Maniwaki Ticker

As my Flash skills range from non-existent to ghetto at best, just imagine the following snippets are scrolling across your screen underneath some televised poker tourney where Jimmy Wong is wearing dark glasses and laying the smack down hand in a Texas Hold'em contest. And rolling:

.....A-rod has cemented his status as ultimate MLBitch, by faking out Jays 3B Howie Clark, calling "mine" while running behind him en route to third. Clark subsequently let the pop up drop as he thought SS John MacDonald was waving him off. The inning continued and the Yanks tacked on a couple of more runs and won the game. What is this? The sequel to big screen baseball flick Rookie Of The Year in which a 12 year old with the 200mph fastball gets drafted by the Cubs (I know...I know...) has to resort to sandlot antics (ie the hidden ball trick) to win the big game after his pitching powers disappear in the ninth? Makes Angels In The Outfield look like The Godfather Part II.....

....Torre to be fired from the Yanks? Are you kidding? If A-rods latest antics aren't reason # 5692344 to hate the Yanks how about a fan base and FRONT OFFICE that conspire to get rid of a skipper whose only crime is managing an overrated, over the hill, injured team that sits in the AL East cellar. After only two months of ball of the '07 season have been played. It's not like he ever did anything of merit. Like leading the Yankees to 11 STRAIGHT playoff appearances, four times capturing the World Series. Or navigating the Yankee freighter down rough seas churned up by the Giambi steroid debacle, the wrath of Steinbrenner and the sheer ridiculousness of A-Rod in general. Christ, they should give Torre a WS ring just for dealing with the latter two characters on a daily basis. So the Yankees haven't won a WS since '00. Why is it that if they don't win the entire enchilada EVERY FREAKIN' YEAR they are somehow substandard?!!!! In fact now that I think about it... Yankees fans are right. Joe Torre is completely inept, he's the Dubya of MLB. He should be canned. In fact ship him off to T.O. where, he can take this slacker underachieving methods and help the Jays to multiple division titles...

...Sens live up to their namesake? Are the Senators as ineffectual and redundant as the Canadian Senate? Looks like it. With the top scoring line handcuffed last night in Game 2 of the Cup Final, and with Game 1 and looking more and more like the prize bass that got away, it appears that the Ducks are on their way to showing GM Brian Burke and interim head coach, Emilio Estevez, that they are indeed mighty. Let's just hope they don't trot out that god awful V formation like in the flick. I'll give them this though. They play the best music at the Honda Center. Every time the Ducks score, "Bro Hymn", by Pennywise fills the arena. Jane's Addiction, and Bad Religion have been cranked over the loud speakers, as well as a slew of So Cal punk classics. Whoaaa.....ohhhhohhhhohhhh......



....Can the NBA playoffs get any more uninteresting than the San Antonio Spurs vs the winner of Cleveland and Detroit? I wish Steve Nash would've got all Jarome Iginla during the Spurs series and scrapped half their bench. I don't fault him however. Not in the slightest. He's a smart and selfless player and knows that in the Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood that is Commish David Stern's NBA, any pugilism would've cost him a multi-game suspension and sunk the Suns' chances at coming back. Still though it would've been nice to see Nash wind up and hoof Robert Horry like he was a FIFA approved Soccer Ball.....



"Look Duncan, don't make me get all Game Of Death on your ass..."








...The Rocket coming back to the Yanks after "retiring", in what seems like a decade ago. Not to mention being granted a contract that is even more ridiculous than A-Rod's...road trips he gets to opt out of, a gazillion dollars per inning pitched. They might as well give him his own easy chair and plasma screen on the mound where he can kick back between batters....




"Well it's been a fun decade. Here Rocket...take another 10 mill."

Grindhouse Of Playoff Dreams

[A Double Feature ala Rodriguez and Tarrantino's Grindhouse. I'm up first. Then the Skip.]

***

So there we were, rocketing down the I-5 on our way to the Oregon Coast with visions of perfect waves and Game 6's...

Who knew that the surf trip to Oregon that my compadres and I had planned months earlier had fallen smack dab on the night of the most cosmically epically, massive game of the season? Game 5, the potential season ender ender, would be on whilst we were exiting the country??!!

Dicey, I know, abandoning the fort when it's under attack but a move we had to make nonetheless. We justified our departure saying that we were advancing into enemy territory, lending moral support to the lads, strengthening our collective numbers on the battle field. Hell, for a while we debated skipping Oregon altogether and beelining straight for Anaheim. With the amount of overtime periods that were sure to ensue, we knew we had an outside shot at making it.

However, for the meantime we had to settle for AM radio. Luckily we were able to pick up the Team 1040 as it cracked and fizzed the play by play the farther we got away from Van. At times the reception got so bad that it started to mix with a Latino station and we were treated to samba music inter-spliced with commentary on our latest power play woes.

But it mattered not. We were undeterred. Never before have three lads in a car been so enthralled with static as the game started to fade in and out. The signal held out past Seattle and I believe that it was our collective energies that actually willed it to stick with our vehicle no matter how faint...

We cringed at the Duck's first goal in the first, lost our heads when Burrows tied it up with 5 minutes to go in the game and all dropped moose sized shits when we barely made out that Sabourin had started the first OT. The reception was terrible at that point and we feared the worst, that Luongo had been hurt. The scene was like nuclear war had just broke out. We clung to that radio like it was broadcasting co-ordinates of the last fall-out shelters. And in many ways apocalyptic is what it did indeed turned out to be..

As we were pulling in for gas, as the second OT started, we heard the shot that rang through the Pacific Northwest. We didn't even have time to park as Niedermayer had pulled the trigger from the book depository or the point (depending on your perspective) and left our playoff dreams dead and bleeding in the Dealy plaza...or the Honda Center (depending on your perspective).

It was over.

How? Why? How again? I can honestly say I was so sure. So light years beyond positive I was that we would capture the gold ring this year, anything else seemed completely ridiculous and unfathomable. Losing just wasn't an option.

I mean I know why we didn't win. We could barely score a goal, and our power play was Peewee maybe Bantam at best, and you don't win the big games, moreover the cup, without it at least working half the time. I don't know...it just felt like the year. Just like it did in '92 and '93 with the Jays and in '04 when the Red Sox won. Sometimes you just feel it.

While I wander the lower mainland ruminating on this as well as the evil, evil machinations of the Hockey Gods (and I initially thought the Baseball Gods were vindictive...ha!), I will leave you with the second half of this double bill article, as the Skip left a quite analytical and thought provoking assessment of the situation in my inbox while I was luckily away in seclusion with plenty of surf to help ease the pain of a season cut tragically short.





"Hey where did everyone go?"





At this point I'd like to hand the floor to The Skip:

***

Oh… Canada .

I was hoping that I didn’t have to do this. I was hoping that the Admiral, indeed, held the conch. I was hoping that his prediction of a Canuck Stanley Cup victory – nay, DYNASTY – was on the money. I was hoping that I didn’t have to write this piece.

I was wrong.

As powerful as the conch has been many times in the past, unfortunately this time there is no substitute for statistical analysis. Going inside the history books, I have no choice but to paraphrase our favorite belly-shaking latina vixen, Shakira:

Annnnddd, I’m on tonight,
My numbers don’t lie
And I’m starting to feel it’s right…

Why all the shaking, Skip? What are you talking about?

Let’s get down to brassies, Alex. I’d like ‘Random Hockey Trivia’ for $800.

Alex: Of the 90 Stanley Cups that have been handed out in history to the champions of the NHL, it’s the number of times that it was presented to a non-Canadian captain .

BING!!!

Alex: Skip?

Skip: What is ‘exactly once’?

Alex: Right.

Go ahead and read that one again. In the history of hockey, only ONCE (!!!) has the captain of the winning team not been from the Great White North. At first I’m sure you’re thinking “no way… that can’t be. Surely the Skip’s off his rocker”

Maybe you’re thinking about those Islander teams from the 80’s?

Denis Potvin. 29/10/53. Ottawa, ON .

Ok, fine. What about some of those filthy Cup wins that shouldn’t have existed? You know, like (bleccchhhhh) Carolina last year?

Rod Brind’amour. 09/08/70. Ottawa, ON .

Surely one of those multiple New Jersey / Detroit / Colorado runs over the last decade has to mess this up?

Scott Stevens. 01/04/64. Kitchener, ON .

Stevie Y. 09/05/65. Cranbrook, BC .

Joe Sakic. 07/07/69. There’s a reason he’s known as ‘ Burnaby ’ Joe.

Trust me, kiddies. The list goes on and on and on. I had made the Admiral aware of this fact a couple of months ago, but alas, he would have none of it. In fact, he even alluded to it in a previous Mauler piece (see “Playoff Proclamation #4, April 11), but held fast to the notion that history would not repeat itself.

As well as Naslund actually did play (which, yes, I found extremely surprising), his downfall resided within his Swedish DNA. Clearly, growing up on a steady diet of pickled herring is no substitute for bathing all of your breakfasts in maple syrup. No, 1999 represents the only time that the Grail has been hoisted by a man who had a ‘C’ on his chest but didn’t have a lion and a unicorn emblazoned on the cover of his passport: the impeccably-mulleted Derian Hatcher of the Dallas Stars.

Looking even closer at it, it’s possible that this should never have happened. Please do remember that during the 1998-1999 season, Commissioner Gary Satan in his infinite wisdom had instituted the “Foot in the Crease” rule (on par in stupidity-ranking with the current “Automatic Delay of Game” penalty for dumping the puck over the glass in the defensive zone).

For those of you who weren’t watching that particular Finals – and I can’t blame you, considering it was between Dallas and Buffalo – Brett Hull scored the Cup winner in OT after blatantly stepping into the crease. All season there’s no way that’s a goal, but suddenly the zebras had their blinders on in the playoffs.

That whole year, Grapes had been griping on Coaches Corner: “This rule is so dumb. What happens if there’s a goal to win the Stanley Cup when someone is in the crease? Are the refs going to have the stones to wave it off?”

Asked and answered. A resounding “no”.

Had they interpreted the rules properly, it is possible that Jeans-Buffalo would have gone on to win Game 6, and Hasek may have thrown up a stone wall in Game 7. I’m not saying that that’s necessarily what would have happened, but if it had:

Mike Peca. 26/03/74. Toronto, ON .

…………

Keeping this in mind, we now turn to this year’s edition of The Quest. At the beginning of the playoffs, we had 17 captains looking to lead their respective squads to the Holy Land .

-- Quick side note: Yes. There were 16 teams in the playoffs, so obviously you’d think that there are 16 captains, right? Well, there’s a caveat here. Jeans-Buffalo is alternating between the pre-pubescent-looking Daniel Briere and the lumberjack-bearded Boston University alumnus Chris Drury, the Wild were being wild by switching back and forth between Mark Parrish and Wes Walz, while the Pens were without a ‘C’ at all. --

So who are we looking at here, then?

Starting in the West, we had: Lidstrom (SWE), Niedermeyer (CAN), Naslund (SWE), Timonen (FIN), Marleau (CAN), Morrow (CAN), Parrish (USA) / Walz (CAN), and Iginla (CAN).

Out East, there were: Briere (CAN) / Drury (USA), Elias (CZE), Mellanby (CAN), Alfredsson (SWE), Jagr (CZE), Taylor (CAN), and Yashin (RUS).

By my count, that’s only eight teams that stood a chance of winning this year (Anaheim , San Jose , Dallas , Minnesota , Calgary , Buffalo , Atlanta , and Tampa ). After Round 1, however, we’re down to three remaining candidates:

San Jose , Buffalo , and Anaheim .

How are we going to break this tie? What else can we use as a deciding factor?

For the answer, we must again look to the country that was once led by the Right Honorable Kim Campbell, but this time we’re looking between the pipes.

Of these 90 Cup champions, care to take a quick guess at how many of the goalies were non-Canadian? The answer: four individuals, for five championships. Barasso (’91 & ’92 Pens), Richter (’94 Rangers), Hasek (’02 Wings), and the 'Bhulin Wall (’04 Lightning). The rest? You guessed it. Poutine-eating, angry-letter-writing Canadians.

So basically we’re left with the fact that only six of a possible 90 Stanley Cup champs have not had both a Canadian captain and netminder.

Granted, I’ll concede that the number of non-Canadians in the league prior to 1990 was miniscule. Even considering that, though, 10 out of the last 15 Cup champs iced a Canadian goalie, to go along with the 14 out of 15 beaver-loving captains.

Back to the rosters, then… who do we have to choose from? The two-headed Nabokov / Toskala monster, Miller, and Giguere. As much as it pains me to say it, we’re due to follow the growing trend that has seen the Grail in back-to-back parades (in Raleigh and Tampa ) that drew fewer fans than would a celebrity cook-off between Bobby Flay and Rachel Ray.

I give to you the 2007 Stanley Cup champions:

The Anaheim Ducks.

God help us all.

- The Skip

Game 4 Live

Ok, now to the big game, in which I'm going to blatantly copy Bill Simmons from ESPN.com and give a play by play running commentary of this match. Will it be as good? Will it be better? Will it be worse? Only one thing is for sure. It will be a complete rip off.

1st period. All of it. Entire series for that matter. We still can't score on the power play. What else is new?

12:55. NASLUND SCORES!!! I know..I know...I know what you're saying. Look. It's not like I've been totally off base. He's scored some key goals so far in the playoffs. His third consecutive game with a goal no less, so just chill out. But tonight's THE night. The C could quite possibly get as many points as Bargnani did for the Raptors.

14:30. Fuck on a Duck. If I see one more Anaheim player crash Luongo, I'm going to run down to Champs, grab a retro Tiger Williams jersey, then make a bee line for GM Place, hop on the ice and start cracking skulls myself. I'm 5' 10" and a buck eighty and I welcome all comers...Enough of this shit...

18:59. Killing off another penalty, yet we're applying pressure and it looks like we're going to score. How does this work? The Canucks can't set up five on four, but yet assemble like Y-Wings setting up a Death Star attack run when they only have four players on the ice.

1st intermission. A quick blurb from Trevor Linden. Level headed and to the point. Keeping things cool not only in the dressing room, but in the whole lower mainland. If anyone deserves to hoist the cup on this squad it is him. He absolutely deserves it. When it happens in Game 6 of the Cup final, I might even shed a tear. I SAID MIGHT.

A fresh pint from our latest keg droid, R5 D4. This one has been sitting on the balcony for a week since my birthday. Like the last one, it will not be returned until it is empty.

2nd Period.

1:24. Is it me or does Niedermayer look like Old Man Winter with that white playoff beard? Or maybe Gandalf.

2:16.Sopel is skating around without his helmet, as it got "knocked off". I just think he wants to calm everyone down by showing them that he's growing his mullet back. Thank God. It's high time.

5:19. Looks like another penalty against us. Great, maybe we'll score. I can't believe I'm actually looking forward Annaheim power plays rather than ours.

6:29. Sure as shit a short handed two on one in which Morrison just about scored.

7:01. Great! A five on three for Anaheim!!! And a four minute minor to boot as Josh Green high sticked Selanne in the face drawing blood!!! I am expecting at least three goals for us!!

9:26. Maybe James Cameron and company did find the Tomb of Jesus Christ. And maybe when they opened it Roberto Luongo climbed out, gave them a "Oui, Allo!", and proceeded to make sick saves. Where do you even begin with this guy? Dedicate and entire column to him? How about a full blog for starters..

12:04. Two seconds left in our power play due to too many Canards on the ice. Whew...

15:30.Morrison penalty. Maybe Luongo can score. Nope looks like Sopel just about mulletted one past Giguere.

17:31. Morrison scores!!! Wow! A two goal lead!! I haven't seen one of those since March!!!

19:24. Brad May hit twice. Once by Smith then another by Burrows. Good. I hate Brad May.

2nd Intermission. Another visit to R5-D4. My spouse wants to know when I will be getting rid of him. I say that I can't bring myself to send him back to his Russel Brewing Sand Crawler while he still has Pale Ale in his system. It would be wrong. She doesn't like him. She wants him gone. It's gotten to that time. I'm not worried. I've been here before.

3rd Period.

2:02. Hank with a nice spin-o-rama, but to no avail. That shit was a tilt-a-whirl with a rat-tailed Carny hepped up on bathtub meth at the controls.

3:58. Lucky Fucky Ducky. Pronger blasts one past Luongo of Nazareth. While the rest of the lower mainland is waiting for the other skate to drop, I sip my R5 Ale casually. We've been here before.

6:45. Another great chance. We are playing with some jump. So much so that I would not be surprised if the camera cut to David Lee Roth in the stands making an attempt to pick up some doe eyed Shark Club waitress.

9:00. Bieksa trots to the box for hauling down Getzlaf. I don't feel good about this one.

11:00. Penalty over. Whew. Luongo survived another barrage, knocking one down with his stick. I wonder if it is really a lightsaber...

13:06. How much more can he take? Another blinding save display put on by the goalie. The shit looked like the end of the Matrix where Neo casually deflects Agent Smith's toughest punches.

14:18. Selanne has just woken from his slumber by knocking one out of the air and scoring. First shot on net in two games CBC reports. I am mildly concerned. But only mildly...

16:34. Looks like the Canucks are reading a page out of the Raptors' playbook this evening. And Mitchell has been sent to the box. Is it too late to draft Chris Bosh?

3rd Intermission. What can you say at this point? Really. It's gotten to the point that if we don't go to OT, I feel incomplete. You know who loves OT even more? My spouse. Words cannot express her profound disdain for the playoffs. I feel that one day I will wake up in some abandoned warehouse tied to a chair and forced to watch a "What Not To Wear" marathon. Eyes possibly pried open, Clockwork Orange style.

1st Overtime. This really isn't good. Travis Moan for Anaheim at 2:07 in OT. 3-2, the final. Let's just say I am more than mildly concerned at this point. Still not conceding defeat though. We will still win the cup.

Never Mind The Flintstones...

Wow. Not since The Knicks/Pacers series of '95 when Reggie Miller scored something like 1000 points in the closing minutes, knocking down threes like he was picking off mallards in Duck Hunt, have I been so enthralled in an NBA game. The Raptors have just squeaked out a 98-96 win versus The Nets, thus staving off a first round exit courtesy of Jason Kidd and Uber prima donna, Vince Carter.

Talk about drama.

Italian import Andrea Bargnani practically put the entire Nets squad over his knee and spanked them as he donned his Reggie mask and started draining terzettos in the 1st Quarter.

And then the Raps blew their 20 point lead but managed to cling by a mere two at the final buzzer thanks to Bosh, who came up with some MONSTER CLUTCH blocks on Vince. (That sounds like some R/C car made by Tyco or something, and seeing how Carter is a child it's actually quite fitting.)

All in all a very nervous affair, but one that I hope continues as I plan to study these Raptors as intently in the next round, as if I were a University Of Alberta paleontologist sifting for fossilized T-Rex remains in Drumheller.


"Don't fuck with me Vince...you may live in Jersey now but I'm Tony Soprano here. Don't make me make you a direct contributor to the Alberta oil economy by sending your carcass to the Hoodoos."