Deep Thoughts, with Kate Handy

I made a little joke a few posts ago about the book “The Power of Now”.  I don’t know if you guys ever read that book, but it was one of those “meaning of life” books that caught on with the general populace (with a little help from Oprah, I believe) a few years ago.  I read it in 2005-ish, and since I was very young back then (a mere 30!), the book really left an impression on me.  The premise is that time is an illusion and that the only thing that is real is this exact moment that we are experiencing.  Everything besides “now” is just a construct of the mind.  We remember the past through a mental prism that supports the emotional reaction we are most comfortable experiencing, and we project dreams and nightmares into a future that is in reality, completely unwritten.   Both the past and the future are lies, and “now” is really the only truth in existence.

If we apply this concept to the Sabres, and we assume we can’t trust either the past or the future, here is what we arrive at: THE SABRES ARE ACTUALLY GOOD AT HOCKEY.  EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL!  THOMAS VANEK IS A SLAG-FACED WHORE BUT IT DOESN’T EVEN MATTER BECAUSE THE TEAM IS SO EVENLY BALANCED.  AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, RYAN MILLER IS A SCRAWNY, WONKY-EYED GOD!

I don’t think about the concepts of “The Power of Now” very often anymore, but I like applying it to our current hockey situation.  It’s tempting to be all, “Oh, we’ve seen them be good for stretches before, but they’ll find a way to start sucking again” or “The Sabres are GOING ALL THE WAY, ” but the ONLY reality-based, “now” is a fairly steady state of simple “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Right now, the SABRES KICK ASS and we should experience it fully, because it is the only truth.  Amen.

He’s a Sabres fan.

Politics: Don’t Worry, This Post is Not Actually About Them

One of my absolute favorite things about sports is how they provide common ground for people from all walks of life within the context of a fairly benign environment.  I mean, sure, Bills fans hate the Dolphins, but that “hate” is just part of a game we sports fans play.  The rivalry is not personal, and furthermore, it’s based on a bunch of freakishly large men throwing a little ball around on a field of grass.  How hateful can we really be over such a thing?  Even the craziest, most deep seated rivalries, like the Red Sox and the Yankees, are hogwash when it comes right down to it.  The battle lines are created by the sports industry so that we can satisfy our natural urges to fight and defend, all within the walls of a carefully manicured arena.  It’s a wonderful system.

I loathe politics.  I feel a responsibility as a member of society to stay informed, and to do things like vote responsibly, but truthfully I struggle with even these simple tasks.  I understand that someone needs to run the government, and I understand that everyday citizens need to fight for what they believe in, but I’ve always found the political world to be grueling and fundamentally disheartening.  Like everyone else, I have my own set of strongly held political beliefs, so I try to stay informed, and I try to help out where I can, but for me, reading about and participating in politics is seldom easy, and never fun.

There seems to be a tacit agreement between sports fans- Let’s agree to disagree only about things of no real consequence.  Let’s work together to preserve this bit of escapism that mimics war, but does no actual harm.

I know that ideologically, sports fans span every inch of the political spectrum, but I love how as a group we never really go there. I think this bit of naturally occurring self censorship is healthy, and I’m so grateful for the respite from constantly churning political machine.  Good work, fellow sports fans.

NHL Patches and Minnesota North Stars

From time to time I look in on the goings on over at Uni Watch.  I am by no means a connoisseur of “athletic aesthetics,” but I do appreciate a well designed jersey.  (My favorite NHL jerseys are the Canadiens darks and the Bruins darks.  If I had been a fan of hockey when they still existed, I would have been a Whalers fan just because of their jerseys.  I don’t understand why everyone loves the Blackhawk jerseys so much.  I think those jerseys are flat out ugly, not to mention a little racist around the edges.)

To put my level of interest in athletic aesthetics in perspective, I’ll admit that I’ve never been terribly horrified by the slug.  Sure, it’s goofy and not even remotely dignified, but whatever, at least it’s not the goathead.  The goathead was terrible in every way.  Every. Way.  When I hear people bitching about the slug, especially if they are over a certain age, I always think, “You survived the switch from the original jerseys to the goat head. How could the slug POSSIBLY be causing you this much pain?”

But I digress.

I encourage you to hop over to Uni Watch to spend a few minutes looking at NHL jersey patches.  The Uni Watch guy has pulled many interesting patches off a website called…wait for it….NHL Patches.   I found navigation of the original site to be a little cumbersome, so just start with Uni Watch.

I’ve never given jersey patches much thought, except to notice how they frequently mussy up an otherwise nice uniform, but it was fun to click through these bad boys.

I also learned something interesting which is that the Minnesota North Star apparently adopted the current Dallas Stars logo while still in Minnesota.  I didn’t know that.  The North Stars have become increasingly interesting to me lately.   Many times I’ve tried to adopt the Minnesota Wild as my secondary team (maybe it will get easier now that Lemaire is gone), but it’s never really stuck. I think one of the reasons I don’t connect to them is because they didn’t exist when I was a child.  The Wild simply were not a part of my childhood consciousness….but the North Stars were.

I didn’t grow up watching hockey, but as I’ve learned more and more about the league before my time I’ve experienced a interesting bout of retroactive love for the North Stars.  I did grow up as a fan of the Twins and the Vikings, so I am familiar with the seemingly genetic attraction one feels to a team you grew up watching.  Hockey is starting to feel more ingrained in me and although I don’t recall ever having watched a single North Stars game, some dormant Minnesotan in me has gotten more attached to them as my “childhood team”.  Had I been a hockey fan growing up, I would have been a North Stars fan (and Gophers, of course).  Today, for the first time ever, while looking at that North Stars 25th Anniversary patch, I felt a small pang of resentment very similar to what I feel when I look at pictures of “No Goal”.  It’s a difficult feeling to describe.  It’s not exactly a pain I can claim as my own, it’s just a part of my inherited pride.

It’s interesting that I have two inherited resentments towards the Dallas Stars for incidents that occured with two separate teams long before I even became a fan of the sport.  I wasn’t even aware of it for the first 30+ years of my life, but the Dallas Stars and I have been locked in an extremely slow moving epic battle for decades.

Current score:  Stars 2, Katebits 0.

The Peoria Sabres

I’m reading Will Leitch’s “God Save the Fan” right now, and it’s often pretty funny, and it’s often really repetitive (Yes, ESPN sucks.  WE GET IT ALREADY), but one essay really jumped out at me last night.

Leitch writes about sticking with his boyhood football team the St. Louis Cardinals when they move to Arizona.  He even goes so far as to suggest that a person who doesn’t follow a team through a geographical move is not a real fan.  This idea blew my mind mostly because my instincts tell me that if the Sabres ever moved, I would devote my life to rooting against them.

Leitch’s argument:

See, here’s the thing: Being a sports fan is a year-round job.  At the end of the season, You’ve got your free agency period and then the draft and then your salary cap cut date and the next thing you know, it’s training camp.  So, when exactly was I supposed to switch loyalties?  Was there one day that I cared about Vai Sikahema, and another day when I was supposed to stop?  I read some piece of information about my Cardinals every day of the year.  I know the fifty-three-man roster.  I know the draft picks, I know the coaching staff, I know the name of the guy who plays the mascot.  It’s a full-time position, rooting for a football team….so how am I just supposed to say, “All right, yesterday I cared about these players, but now I care about these”?  If something as wishy-washy as geography guides your rooting interests, isn’t it wishy-washy to move your loyalty around just because someone realized the franchise could make more money in Boise rather than Topeka?

He loses me a bit when he argues that geography is a silly reason to choose one team over another (the reason I became a hockey fan was so that I had an excuse to cheer for Buffalo- nothing wishy-washy about it), but he does make a good case for loyalty.  Once you have your team, you have your team.  Plain and simple.

Although the Bills are the most obvious comparison (and the most likely to actually leave) I’m going to use the Sabres simply because I just don’t care enough about the Bills to make this interesting. If the Bills left town, I’d be sad for all the Buffalonians who love them, but NO WAY would I cheer for Marshawn Lynch if he were running girls over with his car in Toronto or LA instead of Buffalo.  The Bill can just forget it.

The Sabres might be a different story.  Would I suddenly STOP rooting for Goose and Crunchy just because the team moved away?  It’s difficult to imagine.  As much as I bitch about the Sabres and claim that I want them ALL TO BE TRADED, it’s hard to picture rooting against them as a group.  If Lindy and the whole gang were playing in a different city, would I still cheer for them?

I’m not bringing this up to get everyone depressed imagining a bleak future without the Sabres, I just think it’s an interesting way of thinking about the team.  It’s an interesting way to measure what it is that we’re cheering for.  I really think I’m mostly cheering for Buffalo, but I spend so much time watching these players that I do have attachments to them.  I am cheering for the players too.  In the absence of an NHL team in Buffalo I might find myself cheering for the Peoria Sabres just out of habit.

I really don’t know!

Please don’t get yourself depressed by thinking about this too hard, and please don’t spend any time trying to figure out what kind of terrible situation would have to evolve in order for the Sabres to leave.  This is just a simple exercise.  If the current Sabres were plopped down in Peoria, Illinois tonight, would you still be a fan tomorrow? I think it’s interesting and kind of fun to ponder.

After a lot of thought, I voted for “I’d probably keep cheering for the Sabres,” but honestly, I might devote my life to hating them.  It’s a really tough call.

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.

Thoughts

Huh.  I can honestly tell you I didn’t see that game coming.  I did not expect the Sabres to play a decent defensive game and get shutout by Marty Biron.  When I got home last night I was too tired and cranky to write about the game, but I woke up this morning feeling rejuvenated.  Here’s what I was thinking about in the dawn of a new day:

1. Beer

Until last night I had never had a beer at HSBC arena.  It’s weird that I never drink at the arena because I have absolutely no objection to drinking, in fact I do it frequently.  I attribute my non-drinkyness to a few things (not the least of which is that I’m not much of a beer drinker these days), but I think the number one reason I wasn’t drinking was it just seemed like too much of a hassle.  When you don’t eat or drink at games, you’re all settled in for the evening once you get to your seats.  Drinking involves dealing with crowds in the concourse, lines at the concession stand, and of course, peeing. Oh, the peeing!

I’ve already been to five games this season, and I’m getting really good at maneuvering around in my little portion of the 300 level concourse.  I’ve learned that if I bolt out at the end of a period I can hit the bathroom, hit a concession stand, swing by to wave hello to Anne (and buy some cotton candy from her if I feel so inclined), and still have PLENTY of time to be back in my seat to see the majority of a weirdo interview with Maria Genero and Paul Gaustad on the jumbotron. (Seriously, what was that all about?  I couldn’t hear the audio on the clip on the jumbotron.  All I gathered from the feature is that Goose went fishing at some point and that, judging from the body language, he and Maria might very well be in love.  That was a LOT of bashful giggling.  Not that I’m complaining.)

My point here is this: I was totally wrong to not drink beer.  Beer helps.  A lot.  I’m never not drinking beer at a hockey game again.

(Maybe at some point I will investigate those gigantic beers that they pour out of bottles, but maybe not.  What’s up with those?  Why can’t they pour a gigantic draft at the concession stand?  My inclination is to assume draft beer is colder and more delicious, but ENORMOUS beers have their attributes as well.  Please advise, dear readers.)

2. The Crowd

The crowd was terrible.  I’m not judging, because I was a part of the crowd and Buffalo sports fans have had a real rough week, but MAN, the crowd was flat.  I’ve never been to such a subdued game.  Granted, the action was very, veeeeery slow, but still.  The crowd was skeptical, belligerent, and cranky from beginning to end.  As you know, I am PRO booing. I like to boo, and I don’t care who knows it, but…..I’m not a fan of booing just because you have no particular reason to cheer.  If I had my say, we’d save our nonsensical booing for the opposition (like Chara! BOOOOOO!), but I fully recognize the crowd is gonna boo when they’re gonna boo.  That’s just how it goes.

Our section did have one nice crowd moment: In the third period when it was 2-0 and the arena seemed library-level quiet, a guy about five rows back from us screamed out in a very clear, loud voice, “WE WANT MAX!”  He yelled it at just the right time and it seemed to boom over the entire arena.  There was lots of giggling in response.  Then, a guy in front of us yelled, “I TOTALLY DISAGREE!”  And I then I yelled, “ME TOO!”  And someone else yelled “ME THREE!”  I’m sorry to say that this exchange might have been the highlight of the evening.  I like the idea of an orderly discussion occurring in the middle of the game.  I was tempted to shout, “I’M CONCERNED THAT LINDY’S THREATENING INSISTENCE ON DEFENSIVE PLAY IS BACKFIRING!  THE SABRES SEEM AFRAID OF MAKING MISTAKES.  THEY ARE NOT PLAYING AGGRESSIVE OFFENSE!,”  just to see if some else would shout, “SOLID DEFENSIVE PLAY LEADS TO OFFENSIVE OPPORTUNITIES!  THEY JUST HAVE TO STICK TO THE SYSTEM AND BURY THEIR CHANCES. THE GOALS WILL COME!”

3. The Sabres aren’t that bad, but they’re also not that good.

If the Bruins game was when I lost all perspective, last night’s game was when I got it back.  Listen, it’s still early in the season.  There is LOTS of Brahms hockey left to be played.  After the Bruins game I reached a level of unhappiness with the Sabres and sports in general that crossed a line I have drawn for myself.  There is only so much angst I am willing to tolerate in the name of sports.  It’s a long season, with a lot more annoying-ness yet to come, so I realized I need to dial it down a bit if I am going to survive with my sanity intact.

These Sabres are just not dominant and we need to stop expecting them to be dominant.  They have lots of potential to dramatically improve, so I guess we just hope for the best.  They tricked us by coming out of the gate so strong, but it’s time to accept that those first six games were a bit of an anomaly.

4. Thank GOD I have to work tonight.

I love my job, but it’s a drag that it so frequently conflicts with the Sabres schedule.  Usually I’m sorry to miss the Saturday games, but not tonight.  I need a break.  To make matter even better, we’re playing a REALLY cool concert at the BPO this weekend.  The concert involves a lot of great music, but there is also some truly dazzling acrobatics that will steal the spotlight.  We’re playing a full concert with the acrobats tonight, and then a truncated version tomorrow afternoon as part of our Family Series.  I can’t get comp tickets for tonight, but if you are interested in coming to the show (for free) tomorrow afternoon, shoot me an email.  I have four tickets set aside for anyone who would like to use them.  I can’t imagine anyone not liking this show, and I think kids will LOVE it.  Our family shows are usually about an hour long, without intermission.  Yes, it conflicts with the Bills game.

Another super neat thing going on in Buffalo this weekend is the opening of the Burchfield-Penney Art Center. In the middle of a terrible economy, in an already economically depressed community, Buffalonians managed to get a brand new, state-of-the art, museum built.  This is an accomplishment that really really needs to be celebrated.  The museum is opening today, AND it’s going to be open ALL NIGHT. That means, that you can go out, do whatever, and check out the museum at FOUR IN THE MORNING AFTER YOU GO TO JIM’S FOR A CHICKEN FINGER SUB!  I’m SO there.  I really encourage everyone to check out the Burchfield-Penney Art Center tonight.

I love Buffalo sports, but sports are not all we’ve got around here.  When sports are getting you down, try something else!

Let’s Go Buff-a-lo!

HNIC Towels

I thought this story (discovered via Kukla’s Korner) was incredibly cute. Apparently, the HNIC towels that we see draped over the shoulders of NHLers in interviews are highly coveted status symbols for the players. Hockey Night In Canada keeps them under tight lock and key, and the only way to get one is to appear on camera in an interview, and the only way to get interviewed is to be extra awesome in a game. Most of the NHLers grew up watching HNIC, and the towels seem to represent a dream realized.

You can’t buy that towel at Bed Bath and Beyond.

How badly do you want a HNIC towel now? I really really really want one of those towels. Due to the fact that I’m old, out of shape, a woman, and severely unathletic, I have very little chance of becoming a professional hockey player. It seems highly unlikely that I will ever be the recipient of the coveted HNIC towel….but that didn’t stop me from imagining having it draped around my shoulders at my moment of triumph.

For some reason this story got me thinking about how my entire life, I’ve harbored little dreams that are so far removed from reality that they might as well involve me sprouting wings and flying. I spent much of my childhood preparing for my eventual career as a Minnesota Twin. My preparation did not involve playing or practicing baseball (Oh, hell no), but rather sitting around imagining playing baseball. My dream of becoming a baseball player back then was really no less ridiculous than the moment I took to covet the HNIC towel today.

Reading about the HNIC towel, I was delighted to be reminded that these childhood dreams are universal. This dream is a big part of why we watch sports, and it’s why the towels have value amongst very wealthy men. It’s nice that our little childhood dreams still have value, and it’s even better that sometimes that value is represented by something as simple as one small white towel.

No Guarantees

Let us examine the case of the 2007-2008 Buffalo Sabres:

Sabres fans, as you may or may not recall, we went through a bit of a rough patch beginning with encountering the Ottawa Senators in the ECF last spring. The rough patch continued on through July 1st, when (just to remind you) both of our previously beloved captains bolted town amidst cries of managerial incompetence from nearly every corner of the hockey media. Then, the season was up and down (mostly down), and Brian “Soupy” Campbell was traded when it became clear he could not be signed as a Sabre. Again, Buffalo lost another valuable piece of the team that had come so close to the Stanley Cup. Finally, in the season’s dying days, the Sabres were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, ending an all-around depressing year.

Now, let us examine the case of the 2007-2008 Ottawa Senators:

After losing in the Stanley Cup Finals to the Ducks, the Senators management calmly began signing their marquee players to contract extensions. One by one, Spezza, Emery, Fisher, and finally, Dany Heatley were inked to long term deals ensuring that the team would be an EC powerhouse for years to come. The season started out in spectacular fashion, with the Sens playing a record breaking 432-2-1 in their first 20 games. (Okay, I’m too lazy to look up their actual record, but I assure you, it was good.) Then, inexplicably, it all went to hell. For awhile they look merely mortal, but by December they were looking terrible. In the end, only their incredible start saved them from missing the playoffs altogether. They were eventually swept by the Penguins in round one of the 2008 playoffs.

***********

The Sens are essentially the same team now as they were one year ago, and HOLY COW is that scene a disaster. The Sabres essentially lost all of their lockerroom leadership from last season, and the scene is, well, it’s not quite a disaster, but it’s definitely not ideal. There’s plenty of room for improvement, let’s put it that way.  I would argue that the Sabres season was preferable to the Sens season from a fans perspective, but that’s just a matter of opinion.  The fact is, these two teams ended up in basically the same place at the end of the year: zero playoff wins.

I’m not saying that what happened to the Senators would have happened to the Sabres had we locked up all the free agents, I’m just saying it could have happened. It’s worth noting.

There are no guarantees. Ever. That’s all I’m saying.