On Monday James Merilatt from Mile High Sports used the daily email newsletter to whine about Team USA’s loss to Canada for the Gold medal in Men’s Hockey.  He asked if his opinion would earn him the label of “ugly American”.

James, you’re good there.

However, his nonsensical whiny opinion should earn him title of “silly American”.

By ignoring any logical thought Merilatt blames the US loss on the fact overtime play is 4 on 4.  He claims 5 on 5 the USA was the best team and because of the unfair overtime rule the gold medal was effectively stolen from the USA.  He even takes the time to do a head-to-head comparison of the two teams.  The problem is his argument falls apart before you can even get to the numbers.

The USA and every other team who participated in the Olympics knew the rules before they started.  If the OT rules were so unfair they should have addressed it long before the conclusion of the final game.  This is akin to playing rock-paper-scissors with someone, choosing rock when they choose paper, losing and then crying foul because there is no way paper can hold up to a rock.  I think anyone will agree that if you hold a piece of paper in front of your face and let someone throw at you, you will lose.  True as that may be when you decided to play the game you agreed paper was superior to a rock.  This point alone renders Merilatt’s argument moot, but I am going to take it a step further and pose this question:

If the USA was so much stronger at 5 on 5 play why couldn’t they win in the 60 minutes of 5 on 5 play they got before the ten odd minutes of 4 on 4 play?

The superior 5 on 5 team had nearly six times the amount of time to win and they did not.  In fact, the US never lead at any point in the 60 minutes of 5 on 5 play leading to overtime.  Sorry James, but that does not make the US sound like a better 5 on 5 team.

If assaulting the read with this ridiculous argument wasn’t enough Merilatt precedes to compare this “injustice” to the 1972 basketball debacle and calls for the US to reject their Silver medals.  Really?  In 1972 there was a real issue.  This is just you whining because the US didn’t beat Canada.  Every single American player should be proud of their huge accomplishment and graciously accept their Silver medals.

One of the greatest things about sports is no matter what happened in the past on any given day two teams will face each other and at the end of the day one will walk away victorious and one will walk away disappointed.  Sometimes it is the better team and sometimes it is the team who had no explainable reason to win.  That is one of the fundamental reasons sports are so great.

Congratulations to Tyler and the Pioneers Hockey Club.  Good luck north of the border Tyler.

Neither author is too broken up by the prospect of him departing Denver and I don’t necessarily disagree with them based on his performance this year.  However, I think Arnason is a good hockey player and has plenty of potential to excel.  In years past Arnason has always been on lines with player who simply do not understand the game of hockey.  He was so busy covering for his line mates that were constantly out of position and had no desire to focus on the fundamentals he never had a chance to play.  He would occasionally end up on a different line or have the opportunity to skate with a special line and he would usually produce be it a goal, assist or just great play.  This is going to be frustrating to anyone.  I would submit that after a number seasons dealing with this you just give up and I think that is where Arnason finds himself today.

If a trade is forth coming I hope Arnason finds an opportunity he will be excited about and hopefully will excel.  Further, I hope the Avalanche can pick up a player who will be excited to play for such a venerable organization

Before we get into my favorite nitty gritty part, the statistics (which speak for themselves I might add), let me just say that my father is a die hard Rangers fan.  And I think the readers here at Thin Air Sports are all die hard Avalanche fans, just like myself.  My dad isn’t an Avalanche fan… at all.  In fact, for my 19th birthday the two of us met in Detroit for an Avs game at the Joe Louis Arena on my birthday.  And while I dared to walk in there with an Avs jersey on (no judging, but it was a Dan Hinote jersey) and a RED WINGS SUCK shirt on underneath, my father bought a Brett Hull baseball cap just to fit in.  So it’s safe to say that any stand I take on hockey, he will disagree with me just to disagree.

Another small piece of factual history: I’ve been a bit mad at Rangers fans lately, because the last time I went to a Rangers game at the Garden I got in a fight with a large man.  I thought we were bonding over a mutual respect for Sidney Crosby when I told him I was an Avs fan and he made the mistake of saying to me that I could “Sakic his balls.”  I wasn’t a fan of that much.  Subsequently I told his small, skinny friend to “put a muzzle” on the Sakic-hater.  I haven’t rooted for the Rangers since.

But nasty words and backstabbing aside, back to our debate.  Which conference is more competitive, East or West?  I can answer the question easily: West.  As I mentioned before, the stats speak for themselves.  Anyone who wants to argue with me, check out the numbers, and then get back to me.

As of Friday morning, our number one seeds are one point apart: Boston at the top in the East with 88 and San Jose on top in the West with 87.  So there isn’t one specific team that is running away with the lead in either conference.  But the answer to our question isn’t who is in 1st, but rather who is at the bottom?  Right now at the very bottom of the East with only 40 points we have the New York Islanders.  Ouch.  And in the West, our beloved Colorado Avalanche are in 15th (just FYI one small tear leaked out the side of my eye as I typed that) with 55 points.

That is a HUGE difference hockey fans.  The worst in the West has 15 more points than the worst in the East (and has ten more wins).  What’s beyond that, is that the 14th place team in the East, the Atlanta Thrashers, is 8 points ahead of the Islanders.  In the West we’ve got a tie for 14th, with both the St Louis Blues and Phoenix Coyotes sitting with 57 points — only two above the Avs.

The obvious point I am trying to make here — and call me blind and biased if you have too — but it is much more plausible that the Avs will make the playoffs before the Islanders will.  The Islanders would have to score over 25 points (26 to get to 8th) and that is assuming that every other team in between lost every single game in the next month and a half.  In the West, the Avs are less than 10 points out of a playoff spot (8 points to 8th!).  That doesn’t even take in to consideration the eventual collapse of 5th seed Vancouver which we ALL know is coming.  And Dallas won’t make it out of the first round if they even make it there at all.

I know I’m an Avs fan, but those numbers speak for themselves.  While I’m not going to sit here and preach that the Avs can still make the playoffs, in the West we don’t have to give up hope.  Not only do the Islanders fans have to give up hope, they have to find a way to give up that lengthy and expensive DiPietro contract.

See you next time hockey fans!

Sean Avery

It was announced recently that Sean Avery had cleared waivers and is poised to make a return to the NHL.  If you do not recall Avery was suspend and later fired for some disparaging remarks aimed at other players.  At this point, he has completed his treatment and orchestrated an opportunity to return the NHL.

To summarize from the articles:  Dallas does not have an AHL affiliate therefore Avery needed to find another teams’ AHL affiliate that is willing to bring him on board.  Once he is assigned to an AHL team, NHL franchises will be given the opportunity to pick him up.  The new team and Dallas will split the cost 50/50 of his current contact.  He still has a number of hurdles before a NHL can get to him but that is the gist of it.  Fortunately, for Mr. Avery the Hartford Whalers Wolfpack want to give him a second chance.

As of yesterday, Dallas assigned Avery to the New York Ranger’s AHL affiliate the Hartford Whalers.  This however does not ensure that Avery will return to the Rangers.  There is some business about the lowest ranking teams have a right of first refusal and having some knowledge of the pro-hockey leagues I can say they shuffle these players from team to team so much it is hard to keep up.  Looking past those caveats I see Avery returning to the NHL via the New York Rangers for a couple of reasons.  Avery turned out to be toxic in every way to Dallas.  After bringing him on board Dallas went from a Stanly Cup contender to holding up the league and now with Avery gone the team has made a recovery.  It likely was not all Avery but, he clearly was not helping the team succeed.  This was not the case for New York.  He had some penalty/temper issues but he scored goals and could fight thereby creating a powerhouse player.  Sure, he did not have the fineness of a Dubinsky but each line needs three different player types and Avery filled a spot.  When Avery became an UFA earlier this year due in large part to his success in New York he asked for a lot more money and the Ranger’s rightly turned him down.  He was a good player for the team but he was not worth what he wanted.  I think the Ranger’s see an opportunity to bring Avery back on board for half price (thanks Dallas and Ms. Cuthbert).  Furthermore the comments coming from the organization and the teams top players have been encouraging and signal the team would welcome Avery back.

I would be happy to see Avery back in a Blueshirt and if they do bite I hope this very young Ranger’s team can still control a sometimes pain in the ass player.

My last question would be:
If Avery ends up returning to the NHL and playing for the Rangers does that make him sloppy seconds?

Anyone check out ESPN’s “10 Burning Questions” online yet? While the questions are great, and they are questions I think any hockey fan has asked herself (or himself) in the few games since the All-Star break, I’ve got burning question number 11: anyone see a trend in these answers? Scott Burnside and E.J. Hradek are quite clearly taking the easy way out and answering these questions with what they’d like to see happen.

For the first question, Burnside and Hradek both agree that the Pens will advance into the playoffs. While I don’t necessarily disagree with that, Burnside’s genius reasoning is “any team with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin shouldn’t miss the playoffs.” Wow, he really studied the stats there, didn’t he? Now it’s true that any team with Crosby and Malkin shouldn’t miss the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t. Any team with those two skaters should never be shut out – but that’s happened a few times this year, hasn’t it?

And that’s just the East. In the West, we learn that Wild and the Stars will advance. Burnside’s reasoning here? “…just because I picked Dallas to win the Stanley Cup during the preseason.” Again, nice. Thanks for answering my burning question, Burnside. I very much doubt Turco is going anywhere past the first round.

Even more disturbing in the NHL today, the Red Wings are expected to announce their new deal with Henrik Zetterberg. Ready for this one? Twelve years, $72 million total. While I can make my peace with the $72 mil (coming out to $6 mil a season) would anyone really want to commit to twelve more years of Zetterberg? Everyone who knows me knows I hate the Red Wings, but I can admit Zetterberg is a key player. But the man is 28, and in this day and age we are seeing less players get to age 40 on the ice (take the hint Chelios). They better hope in Detroit they don’t end up having a Rick-DiPietro-type-situation up north.

Most upsetting of all, with last night’s loss to San Jose, our beloved Avalanche now have a losing record. Sitting in 5^th place in the Northwest conference and four spots out of 8^th in the West, the Avs are 23-24-1 for a sad, sad 47 points. Just how sad is 47 points? We are still behind Vancouver by 4 points and Vancouver is on a 6 game losing streak which could be extended to 7 if they don’t shape up against Nashville tonight. Not that I care if Vancouver doesn’t shape up – they are right behind Vancouver on my list of most annoying clubs. The only good news is that the West is still looking remarkably competitive. If the Avs manage to catch up to Vancouver with just three wins, we could potentially swing back into the playoff picture as the 8^th seed.

What do the Avs need to do to ensure we see the first round? Consistency. Granato should put Raycroft in the net and stick with him; no more of this Raycroft-for-a-few-Budaj-for-a-few line up. It just isn’t working. It’s definitely been hard with us managing to catch the injury bug again, but we could be coming to the end of that stretch. The bad news is Sakic and Stastny will be out at least a few more weeks, and Foote is still out as well. The good news is Laperriere has been activated off IR, and we’ve still got strong scoring skaters like Hejduk, Arnason and Svatos. While I’m betting that the Avs make it up to 6^th or 7^th for a post-season run, it could be anyone’s guess what’s next in Colorado… but that’s another day and another blog entry.

See you next time hockey fans!

]]> http://thinairsports.com/2009/01/28/self-fulfilling-prophecies-and-nhl-round-up/feed/ 0 Alaina 30781 http://thinairsports.com/2009/01/23/april-showers-bring-may-flowers/ http://thinairsports.com/2009/01/23/april-showers-bring-may-flowers/#comments Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:55:18 +0000 Alaina Scarano-Isbouts http://thinairsportsblog.com/?p=205 Continue reading →]]> All sports fans love a good controversy, right?  Of course, controversies are a-plenty in the NBA, NFL and let’s not even get started on the steroids drama in the MLB.  But occasionally us NHL fans get a taste of the good stuff too.

Some wonderful things have happened in the NHL recently.  Viewing was at an all-time high for the second annual Winter Classic in Chicago, the NHLPA announced today that the CBA is not going to be reopened until 2012, and things seem to be on track for a spectacular showcase this weekend in Montreal.  

I guess things were just going too well for the NHL.  So Brad May thought he would come along and screw it all up for fun-loving hockey fans everywhere.

Arguably the biggest piece of trash no-talent-yet-big-name hockey player out there is, despite all foreseeable odds, returning to the NHL for the Toronto Maple Leafs.  We all know that Toronto is certainly desperate this season; they’ve lost the best player on their team, Mats Sundin, and only a miracle will get them to a wild card spot in the playoffs this season.

So why bring in May?  And why now?  Is Toronto this desperate for publicity?  It’s certainly not May’s skill that will be helping the Leafs on the ice; to date he has 127 goals in 970 games played (to put that in perspective, Keith Tkachuk to date has scored 515 goals in 1,099 games), but has more than 2,130 penalty minutes.  Not something to be proud of, as far as I’m concerned.  

And what is even more disturbing to me is that this was a feature on the NHL’s homepage today (for the unfortunate coverage, visit http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=405778).  It’s not like we haven’t had enough bad publicity lately, what with Sean Avery being, well, Sean Avery and all.  Why would anyone in their right mind be bragging about the fact that a player who once put a price on another player’s head and has one of the league’s longest suspensions is back on the ice?  

Of course, this is where the controversy comes in.  Perhaps the face-slash that May brought upon the nose of Steve Heinze back in 2000 was just an unfortunate high-sticking accident.  Some may say that May has just gotten a bad rap; after all, that whole locker-room-bounty-talk was just talk, perhaps.  And you could even suggest that May’s 2007 hit on Kim Johnsson was just a hockey fight that got a bit too, uh, passionate.  Right?  Wrong.

May has a horrible rap sheet and brings absolutely not value to any NHL team.  The Avalanche made what could be considered the biggest faux-pas in franchise history by signing May back in 2005 after he helped end Steve Moore’s career, and the fans have yet to let May or Francois Giguere forget it.  Every time May touched the puck in the Pepsi Center, even in his burgundy and navy sweater, he was booed heavily.

If the Powers That Be in Toronto think that May could be another Tie Domi, they’ve got another thing coming.  He’s not fun to watch, he’s not even good enough to earn the label of “enforcer” but is rather just a goon, and he certainly won’t be as loyal to Toronto as Domi was.  

Toronto, we know you’re desperate… but as an Original Six team, we expect more of you.  Even as fans of the Avs.

Now Claude Lemieux returning?  I’ll sing a different tune there.  But again, that’s another day and another blog entry.

See you next time hockey fans!  Enjoy the All-Star festivities this weekend, even though we all know Crosby won’t be there now.  And by all means don’t tell me what happens… I’m DVRing the game and will watch it next week when I am back in the States.  I’ll return then with my take on the game.  My prediction?  East will win by two.

On to the sports story.

I don’t usually watch the All Star games as I think they are rather boring.  The players are the best of the best (per the fans) so no one hits each other and I end up cheering for a team that contains players who spend the whole season pissing me off.  The French Canadian themed promotion, while appropriate, pissed me off too.  Therefore, Sunday night at 4 pm I will be doing something else.  That being said all is not lost.  On Saturday night at 5 pm they will conduct the NHL Super Skills Competition.  I always watch the skills competition (I heard AO can nail the midair spin move).  The player don’t take it too serious but, they do make it clear why they got there.  But my favorite thing about the skills competition is that it reminds me being on the ice in an empty area with a few of my teammates at 2:00 am trying to best each others latest move.

You win some, you lose some but, in the end you remember the goal you scored while the world slept.

So did anyone catch this months’ ESPN Mag?  I always get excited — no, I get ecstatic — when I pick up my ESPN magazine where our mailman leaves it on the floor and see a hockey star on the cover.  I know most hockey fans will agree with me when I say that ESPN neglects hockey; then most of their columnists (especially Mike & Mike) go on and on about how no one watches hockey and Bettman is screwing it up.  Well Bettman is screwing it up, but that’s another day and another blog entry.

Maybe the word “star” is a bit over the top to describe Carey Price.  But all the same, it was all I could do to wait until I got to my apartment upstairs to rip it open and read about it.  Who Linsay Berra rightfully calls “the loneliest man in sports,” shouldn’t be anymore.  Most NHL fans should be watching him, along with most other goaltenders in the league right now.

Goalies can be go-to men.  They can easily be the reason a team advances (J.S. Giguere) or the reason a team falls by the wayside (Marty Turco).  You’ll likely hear any fan scream, “For the LOVE of GOD Aebischer, how could you miss that?!?!??!?!” before you’d hear, “Statsny, how could you MISS that?!?!?!?!?!”  The goalies are more visible, the man at the other end of the ice who just sits, waits, and seemingly has only one job to do.  Stop the puck.

But Berra makes some good points.  Points that anyone today who yells at a goalie should read.  Goalies today have to be much smarter, more calculating than goalies in the past.  They watch the films, they pay attention to the stats.  They know who is more likely to go for the top shelf versus who shoots down low.  They have to know who is more dangerous on the breakaway versus who is most likely to miss the breakaway opportunity all together.  And most importantly, they have to stay alert.  While we can get up for another cold Snake Dog IPA, just to run back to the TV once the puck goes back into our zone, those goalies are intently staring at the puck and the plays from the other end of the ice.  It’s much harder than it looks, which is something NHL fans, including myself, needed to be reminded of.

The fact of the matter is that goalies are either hot or cold.  Goalies are the easiest people to blame in any given team’s success or failure.  It’s easier to blame Henrik Lundqvist for letting in three goals as the reason the Blueshirts won  rather than to recognize Petr Sykora’s goal and an assist as the reason the Pens won.  It’s easier to blame Theodore for practically giving up in last season’s second playoff round against Detroit than to admit… well, let’s not go there.  I still blame Theodore for that painful second series sweep.

But just how important is chemistry for a goal tender?  They don’t get shifted around like line mates do from game to game.  But what else can we say about Theodore being the number one man in Montreal, and then pulling on an Avs sweater just to be the biggest disappointment the Avs have seen since Roy’s last NHL game, just to sign with Washington and become Boudreau’s missing piece of the Washington puzzle?

Maybe Avs fans have found what we were looking for in Raycroft… only time will tell.  We certainly don’t want to be the team looking to sign a goalie, yet again in the offseason.  Roy has left us with a puck-sized hole right in the middle of our net.

Don’t forget to tune in the the Avs-Calgary game tonight.  To check out Lindsay Berra’s article on Carey Price, click: http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3836512

See you next time, hockey fans!

For all intensive purposes, the Rangers should pick up a W.  The Pens are suffering from a host of injuries sidelining players they need to win.  Dupuis, Fedotenko, Zigomanis and Gonchar have all been placed on IR.  As of tonight, Orpik and Talbot have been confirmed as scratches for Sunday’s game.  Fortunately for the Pens Crosby, Scuderi and Letang may play on Sunday.

A loss for the Pens, while expected, would be another step in the wrong direction and that is the last thing they need.  However, if the Pens can rally and beat the Blueshirts it would be a much needed pick up that might propel the team into playoff spot.

On the other side of the rink, the Rangers need to pick up these wins.  This is the time of the year things pick up in the NHL and every win is needed.  The Rangers cannot afford to lose games they SHOULD win.  Things are too close in the East for a team to miss even one point.

It should be a good game and hope you all can watch a spot of hockey before you set your sites on NFL playoffs.