Perfect Hockey

Hockey has a limited following in the United States. I mean, yeah, there's lots of NHL fans, but most people in America would rather watch basketball than hockey, far more would prefer baseball, and nearly everyone would rather watch football.

People give all sorts of reasons for not liking hockey. They say it's too physical, that it isn't physical enough, that there's not enough scoring*, and that the rules are too complicated. They don't like how the play gets caught in the corners, the interminable whistles, and the stupid term "power play."

If any of those people watched tonight's USA/Canada game, they have become hockey fans. It was a perfect game, with relatively few whistles, physical, fast play, and plenty of scoring. The United States, again led by unlikely hero Brian Rafalski, scored less than a minute into the game and never trailed, despite being heavily outshot. The game itself was pretty even, with lots of end-to-end action, including one sequence where the Americans earned a breakaway, followed by a Canadian breakaway, followed by an American breakaway. This is beautiful, beautiful hockey.

There was plenty of physicality, with hits on both sides of the ice, including a weird collision between two Canadians that wrapped up a third. There was finesse, with players batting passes out of the air and back onto their sticks. There was flow, particularly in the first and third, with lots of point shots and transition offense.

The Candians were victimized by, in my opinion, a poor choice in starting goaltender. Look, I respect Brodeur, but when you're playing in Luongo's home rink against your best competition thus far, you might as well use your best goalie. Luongo doesn't allow the goals Brodeur did, particularly the ugly five-hole goal that hit Marty's stick between his legs as it deflected in. Ryan Miller, however, was brilliant, making some saves in the third period that looked, well, Brodeur-ish.

It was nice to see Drew Doughty representing his country with style and grace. Where Canadians were unlikely to comment on Doughty before, I suspect we'll start to see some #8 Team Canada jerseys before these Olympics are over. He was really, really good, and almost scored late in the third on a brilliant deke and skate into the crease. He was, however, spun around by Kings teammate Dustin Brown before diving to poke away the puck before Brown could put a shot on net.

Soccer is often called "the beautiful game," but hockey looked pretty damn gorgeous tonight.

*For those of you who like football, and think hockey is low-scoring, make touchdowns worth a single point and goals worth 7. Tonight's game was won by the United States 35-21. The Saints won the Super Bowl 5-3, rounding up each team's actual scores of 4.4 and 2.4 to whole numbers. Hockey is not low-scoring.

Oh yeah, I have a blog

I've discovered that I have substantially less to blog about when the teams I follow are playing well. If the Angels win the Series, the Kings win the Cup, and the Huskies win anything, I'll probably spend months away from here.

Regardless, after watching the US demolish Norway 6-1 despite playing about 20 minutes of good hockey and 40 minutes of crap, I figured I'd talk about sports.

Angels

I promise to have a season preview up before the season actually begins. With most projections showing the Angels to be an 85-win team, I'm fairly confident they can win 90, but it's going to take repeat or better performances from Morales and Kendrick, along with some degree of recovery from Kazmir and Santana. Santana is probably the most important player on the Angels. If he can return to his 2008 performance, he becomes a cheaper, younger, and better John Lackey. Kazmir as well, although I expect less from him, largely because he hasn't showed the solid peripherals he maintained during his first couple seasons for the last three seasons.

Joel Piniero was a waste of money. But that will become clear shortly enough. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Tony Reagins is not a top-tier GM.


Huskies

This is a big weekend for Northeastern. The hockey team opens at Matthews against BC tomorrow in a surprisingly crucial game. I say "surprisingly" because the Huskies were clinging to the final playoff spot three weeks ago, giving games in hand to powerhouses like Merrimack, and with the distinct possibility of missing the playoffs for the second time during Cronin's tenure. However, they've since won 6 of 7, with the lone loss coming in the Beanpot, and sit a single point out of fourth place. Fourth is where the home ice is, and that would be wonderful. I'm missing the final home hockey game of the season, so if I want to see more than two hockey games at Matthews before I graduate, the Huskies will have to make a valiant run to 4th.

Saturday brings Louisiana Tech to Matthews for a Bracket Buster battle between* NCAA tournament hopefuls. The Huskies can and should win this game, in front of what will likely be the largest home basketball crowd since Reggie Lewis called Huntington Avenue home. If Northeastern can win its final two CAA games, it wins the CAA regular season title and guarantees itself a spot in the NIT. Win three more in Richmond, and the Huskies dance, forcing me to scramble to find tickets to the regionals on short notice, ensuring the flight will cost more than my annual hockey budget.

Sunday, the hockey team plays BC at BC in a weird 3:00 game, a game I'd like to go to but probably can't make. Later, the US plays Canada in the closest thing we'll have to an NHL All Star game this season.


Marcus

So I updated the Ice Sports Schedules on the right side of the page. My hockey team is an expected 0-3, although my idiot teammates (and I say that in the most loving way possible) decided not to show up to a game on the 14th, so we lost by forfeit, instead of the usual "give up way more goals than you score" method. My next game comes, thankfully, after an Aerodynamics test, and we'll be playing Jeff's team, so our first W might be in sight.

My broomball team, on the other hand, has no losses and two wins, something that's never happened before. I've allowed a single goal on the season, and have posted consecutive shutouts for the first time in my career. It's a weak league this year, but if we can win our next two games we'll make the playoffs for the first time.

Coming up later this semester: floor hockey.

USA Hockey Schedule

Tues., Feb. 16: Switzerland 3:00 p.m.
Thurs., Feb. 18: Norway 3:00 p.m.
Sun., Feb. 21: Canada 7:40 p.m.

All times Eastern. The Canada game's gonna be a doozy.

Cheering for both teams

Olympic Basketball

I woke up early (well, early by collegiate standards) this morning to watch the United States Olympic men's basketball team take on Yao Ming and China. The game started with one of the more resonant shots of the last few years, a Yao three pointer which opened scoring and gave China their only lead of the game. The place went nuts, but basketball in China is unique. The fans would cheer for Chinese scores but also cheer for Kobe dunks and LeBron alley-oops. I have to imagine it was a very special game for both teams, with Yao doing some impressive cheerleading as the clock wound down to zero.

The US won 101-70, but honestly, you have to feel good about international basketball after a game like that. Hopefully, China will leave Yao alone and let him become the superstar he can be. Also on display during the game: now-Laker Sun Yue. He looked good, although without figuring out his number until the third quarter, I probably missed a lot of his play.

The team plays Angola on the 12th, I believe.


Series Recap: Angels 3, Yankees 0

Another sweep of another overrated AL East opponent. And my, oh my, did we get some offense this weekend. Without delving too deeply into details, particularly at 12:40 AM, the Angels outscored the Yankees 25-12 over the three game series, with 8 of those runs coming in the eighth inning of Saturday's game. Somehow, the Angels broke a 3-3 tie with 8(!) runs in the bottom half of the inning, with the RBI-fest starting with Vlad's homer and ending with his single to left. Yes, Vlad went 2 for 2 in the inning, finishing 2-5 overall in a game where every Angels starter had a hit. It was a remarkable game.

The Halos managed to pull off the sweep today thanks to Joe Girardi's inexplicable choice to bring in Mariano Rivera in a non-save situation. Without the S statistic in play, Mo's been downright mortal, giving up 7 ER in 21 innings, as opposed to 1 ER in 29 innings with the save on the line. It's weird, but it's something to look at. He probably got screwed by an exceedingly lazy play by Cano, who looked like he had a real chance at Chone Figgins' game winning RBI single to right in the bottom of the ninth. Erick Aybar, though, didn't seem to mind as he flung his bat into the air as Howie scored the winning run. It was pretty funny to watch.

Jose Arredondo did his best recreation of a Frankie inning, allowing Alex Rodriguez to double with one out in the eighth. Thanks to a great throw by Mike Napoli and bad positioning by the third base ump, A-Rod was called out at third attempting to steal, although replays showed he was safe by a couple inches. Jose got out of the inning, and such is baseball. Regardless, the strike zone was a fluid concept this afternoon, reminding me again why umpires need to be replaced with pitch tracking systems as soon as possible. I swear, Derek Jeter gets a strikezone the size of a shoebox. It's ridiculous.

This sweep logged a couple milestones for the Halos, one of which demands reflection back to 2002, the last time the Angels were 30+ games over .500. 2002 was a good year for the franchise.


Miscellany

• Amanda's in another tournament, this time the Western and Southern Financial Group Women's Open. Unlike her other tournaments thus far, this is a WTA event, so it's worth $175,000 in prize money. She plays #31 world ranked Katarina Srebotnik tomorrow.
• The Rays won their 71st game this season, breaking their former franchise season win total with 45 games remaining. Bravo, Tampa Bay.
• Olympic sports that are not sports: badminton, beach volleyball, diving, "equestrian," gymnastics, swimming, synchronized swimming, table tennis, and weightlifting. Not sports. Sorry. I'm not trivializing the athletes, just the dumb games they play.
• A small part of me feels bad for sweeping the Yankees and making life easier for Boston, but then I remember: I hate the Yankees also.
• Kira sent me an interesting link about why I should've chosen athletic training over mechanical engineering. Even so, fuck ESPN.
  
• Firefox 3 is a worthless piece of shit. I'm going to downgrade to a functional browser in the next couple hours. Whoever is responsibly for the asinine URL bar needs to be fired and/or shipped to Apple.
  

Angels and Kobe

Angels 9, Boston 2

So the Angels swept the Red Sox. Again. But this time, they did it in Fenway behind another strong outing from Hokie Joe Saunders. Despite accumulating only 2 strikeouts through 6 innings of work, he gave up only 2 runs, both on a Crisp homer in the fifth that brought the Sox within one.

Josh Beckett still needs to shave and, for some reason, has forgotten how to pitch to the Angels. Terry Francona is also mortified at the concept of bullpen use, so he's been leaving in failing starters far too long. Thus, the Angels had a 5 run sixth inning, during which Boston committed 3 errors (4 total in the game). Interestingly, those errors lead to only 1 unearned run, with the other 4 runs in the inning all being charged to Beckett. His line was a weird 5.1 IP, 11 hits, 7 ER, and 8 K's. That's usually the linescore of a pitcher who's all over the place, but most of his pitches weren't particularly bad. He got hosed by little league Fenway Park when Garret wrapped a 280 foot line drive homer around the pole in right. Some folks get offended when I call Fenway "little league," but it is.

GA finished 4-5 with 4 RBI. Interesting side note: His first two AB's, he saw a combined two pitches, got two hits, and 2 RBI's.

Mark "Not a Ranger Anymore" Teixeira had a tough day at the plate, going 0-4 with a walk. He struck out twice, but reached twice, thanks to the walk and an error on Kevin "Overrated Defensively" Youkilis in the fifth. I still Youk would be defensively better without the dumb beard.

Torii slammed a pitch into the Monster seats in the ninth. He's been on fire lately.

Despite all this, I won't be happy until the Halos beat the Red Sox in October. They went 8-1 in the regular season this year and got their first sweep at Fenway since 2001.


USA 114, Turkey 82

I actually woke up at 8 AM to watch Kobe, LeBron, and the rest of the Americans take on a talented (but not Olympic-quality) Turkey team. I've been getting chills reading about and watching this team, so I'll probably be dedicating what time I can to watching them.

The first quarter was a little rough for the US. They weren't playing particularly good perimeter defense and committed a couple dumb turnovers on the offensive side. Coach K had them refocused at the start of the second, though, and they allowed only 10 Turkey field goals over the next two quarters.

At this point, the US was running all over Turkey, and had a couple pretty spectacular plays. The best was probably a Kobe bounce pass to Melo that turned into a gorgeous dunk. they're having fun out there, and it's fun to see. It's also nice to see them refocus on defense when they're obviously not acting cohesively.

This is a very good team with a very good coach.