the World Hockey Association New England Whalers in 1972, then joined the NHL as the Hartford Whalers in 1979 and moved to North Carolina in 1997, winning the Stanley Cup in 2006. The Capitals have been around since 1974, and they won the 2018 Stanley Cup.
Also last night, the Edmonton Oilers beat the Vegas Golden Knights, 1-0.
ReplyDeleteThe Oilers (founded in 1972 as the Alberta Oilers) are another team that came in to the NHL through the WHA in 1979. When they did, the Oilers won a fight to keep Wayne Gretzky on their roster, and that was a good battle to pick. Edmonton won the Stanley Cup in 1984, '85, '87, '88 and (though without Gretzky) '90.
The Vegas Golden Knights were founded in 2017 and won the 2023 Stanley Cup.
One of my favorite things about NHL.com is that they display a little picture of a Zamboni ice-resurfacing machine next to a counting-down clock when the game you're following is in intermission.
ReplyDeleteSince I last commented, the fourth of the four conference-semifinal series has gotten underway. The Winnipeg Jets and Dallas Stars are tied at a game apiece, and Game 3 of their series is scheduled for Sunday.
ReplyDeleteThe Winnipeg Jets are the old Atlanta Thrashers. They actually aren't the old Winnipeg Jets. The first Winnipeg Jets were another charter member of the old WHA, founded in 1972 and then merged into the NHL in 1979. Those Winnipeg Jets became the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996 and then the Arizona Coyotes in 2014, and none of those teams won a Stanley Cup before that team went inactive after last season. The current Winnipeg Jets trace back, rather, to the expansion Atlanta Thrashers of 1999; the team filed for bankruptcy in 2009, was taken over by the league and then moved to Winnipeg in 2011. And there they continue to toil today--also with no Stanley Cups in their history.
The Dallas Stars are, of course, the old Minnesota North Stars, which were part of the six-team expansion of 1967 which ended the NHL's "Original Six" era and doubled the size of the league. The Cleveland Barons--another member of the 1967 expansion class (and formerly the Carolina Seals, Oakland Seals, Bay Area Seals and California Golden Seals)--merged with the North Stars in 1978. None of these teams won a Stanley Cup until six years after the whole operation left Minnesota for Dallas (with Roger Staubach's encouragement) in 1993. No longer North, the Stars won the 1999 Stanley Cup in a controversial finish that gave the NHL its only champion from 1995 through 2003 other than the Colorado Avalanche, Detroit Red Wings on New Jersey Devils.
Also since Wednesday, Edmonton has extended its lead on Vegas to two games to none (the Oilers and Golden Knights are scheduled to start Game 3 in about half an hour), and Toronto has gone up two games to one on defending-champion Florida (Maple Leafs-Panthers Game 4 is Sunday evening).
ReplyDeleteFinally, just now in Raleigh, the Carolina Hurricanes clobbered the Washington Capitals, 4-0. It felt like it could've been 40-0. The Canes lead the series two games to one.
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ReplyDeleteThe Capitals are my favorite NHL team.
I started with the Chicago Black Hawks (now the Blackhawks) because my family lived outside Chicago for a little while in the early 1970s. We went to some games, and the Black Hawks were good. The Capitals became my second favorite team (as opposed to my second-favorite team) during the Lake Placid 1980 Olympics, and I would pretend the Washington players in their red, white and blue uniforms on my 1979-80 Topps cards were Team USA.
Ever since, I've rooted for the Caps. I also rooted for the NBA's Washington Bullets since boyhood. When I moved to Washington in the 1990s and got to live the day to the day with my favorites, I found it, on balance, detrimental to my Bullets/Wizards rooting and, on balance, enflaming of my Capitals ardor. I know the Washington Capitals are a frustrating experience for many of us fans; however, when your other favorites are the Wizards, NFL Miami Dolphins and MLB Athletics, the Caps have been the jewel of your team-sports crown since the 1990s.
The Hurricanes are my second-favorite NHL team (as opposed to my second favorite team). They were the only big-league team when I lived near Raleigh in the late 1990s and early 2000s (still are), and it was infectious to live around so many invested fans.
ReplyDeleteThe church my wife served in Raleigh was chock full of giant Hurricanes fans, and, in fact, I read in its newsletter this week (it's the church where I was baptized, so I stay pretty dialed in) that several members would be working a concession stand at tonight's game as a fundraiser for the church. It's a regular deal; they are scheduled to be back Monday for Game 4 and next Saturday for Game 6 (if necessary). Last NHL season, church members worked 42 Lenovo Center concession-stand shifts, earning more than $40,000 for the church. That's a lot--might pay for an entire administrative-support person.
I just can't believe, for as little scoring as there is in hockey, how often I tune in a game and within just a few seconds see somebody score a goal.
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