by Brian P. Foley, The College Baseball Blog
I recently recognized that the Boston Bruins have not been good the last few years. The reason for this is that former General Manager Mike O'Connell decided that Joe Thornton was not good enough to be a member of the Boston Bruins. He was traded for Brad Stuart (no longer with Boston), Wayne Primeau (no longer with Boston), and Marco Sturm (second line center for Boston) on December 1st 2005.
Gentle Joe Thornton just went out to San Jose and was named the 2005-2006 MVP in the NHL for the season. How many other trades have you seen that one of the people traded was named the best player in the sport that same season? Can anyone come up with one?
The Bruins have not qualified for the playoffs since they have made that trade. They are currently sitting near the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference which means they could be overtaken and miss the playoffs for the third consecutive season. This is a major issue for the NHL as Boston is one of the Hockey hotbeds in the United States and the fans of the Bruins who are few and far between are getting really upset with the losing attitude on Causeway street at the New Garden.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
WORST TRADE IN HISTORY?
Friday, January 4, 2008
FROM THE GREAT WHITE NORTH: I HATE BOSTON!
by E. Spencer Kyte, Bugs and Cranks
I hate the Red Sox. I hate the Celtics. I hate the Patriots. I hate the whole damn area!
As things stand right now, on this fourth day of 2008, the Boston Red Sox are the World Series Champions, the New England Patriots just went 16-0 and should win the Super Bowl and the Boston Celtics are the best team in the NBA, at least as far as records go. On the whole, that blows! No area should be afforded that much success ever, yet alone in the span of one sports year...
For comparison sake, Canada hasn't won anything since 1993 when the Toronto Blue Jays captured the World Series and the Montreal Canadians won the Stanley Cup. Since the Stanley Cup doesn't really count in the US anyway, even though it has resided there ever since, that means the Jays are all I have to hang my hat on and that's for an entire country, not just a region. We're talking about a geographical area in New England that isn't even the size of Newfoundland. This is just brutal!
Here are five reasons why this really sucks:
1. The Patriots Have Been Awesome For A Decade
Remember when the Patriots upset "The Greatest Show on Turf" Rams for their first Super Bowl and were the darlings of the football world? That was nice. Now, now that they are the step on your throat, kick you while you're down, beat you, pick you up and beat you some more Patriots who just went 16-0, I hate them. Special thanks goes out to the other teams in the NFL who insist on trading insanely talented players to the Patriots for 35 cents on the dollar. Thank you Miami (Wes Welker) and Oakland (Randy Moss). And, just to add insult to injury, Tom Brady is bangin' Giselle. Go to Hell Tom Brady, You Greedy Bastard!
2. The Red Sox Aren't Idiots Anymore
Much like their football brethren, the original incarnation of the championship Sox was lovable. They were the underdog before Jason Lee, with a band of characters like Pedro, Cowboy Kevin Millar and ManRam, plus they did something that had never been done before in coming back from 3-0 down to win a series. They even gained extra points for doing it against the goddamn Yankees too! Now, no more idiots, except for Paps. Manny being Manny isn't entertaining anymore, Josh Beckett is too damn good and Theo Epstein is a freakin' genius even if he signed JD Drew to a long-term deal.
3. The Celtics Are Making Danny Ainge & Doc Rivers Look Great
Let me remind you that prior to this season, both of these men should have rightfully been fired. They had accomplished the square root of fuckall and had turned the once proud Celtics into a total laughing stock. They pretty much tanked on purpose last year to try and land Oden or Durant and then even failed to do that. But then Kevin McHale bailed out his old team by shipping KG to town and The Big Ticket has transformed the laughable Celts into legit contenders, despite what Wilbon and Kornheiser might say on PTI. As such, Ainge and Doc look great right now as the GM and Coach of the team with the best record in the NBA, when we all know that they have nothing to do with the success of the Celtics.
4. It's Going to be Like This For A While
The Patriots will remain dominant so long as Tom Brady keeps taking less money to remain in New England and Hobo Bill patrols the sidelines. The Sox are The New Evil Empire, like it or not Bostonians, and will stop at nothing to remain neck and neck with the only team they care about competing with and since the Celtics have Allen locked up until 2010, Pierce through 2011 and KG through 2012, chances are that they have a nice little five year run ready to go starting this season.
5. Eventually, the Bruins Might Catch On
And if that happens, it's a sure sign of The Apocalypse.
As such, here are my hopes for 2008 in regards to the sports franchises residing in the New England area:
The Patriots run into Jacksonville, who beats them up physically. They might not beat them on the scoreboard, but spending an entire game having that line and those backs pounding on you is hard. That way, when Indy comes to town a week later, Peyton, Reggie Wayne and the fresh and ready to go Marvin Harrison can pull an upset, with ex-Pat Adam Vinatieri kicking the winning field goal.
The Red Sox trade for Johan Santana, giving up Jon Lester, Jacoby Ellsbury and a couple others and ink him to a long-term deal. Santana promptly goes out and tears a ligament in his pitcher arm, misses almost two years and the guys they traded away develop into the All-Stars everyone is pretty sure they will be. Sadly, even without Santana and the guys they traded, Boston still makes the playoffs.
Detroit walks into Boston and beats the Celtics on a pair of late free throws by Chauncey Billups, who got to the line by pump faking Tony Allen into the air just like Doc Rivers told him he would. Wait? That already happened? Alright. Forget about the Celtics then...
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
LIVE AT THE HOSERDOME: I LOVE THE SMELL OF LACTIC ACID IN THE MORNING...
by Neate Sager, Out Of Left Field
It's good that their city is Windy, since two members of the Chicago Wolves are going to smell big-time on Thursday.
Normally, the stench associated with hockey in Chitown has to do with the NHL Blackhawks, but two members of the minor-league Wolves, Nathan Oystrick and Jordan LaVallee, are going to try and keep their gear on for 27 straight hours after the team's game on Wednesday.
It's all for charity, and it's a nod to one of the game's great inside jokes that's only really humourous in an it's-all-fun-and-games-till-someone-gets-a-staph-infection, gallows-humour kind of way. It's an unwritten rule that's it's perfectly acceptable, no, encouraged, for your hockey gear to stink a bit. OK, a lot.
Over a season, if you're one of those beer-leaguer types, your gloves, shoulder, elbow and shin pads absorb sweat. After a game or practice, you zip it all away in a duffel bag, and usually don't take it out again until the next time you play. It doesn't take a biology major to figure out what happens and why nothing, but nothing smells like a Hockey Dressing Room. (Yes, dressing room, not locker room.)
Now, it isn't all light-hearted. There's a lot of bacteria and fungus burrowed deep in those pads, and from time to time, you always hear about a NHL player sidelined by a mysterious infection. However, if it's all for charity, that's OK. Lavallee and Oystrick will play a game, then keep their equipment on the next day while they make a couple appearances. They're going for an unofficial record, since last year a junior player kept his stuff on for 26 hours after his team won the U.S. Hockey League title.
Now the short strokes:
Last but not least, some holiday wishes:
Second verse, same as the first with Gretzky. It was a Phoenix-New York Rangers game, and I think we all know what a great rivalry that's been through the years.
The story of how the Bruins turned it around is about as exciting as Bill Belichick Monday press conference. They play good defence. Journeyman Alex Auld is on a career roll in goal. That's about it.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
BACK ON THE POND
by The Original JD, Six Pack Sports Report
This has the potential to be the worst thing I've ever written. I know that last week I wrote a pro cocaine article but trust me, there will be more people upset that I'm writing about this topic then there were last week. For whatever reason supporting cocaine doesn't seem to be as divisive an issue as this next sentence will be: my name is JD, and I'm a fan of the NHL.
I realize that fifty percent of the people who read the Carnival just clicked that red X in the top right hand corner and the rest of you are either bots who just surf the Internet looking for email addresses, or people who got lost looking for animal porn. So now that I've cut my audience down from hundreds of thousands of screaming fans to four guys who speak with long O's and potentially have mullets - I'm going to explain why I've decided to give it another go with the worst run professional sports league since women's professional soccer.
Hockey is the quintessential sport for someone growing up in New England like your beloved JD. For about 10 months out of the year it's cold enough to either think about, or actually play ice or street hockey around the clock. For six weeks out of the rest of the year it's raining to hard to do anything outside, and for the other two weeks of the year it's too fucking hot to move. Basically if you can't be a hockey fan in New England you can't be a hockey fan anywhere.
I've heard stories about the great Boston Bruins teams of the 1970s, and the epic battles with the Montreal Canadians but there really is only three things that stick out in my mind about the team that I support - Ray Bourque, Cam Neely and Claude Lemieux. Now before you NHL fans start telling me how Claude Lemieux never played for the Bruins - I already know that, but anybody who thinks of Cam Neely without thinking of him bashing Lemieux's head into the boards at the Boston Garden hasn't watched enough hockey. And so what my references are completely dated, after Neely was forced into early retirement, and Bourque went to Colorado to win a Stanley Cup I completely lost interest in the Boston Bruins, and the NHL altogether. The only Bruins game before this season that I even tried to watch was the night Neely had his number retired - you want to know who my childhood hero was, well it was #8 and there wasn't anyone remotely close to him.
Of course the NHL has become bloated, with too many teams, not enough superstars, and a television deal that rivals the NFL Network debacle. Sure most of the players are better now then they ever were before, and I would sound xenophobic if I told you the only reason I don't watch the game is because of the influx of European players pushed the American and Canadian players out the door but the fact remains that the NHL has been in terrible shape for years, and if my comeback to he ice doesn't go well this time around I can honestly say I will start watching the Revolution, and remove the Bruins from my memory forever.
Here are some things that only hockey fans realize - but the rest of the world should recognize. First off live hockey is the best sporting experience that you can have and there shouldn't be a debate about that. For whatever reason television has been unable to capture the speed and violence of the game but being there live takes hockey to a whole new level. Now I live in the stone age so I don't have an HDTV, I've been told that captures hockey like never before and I'm going to have to take people at their word. The second thing that should be mentioned is that hockey video games reign supreme over all other video games. You can shove Madden up your ass because nothing compares to a hockey video game. I promise you that anyone reading this article between the ages of 22-29 can point to two watershed video games of their lives: Tecmo Super Bowl, and NHL 94/95.
You know here at the Carnival I've always thought that I wrote stuff that nobody gave a crap about - and now I can proudly proclaim that I have. It's not all elderly drownings, and cocaine support coming from these fingers I'm also a professional hockey fan. Now there is something I never thought I'd say again.
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