Surly

I am a Surl-a-saurus Rex.

Terrifying, I know.

Right before I moved, I said to myself, “Self, this is going to suck.  The house is not move in ready, and there is no way around the fact that you’ll be living in chaos for a few weeks. There is nothing to be done but grin and bear it.”  So, with the knowledge that everything would certainly suck for a while, I took pains to ensure that I had a few comforts so that I could relax in my new house, even in the midst of chaos.  One of those comforts was DirecTV (so far I don’t miss Versus, but ask me again in a few weeks when the Sabres are on and I can’t see them), the other was DSL.  Well, the DirecTV is humming along quite nicely, but the internet is NOT.  What I’m trying to tell you is that even though I called Verizon THREE WEEKS ago to set up DSL service “as soon as possible” I still have no interwebs at my house.

Now, ordinarily I’m a “roll with the punches” kind of gal, but I’m having a difficult time recovering from this setback because today was supposed to ROCK.  You see, today was the day I had circled on my calendar as the first Sabres game I could watch in my new house with both my television and internet operating at full tilt.  Tonight was the night when I was going to ignore the chaos all around me, put down the paint roller, and blog my ass off while watching my favorite slug-clad heroes play hockey.

But nooOOoooOOoooOOoo.  There will be no live blog tonight.

The good news is that even though it’s a crazy scene right now, homeownership is kind of a hoot.

Home Sweet Disgusting Home.

The other good news is that as soon as I get the interwebs, I will return to blogging about hockey and stop droning on and on about my death trap house.

The OTHER good news is that the Sabres have been extremely sassy lately.  They’ve been so sassy that I have almost nothing to say about them.  Tim Kennedy’s roster photo pretty much sums up my feeling about the Sabres of late.

Adorable little angels.

In closing: I have no interwebs, my house is strangely lovable despite being filthy, unpainted, and most likely about to fall down, and the Sabres are so good at hockey that I have nothing to bitch about as far as they go.

According to Verizon, the interwebs should be up at and running at Casa de Katebits on Friday, but they’ve made promises before.  We’ll see.

The Downside of Getting Season Tickets:

The calendar says “July 8th”, but my heart says “IWANTHOCKEYTOSTARTRIGHTNOW”.

On a Break

If you are like me, your interest in the Sabres is seriously waning.  This team is just not fun to watch lately.  They’re so….lose-y.

I did something last night that I’ve never done before.  I turned off the game before it was over.  Oh sure, I’ve missed tons of games because of work or socializing, and I LOVE puttering around the house when a hockey game is not capturing my full attention, but I’ve never just shut it off.  Last night, about ten minutes into the third I clicked of the television in disgust/sadness/frustration, and then I went upstairs and listened to an audio book.

This morning I was lamenting my general Sabres malaise, and I was thinking in very dramatic terms.  I don’t have to watch these jerks!  I have better things to do with my time than blog about such a cruddy team!  I don’t need hockey!    The Sabres are lame!  Hockey is lame!  Eff hockey!  I’m DONE with hockey!

That’s when I checked my email and found this:

The NHL is seriously needy.
Also, that couple is making “come hither” eyes at me, and it’s making me feel like a piece of meat.

The NHL dispatched a hockey clad couple to try to win me back only ten minutes after I had sworn off hockey.

Listen, NHL.  I just need some space.

Uh-oh

1st Power Play: Hm.  That…..wasn’t very good.

2nd Power Play: They seem out of sorts.  I guess Vanek’s jaw was an important part of the power play.  Bummer.

3rd Power Play: DUDE!  They NEED to score here.

4th Power Play: I’m getting scared now.

5th Power Play: *gentle crying*

6th Power Play: *loud sobbing*

7th Power Play: *stunned disbelief, and violent rocking back and forth in chair*

8th Power Play: Oh, COME ON!  SOMEONE NEEDS TO WAKE UP VANEK!  I DON’T CARE HOW MUCH VICODIN HE’S SWALLOWED TONIGHT, THE SABRES ARE NOTHING WITHOUT HIM!  GET HIM ON SKATES, AND PROP HIM UP!  DRILL THE BLOWHOLE!  THIS IS AWFUL!

9th Power Play: Hold me.

10th Power Play: *vomiting begins*

11th Power Play: *vomiting continues and crying begins anew*

12th Power Play: *vomiting and crying continue, and I begin threatening Sabretooth at knife point*

13th Power Play:

*finger hovering*

14th Power Play:

*Press*

15th-20 MILLIONTH Power Play:

Press press…..press…..presspresspress….press
presspresspresspresspresspresspresspresspresspresspresspresspress
Preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssss

PRESS

_______________________

We = screwed

Small Victories

Sometimes, when nothing is going right with the Sabres I play a little game with myself.  I pick some random part of the game and I place a totally nonsensical importance on that exact moment.

———-

I’m still in Minneapolis.  I spent the day with relatives, and then I had plans to go out with friends for evening drinks.  During the time between these two events, I stole a minute upstairs to freshen up.  As I was reapplying a little make-up, I listened to a few minutes of the second period of the game on my laptop.  The score was tied at one, and the Sabres had been awarded 30 seconds of 5-on-3.  Because I hadn’t been following the game up until that point, I had no context in which to place the situation, but I instantly decided the moment had significance for me.  This moment was the game, and for some reason, this game was the season.  So, rather than hold back for fear of making an ass of myself, I twittered this:

Then Jason Pominville scored, and for a brief second, it felt like I was a part of it:

———-

I know how the game ended.  An ugly, ugly win.  I didn’t watch, but I followed along on my phone at the bar.  Sometimes, when the big picture is no fun, it helps to reexamine my perspective and celebrate the little things.

Let’s Blow This Baby Up

I’m kind of a drama queen when it comes to the Sabres (although oddly, I’m not a drama queen in any other area of my life), so I felt a little bit of vindication when I made my morning blog rounds today.  It seems I’m not the only person who thought that that was THE WORST HOCKEY GAME IN THE HISTORY OF TIME AND SPACE.  I mean, I’ve seen the Sabres suck plenty of times before, but that game last night was an abomination.  I’m not sure that either team successfully completed a pass all night.  I will forever remember that game as ten guys standing in the middle of the rink kicking the puck around randomly with their skates.  For all I know, they didn’t even USE hockey sticks last night.

But the details about last night are neither here nor there.  The main point is that the Sabres are not a good hockey team.  I’ll admit, I’ve lost ALL patience for waiting around for this particular group of guys to pull it together.  It’s not going to happen.  Drastic steps must be taken.

I’m not ordinarily the type of blogger to play the role of GM.  I don’t feel very confident with my hockey analysis, but this situation has inspired me to go out on a limb and write a serious post about what I would do if I were the GM of the Sabres.  In my opinion, this team needs a major shake-up.

Here are the moves I would make:

Tim Connolly should be retired and sent to a farm to live out his remaining years grazing peacefully.  It’s the most humane solution at this point.

Drew Stafford should be traded for Evgeni Malkin.

Derek Roy’s talent should be surgically extracted and implanted into Paul Gaustad.  This is a dangerous scheme because there’s a risk that Goose could be infected with some of Roy-Z’s personality as well as his talent (that, of course, would be disastrous/tragic), but I’m sure we can all agree that a Goose/Roy-Z hybrid would be a useful player to have around.  I think it’s worth the risk.  After the talent transferring procedure, the now talentless Derek Roy can become Goose’s personal assistant.  Everyone wins….except Goose, who now has a talentless Derek Roy following him around all the time.

Ryan Miller needs his glass eye removed and replaced with a real eye.  He’s done pretty well with one glass eye, considering, but it’s clear that he needs two good eyes to compete in the NHL.  He might as well get his wonky eyebrow re-cocked while he’s at it.

Jason Pominville needs to be taken off the point on the power play.

Henrik Tallinder and Toni Lydman need to be sent out into the deep forest and each be given a match, a single bottle of water, and a penknife.  They have 48 hours to hunt and kill the other.  Whoever comes out alive gets to keep his job.

Thomas Vanek should be paid $7.1 million dollars per year for the next six years.

Clarke MacArthur should be traded to the Blackhawks for Patrick Sharp and Patrick Kane.

Max Afinogenov and Ales Kotalik should be melted down and then recast as Christmas tree ornaments which the Sabres wives and girlfriends can then sell in the concourse to benefit charity.

Andrew Peters should be waived and Adam Mair should start actively practicing punching people and being punched in return.

Patrick Kaleta should be sent to Portland, and Danny Paille should start actively practicing being really, really annoying.

Nathan Paetsch should be traded for Nicklas Lidstrom.

Craig Rivet should be returned to the San Jose Sharks.  This is a mercy trade made of behalf of Rivet who is probably looking at his old team with extreme longing right about now.  This poor dude was living a perfectly happy life in California a few months ago, and now, through no fault of his own, he’s the CAPTAIN of this train wreck.  Poor dude.  I want to set him free.

Mark Mancari, Nathan Gerbe, and Tim Kennedy should all be given trial jobs with the Sabres, but they should be FORBIDDEN from socializing with any of their elder teammates.  Everyday after practice they should be chauffeured to their grim apartments at the Extended Stay America off the 290, and supervised for the remainer of the day.  If any of them even glances wistfully at Chippewa St, they should be automatically fired/executed.

Teppo Numminen should be compelled to retire so that he may begin some sort of job which involves him standing behind the bench with James Patrick looking foxy in a well tailored suit.

Jaroslav Spacek should call a press conference and then bite the head off the pigeon so that we never have to hear about that dumb thing again.  (This isn’t so much of a personnel move as it is a personal request from me to Jaro.)

——-

So that’s what I would do if I were GM.

Sabres vs Bruins 11/19/08

Pregame

Mood: Cautious.  I don’t trust these guys.  It’s been a rough week for Buffalo sports, and my heart has hardened.  I’m scared to love.
Favorite Sabre: I’m going back to basics.  I may be scared to love, but I am not scared to HONK.  Goose is my favorite Sabre.
Least Favorite Sabre: Derek Roy is the new Thomas Vanek.  Incidentally, I am SO happy that Roy-Z has been moved down to the second line.   I don’t want Vanek being tainted by Roy-Z’s suckitude now that he is showing signs of rehabilitation.
Summary of thoughts: I was recently thinking about the Sabres rivals.  I think that as a Sabres fan I’m supposed to hate the Flyers, the Habs, and the Leafs.  Now, I’m not going to cheer any of those teams on, but I don’t particularly hate any of them based on my season and a half of Sabres fandom.  I honestly think the team that I hate the most based on the hockey I have experienced this year is the Boston Bruins.  I feel like whenever the Sabres had a little momentum last season, the Bruins were there to smother it to death.  They always beat us, and I hate them.
Animal representing my hopes of this game:  Baby sea turtle

It’s a rough world out there, kiddo.

After the 2nd (4-3)

Mood: Totally amused.
Favorite Sabre: Lately I’ve been wanting to call Pommerdoodle “P-Doods”.  I’m going to try it out tonight.  P-Doods is my current favorite Sabre for being so blandly snazzy and for saving Vanek from the groady influences of Derek Roy.
Least Favorite Sabre: Sorry, Heather.  Hank’s fired.
Summary of events: This game is BANANAS!  P-Doods quickly scored (1-0), and then Hank quickly coughed up the puck so that the Bruins could score (1-1), and then Toni Lydman had a goal stolen away by Roy-Z (2-1), and then Numminen deflects a goal past Crunchy, then Vanek and P-Doods convince me they are the best line EVER.  Then, all the Bruins decide to beat Petey up at the same time, which ordinarily I would object to, but it lead to a power play goal (4-2), so you won’t hear me complaining.  Then, the Bruins score again (4-3) because apparantly the Hockey Gods want this game to end 12-11.

I think this game rocks, I don’t care what Lindy yells about in the locker room.  And in Crunchy’s defense, at least two of those Boston goals were totally fluky.

Animal representing my hopes for this game: An older, chillax-ier sea turtle.

Do be doo.  I’ll score on you.
Plee ploo plame.  I love this game.

After the 2nd (6-4, Bruins)

Mood: I have to be honest here.  I’m somewhat irate.  The Sabres are supposed to be good, and they are not.  At all.  And they don’t seem like a team that will be fine as long as they just “stick to the system”.  They seem like a shitty team.  Worse, they seem like a bunch of assholes.
Favorite Sabre: Goose is not a diver.  Eff you, ref.
Least Favorite Sabre: Oh, I don’t know.  Mair?  Peters? Crunchy? Kaleta? Timmy’s bones and muscles?  Lindy?  THE SYSTEM?  Harry Neale?  I don’t like the Sabres.
Summary of events: The Sabres ate a big piece of SUCK-ASS PIE and then vomited it back up all over the second period.

The Sabres are the bait.

At the end (7-4, Bruins)

Mood: Fuck
Summary of events: Misery
Solemn vow:  I shall never love again.

Friendly Reminder

Dear Sabres,

Are you taking proper care of your fingers and thumbs? Hand digit health is of the utmost importance.  I know it seems like fingers and thumbs are no big deal, but it turns out, you need them to play hockey.  So, take your finger steroids vitamins please.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Katebits

Hijacking The Caboose

Okay, people, here’s how it’s gonna be. I know you’re used to a certain level of gentle coddling and digressive fooferal around here, but things have changed, and quite frankly, CrotchetyOriginalSam doesn’t much truck with those concepts.

We do truck in full and complete explanations of current events, however, so one supposes that you’re all owed a summation of the happenings that led to this hostile takeover of TWC. Here’s what happened: a couple of nights ago, HRM Katebits retired to her regally appointed BatShack here in the rain-soaked hills of southern New Hampshire, there to view a few late-night episodes of Monk and generally decompress from another busy day spent considering the needs of her loyal Caboosian subjects. By all accounts, the decompression went well, and at a reasonable time of her choosing, HRM shut down her MacBook, tucked the various bats and centipedes that share her abode into their little miniature beds made of matchbooks and tissue paper, and lapsed into the fitful dozing that passes for sleep when your bed is a piece of plastic-covered foam slapped on top of a sheet of plywood.

Tuesday morning dawned foggy and grim, an ominous sign of the horrifying events to come. Katebits arose at her customary hour of noon(ish), and blearily made her way up the Path Of Mysterious Burrowing Creatures That Sam Will Not Investigate to the Apple Hill farmhouse, hauling her now energy-depleted MacBook with her. She plugged it into the one working electrical socket within a five-mile radius, and hit the power button, ready to spend a leisurely afternoon composing yet another brilliant missive for all you little Buffaslug fans and hangers-on.

Strangely, the MacBook failed to respond. Katebits hit the button again, and tried the enter key and a few random function buttons as well, for good measure. But the computer remained as unresponsive as RJ Umberger after a friendly blue-line encounter with Brian Campbell. HRM does not suffer insolence patiently, and she stabbed furiously at the power button, wailing and crying furiously into the New England fog as the damnable machine silently mocked her devotion to her TWC subjects.

Anyway, long story longer, the power problem proved to be quite dire, such that even a daylong trip by wagon train to the next queendom over (which, unlike the BatQueendom, has its own Mac store) yielded no solution. As a result, the offending MacBook has been imprisoned in HRM’s private dungeon somewhere on Pitcher Mountain, there to think long and hard about what it has done, and Katebits finds herself effectively cut off from you, her adoring throng.

Which is where I come in. My HP Pavilion’s working just fine, and while I may not possess a great deal of knowledge of (or interest in) the city of Buffalo and its environs, I do know hockey, I appreciate a good beef on weck, and I have been known to consume large quantities of chicken wings and cheap beer on occasion, which I have been told is more or less your town’s official pasttime. So we’re stuck with each other for the rest of the week, it seems. Those of you who know me from the comments know where I’m coming from, I think, and while I can’t promise that I won’t display a certain amount of Western Conference/Minnesota bias in the entries to come, I’ll make an effort to tamp down (slightly) my usual contempt for Devils fans, the Dallas Stars as a concept, and the defensively inept style of speed skating and puck flipping that you East Coast types call “hockey.” In exchange, I do not care to hear any derogatory comments about Jacques Lemaire, Steve Downey, or any Western teams that you may perceive as slow and/or boring for the duration of my stay. I think we understand each other?

I’ll have more actual hockey-related content for you over the next few days. For now, however, TWC wishes to officially welcome Barry Melrose back to the National Hockey League, and to ask whatever took him so damn long to jump back behind a bench. In tribute to the old greaser, please spend a few hours today rating some mullets, thinking fondly all the while of the joy you used to take while watching Barry’s coif bob and weave across your screen on NHL 2Night…

5 Confilicting Feelings At The End Of The Season

1. I’m really sad that the season is over. I’m going to desperately miss Sabres hockey during this long offseason. The Sabres in their current incarnation are….not that good, but I’m still going to miss them.

2. I was pretty stunned by how depressing it was to see the Sabres lose last night. I mean, we’ve spent the entire season on the outside of the playoff picture, and yet, there was a large part of me that was genuinely shocked to see the season come to an official end. I didn’t even realize how much I still believed that a miracle was on the way. My capacity for hope, enthusiasm, and optimism took me by surprise this year.

3. I believe the Sabres will be better next year, I really do, but over the last few days it has come into sharp focus how we as fans have no control over any of this, and it has left me questioning the whole enterprise. I’ve read a lot of analysis of the Sabres in the last two days. Some of it is angry, some of it is hopeful, some of it is “the sky has fallen” some of it is “just wait until next year”. For a gal who writes a hockey blog, I have remarkably little interest in dissecting the season. How odd that I’m willing to place so much emotion and energy into a team, but when it comes time to take a look at what happened, my entire attitude is “Meh. It is what it is.” What it “is” SUCKS ASS, but so does a lot of stuff. I’ve spent more time fretting about the Sabres this year than I ever thought possible, but it’s sort of a relief to discover I still have the ability to shrug my shoulders and say, “What are ya going to do? It’s just a game.” (Except for when I think about Crunchy’s upcoming free-agency. When I think too hard about Crunchy’s contract I can’t sleep….or breathe. Hee.)

4. Everyone keeps saying, “It’s good they will miss the playoffs. Squeaking in would have given them a false sense of accomplishment. This failure will be good for them in the long run,” and “They would have been demolished in the first round.” I absolutely agree with both of those statements…..and yet. I fell in love with hockey during the playoffs last year. I’m incredibly disappointed that I don’t get to see my first hockey team play in the playoffs. I know, I know, they would have been destroyed by either Montreal or Pittsburgh in the first round. I don’t care. I refuse to budge on this one. I feel personally cheated by the short season.

5. This team, for all of their faults and inadequacies is my first team, and no matter what, I will always remember them fondly. Several times this season I have tried to express my odd gratitude about the current state of the Sabres, and I’ve never felt I was able to make myself clear. I’ll try again: I jumped on board with this sport as a bandwagoner last spring, but this gnarly season has afforded me the opportunity to earn some baby stripes as a real fan. This was no kind of season for the bandwagon fan, and I’m proud to say that my love of hockey and of the Sabres only grew as the season progressed. Furthermore, I’m not sorry that due to this lost season, history will separate this Sabres team from the teams that came before. I like that any future Sabres success will be a result of something that happens in the future. I’ve missed a lot of Sabres hockey, but I guarantee, from now on, I’ll be there. Hopefully, the best is yet to come.

Let Go Buff-a-lo!