Hello, hockey fans, including fans of the defunct Atlanta Thrashers:
This posting is one of those none-too-rare occasions when Sparky feels the need to vent. I have no vested interest in the subject matter of his little jeremiad. As far as the Stanley Cup finals are concerned, I am strictly neutral, neither Boston nor Vancouver having been given long enough pre-season odds to win the Cup for a judicious wager placed with borrowed money to have been worth the while of any sporting gentleman of merit. As such, I dissociate and distance myself from any comments he may make that may be construed as inflammatory, libelous, or even true. There is, after all, more to life than spectator sports. For one thing, there’s collecting the receipts from them.
Yours as an amateur of professional handicapping,
Uncle Fun
P.S. Those of you who are Vancouver Canuck fans may be interested to know that I have a line on authenticated locks of Richard Brodeur’s hair. For those of you who may prefer the Boston Bruins, I’m under negotiations to acquire the rights to a share of Derek Sanderson’s last authenticated sideburns.
Nevur mind all that. I jus’ gots one thing ta say about all’a theez Stanley Cupped finuls we’ve bin havin’ lately what where one team gets th’ other on th’ ropes an’ can’t put ‘em away an’ it goes seven games an’ it could go seventy-seven if they let it ‘cuz ya know it’s only gonna go back an’ forth without one team lookin’ any bettr’n the other…er any other team what izzent there, fer that mattur.
It ain’t drama. It’s jus’ dumb.
Winnin’s s’posed ta be on account’a how yer better’n th’ other guy, not on account’a luck. If ya win th’ first two games of a best’a seven, ya should have th’ other team’s goose cook’d like a well-cook’d goose already. Ditto if ya get ta three wins b’fore they do. If ya don’t, ya prolly jus’ won all yer games by luck, an’ don’ deserve ta win at anythin’ other’n scratch-an’-win maybe.
So what I perpose ta fix what’s bin broken with th’ hockey playoffs this entire milenniyum is one er both’a two things:
One: Game Seven means sticks in th’ centre. Choose two teams at random frum th’ players what cooden get it done proper-like b’fore, an’ play a one-game-winnur-take-all. 60 minnuts—no stop time. No sense purlongin’ th’ agony. No overtime er nuthin’, neither. Tie game means th’ end fer everyone. Boo hoo, too bad so sad, bettur luck next time, here’s a copy of our home game an’ a year’s supply’a Rice-a-Roni, go away, an’ don’ come back.
Two: ya still gotta win four games ta win th’ Cup, but ya also gotta win by two, jus’ like in ping-pong. If two teams keep ping-pongin’ like that without neither of them gettin’ up by two b’fore trainin’ camps open in th’ fall, there ain’t no Stanley Cup ta hand out in that year. Simple as that. If this happens maybe th’ next six, seven years conseckutively in a row, maybe th’Nobel Prize-winnin’ brain trust what runs th’ N.H. of L. theez days’ll begin ta git th’ message.
If not, then, maybe what they otta do is ta hand th’ Stanley Cup outright ta th’ Montreal Maroons. There’s no way a buncha actually dead guys’d make th’ sport look any worse’n th’ live stiffs they gots playin’ it right now.
Anyway, that’s jus’ my humble opinion. I ain’t no hockey expurt what’s never had no valuable experience an’ expurteeze, like ya git frum losin’ a playoff series ‘cuz ya don’t know what th’ diffuruntz b’tween six an’ seven looks like.
Sparky
P.S. An’ while we’re on th’ subject of Tim Thomust (an’ I am now), pardun my French, but what’s th’ big deal? Google some videos sometime’a this guy name’a ‘Gump Worsley’. He wuz two-foot-six-inches high, built like a watermellun, older’n dirt what’s had ta go to a old-age home fer old dirt, his equipment alone weighted 3 times what Tim Thomust weights with his equipment on, an’ he looks like a ballareena compar’t ta Thomust. Oh yeah—an’ th’ fat ol’ gardun gnome could stop th’ puck without losin’ track’a where his net is (I hear that’s th’ importantest part’a th’ rink ta keep tabs on if yer a goalie.) Ta sum up: Tim Thomust + better techneek an’ lots more talunt = tubby outta shape stumpy li’l ol’ grandpa, only not so good. That’s all I gotta say, other than I’ll give you he’s as good as goalies get theez days, so they really all otta be bettur.
Mes amis,
I have my own two cents’ worth to put in. I wouldn’t put as much as two cents on it, but my money’s on Vancouver to win Game Seven, for one simple reason. I’ve seen both Vigneault and Julien coach for years in Montreal. Neither of them had a clue how to get the right players on the ice away from home without the last change on a faceoff. Perhaps a neutral-site game with no home team, played under pre-World War I rules, with no substitutions except in case of fatal injury, is in order to settle this farce of a final once and for all.
Fant’homme Sortilège LeRevenant
Forum Ghost (on enforced sabbatical)
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