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According to a post on the Yahoogroup dedicated to the San Jose Sharks, the season ticket renewal packages for the 2006-07 season are starting to trickle in. Emblazoned on the front: We Can’t Wait Until Next Fall! This is a significant improvement over the slogan on the packages that went out for the 2003-04 campaign, hot on the heels of a 73 point last-place performance in the 2002-03 season: Somebody’s Gonna Pay For Last Year!
Congratulations to the Edmonton Oilers and their fans, who owned us both on the ice and in the stands…that crowd at Rexall Place was HOT tonight. I suppose there’s an upside; this frees up my Friday. Dammit.
The worst hockey I have seen the Sharks play this year, and before the Thornton trade, they played some BAD hockey. Defensive breakdowns, bad goaltending, stupid penalties, the whole deal. It’s time to prepare the ceremonial fork, because I’m pretty sure they’re done. Which is fine; really, they weren’t supposed to MAKE the playoffs, much less get this far, so if my gut is right and this IS the end of the road, I’m at peace with that. Plus if they lose Wednesday, I don’t have to stay home from my game night on Friday only to have my heart broken. Nonetheless, there is still a Game Six to be played in Edmonton, it will happen Wednesday night at 6:00P PDT, and will be available for viewing on OLN (who will be carrying CBC‘s feed and interjecting stuff from their own studios during intermissions), and Comcast will have the game for anyone with broadband Internet access on Hockey Live. With apologies for the late report, from Friday night in Edmonton:
Frankly, they needed a drubbing. Things were getting too easy, and they needed a reminder that you can NEVER let up in the playoffs. If we have a lead in the third period tonight, and they STILL play it like it’s one long penalty kill, I’ll be fairly pissed off. Game Five is tonight at The Tank. 7:00P PDT. Watch on OLN. Or CBC. Or Listen on the Sharks website. Just be there. (And a special advance notice, so you can clear your schedules…Wednesday night’s Game Six from Edmonton will be available for viewing on the Internet as well, on Comcast’s Hockey Live service, which they have opened up for the playoffs to everyone, not just Comcast’s Internet customers. Game time is 6:00P PDT. So even if you don’t have cable, if you have so much as broadband, you have no excuse. :)) Today was a Starbucks morning on the way to work, and here’s why:
Yep. Three overtimes. And these aren’t pansy-assed NBA five-minute overtimes, these are FULL 20-MINUTE PERIODS. The game-winner was scored at roughly 11:45 local time, which means the game took a little under five hours. The average game, you’re out the door in roughly two and a half. Everybody, say it together with me: Oy. I was minorly bummed when Shawn Horcoff scored at 2:24 of the third extra session to win it (especially because this gives Edmonton momentum I really didn’t want them to have), but mostly I was relieved that I was gonna be able to go to sleep. Still, I wouldn’t trade playoff hockey for anything in the world. It is the BEST. Game Four? Friday night, 5:00P PDT, on OLN and CBC. I’ll be out with my gamer geeks at Microsoft, but I’ll have the Tivo rolling and my cellphone will be updating me with scores, so cheer extra loud for me, ‘kay?
A very dominant defensive game on behalf of Los Tiburones, and I have to think that Edmonton has no idea if they can do anything to beat this team. I’m feeling good about this. The series moves to Rexall Place in Edmonton for Game Three, Wednesday night, 7:00P PDT, on both OLN and CBC.
Good stuff. Ville Nieminen was hitting anything that moved and the Oilers might be able to stop Joe Thornton or Patrick Marleau, but they can’t stop both of ’em. And if they DO…well, that leaves Jonathan Cheechoo. A good start to a playoff series I’m a little worried about. Game Two is tomorrow night at 7:30P PDT, and will be carried on OLN, or for us Seattle locals and our Canadian friends, CBC. Tonight’s result from the Gaylord Entertainment Center in Nashville:
And the Sharks get a couple days to rest up while the rest of the first-round series wrap up. Nice.
Happy birthday, Mom! Now that my Lakers suck again, watching the NBA has kinda lost it’s luster for me. However, I’ll usually try to watch the All-Star Saturday events. Not the All-Star Game itself; I could give a rip about that. But I LOVE the Three-Point Shootout, and I USED to enjoy the Slam-Dunk Contest, to a point. You can only watch so many behind-the-back two-handed gorilla jams, and I’m not the type to jump off of my couch and yell “OH NO YOU DIN’T!!!” at each successive defiance of gravity. So in all of the Olympic hubbub I totally forgot that yesterday was NBA’s All-Star Saturday, until someone online who happened to be watching mentioned it, and I turned it on right at the end to discover that Nate Robinson and Andre Iguodala (whoever they are) were tied at the end of the contest, and that a Dunk-Off would determine the winner. Okay, nothing else on, so I’ll keep watching. And Robinson goes first, and he’s got some ornate dealie where he passes the ball under his legs a couple times, throws up an alley-oop, and jams it home. So he sets up, under the legs, and tosses….too hard. Whoops. Reset, try again. Dribble, jump, under the legs, toss….over the backboard. D’oh. Third time’s the charm, right? Dribble…jump…the toss…oh, too hard. Rerack the tape. This went on FOURTEEN TIMES. And to their credit, they had lost the crowd of 18,300 (probably a few more, they usually find a way to shoehorn in some extra seats at thoe prices for events like this) in Houston after about the fifth. At the end, Cheryl Miller comes out to interview this guy (who won, by the way, despite Iguodala only needing a couple of attempts to make his dunk), and fires off a desperation “Let’s hear it for him, Houston!” at the end, and we heard…crickets. Nothing. Nada. That sound you heard was 18,300 cars starting, because everyone might as well have left. This made my night. I love when stuff like this happens; you see it every so often on wrestling shows, too, when the reaction of the live crowd is the exact opposite of what you know the producers were hoping for. It amuses me when you see irrefutable evidence that an event’s producers are totally out of touch with their audience. So I offer up a Well Done to the fans in Houston last night. Good on y’all for not being mindless sheep and cheering when the scoreboard flashed a “WOW!!!!!!111!!ELEVEN”, when you were watching a stinker. |
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