4 Things

1. I’m on vacaaaaaaation!  I’m in Portland Oregon, aka the Land of Goose.  I love it here.  I love all the hippie-dippy scruffy guys, and I love the mild winters, and I love the general spirit of chillax.  Most of all, I love the people I get to see here.  Somehow through an odd twist of fate half the people I love live in Portland, which makes it a rather satisfying and convenient vacation destination.

As part of my vacation, I’ll be chilling in the mountains this weekend, without wifi.  I have to admit, I’m a little worried about an entire weekend without the computer, but it will be character building.  I hope.

2.  I hear the Sabres will be playing the Rangers and the Red Wings this weekend.  Yikes.  Good luck with that, Sabres!

3. Speaking of the Sabres…I know the game against the Senators was kind of frustrating, but in a weird way I thought that game went about as well as it could have.   I don’t think this team is going anywhere unless they can be compelled to work really, really hard.  Yeah, a decisive win against Ottawa would have been fun, but it’s great that they were instantly punished for their bad behavior in the second period.  I think the longer they’re desperate, the better off we’ll be.  The Sabres play their best hockey when they know they have zero room for error.  So, if I have to watch them almost choke away a three goal lead to Ottawa, I’m willing to do so, because it’s for the greater good.  I think they’ll try harder against the Rangers because they almost blew it against Ottawa.  It’s sad, but it’s true.

4.  I think all the hoopla surrounding Ruutu’s bite has been a hoot.  I also think it’s funny that Andrew Peters took some heat for his reaction to the bite, as if he over reacted to sell the injury.  Listen, I love to bag on Andrew Peters as much as the next girl, and it kind of kills me to give him credit for anything, but honestly, the man gets punched in the face for a living.  If there is one hockey skill I will gladly admit Andrew Peters has mastered, it’s pain tolerance.  If he waved his hand around like it really hurt, well, my guess is that it did.  Even if it didn’t really hurt, and he was totally faking, well, suck it Ruutu.  (Don’t bite: It’s a good rule of thumb.)  (Heh.)

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.)

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

Hockey is Hurting, Confusing, and Delighting Me, a Post In Three Parts

Hurting

Well, that game seriously blew. BAD, Sabres! Heather B summed the situation up pretty well.

Games like last night take me beyond the basic unhappiness of a loss, to a state of dull anxiety. The thing I seem to enjoy dwelling on lately is Crunchy’s upcoming free agency (By upcoming I mean a year and a half from now. See how rational I am?). When I watch a game in which Crunchy is left HANGING OUT TO DRY by his entire team, I start fretting about whether he is going to want to stay in Buffalo. I neurotically worry that he’ll pack up his wonky brow and his death glare, and he’ll move to wherever-the-fuck he thinks he can win a Stanley Cup Championship. This tendency to assume that all the players are desperate to get away from us is not indicative of my general approach to life. I can’t decide if this is just me using sports to air out some previously latent insecurities, a sad scar from my Chris Drury love, or a sign that I really am a Buffalonian now, but it’s kind of pissing me off. Hopefully this phase will pass soon.

Confusing

I keep meaning to write a whole post about hockey violence, but I can’t seem to pull it together. I would like to say a few things about the fighting in last night’s game.

I really hate fighting between enforcers. It’s very stupid, and to me, totally devoid of entertainment. I hate the pageantry involved with watching Andrew Peters and some other dude start yelling at each other during the faceoff. They’re not actually pissed at each other, instead they are playing a role, like an actor in a play. I dunno, I just find it sort of embarrassing to watch. In order for me to enjoy a fight, I have to believe that the participants are both motivated by some degree of legitimate rage created by the flow of the game. When Goose gets pissed enough at Todd Bertuzzi that he wants to fight, well, I trust Goose’s professional judgment on that one. (I trust Goose because he was thoroughly trained at NHL University to recognize when and how to fight. I’m pretty sure he minored in fisticuffs at NHLU. Andrew Peters does not have a degree from NHLU. He’s self taught, and frankly, I think it shows.) It seems that in certain circumstances, I’m perfectly willing to enjoy the hot mess that is grown men fighting in full body armor. (Although, Goose, perhaps you aren’t aware, but Bertuzzi has a bit of a history. He’s scary, and not in an amusing Parros kind-of-way.)

I was raised by hippies, in a household where hitting was wrong, in every situation. I have a fair amount of discomfort with the fighting in hockey, and I am relieved I don’t have to try to justify the situation to my hypothetical kids; but because I am an adult, without the burden of shaping young minds, I can enjoy the non-goon fights for what they are: awesome. So, this is all a round-about way of saying that fighting in hockey is both upsetting and exhilarating. It’s all very fucked up. I suspect that people who have grown up around hockey feel differently about the fighting, but to me it’s genuinely troubling. I wasn’t just raised by hippies who believe hitting is wrong in every circumstance, I kind of am a hippie who believes hitting is wrong in every circumstance…..except in hockey apparently.

This whole issue really confuses me.

Delighting

I am a night owl, so I love these late starting west coast games. Last night I watched the first two periods in a bar, and then I watched the last period in my pajamas on the couch. Nice! I am pretty much always awake well past midnight anyway, but it seems sort of extra fun that I get to watch the Sabres late into the evening. If I had my way, all the games would start at ten o’clock.

Tree, Petey, and T.V.

(This post is a part of a series entitled “Kate’s Favorite Sabre Competition” in which I am choosing my 2007/08 favorite Sabre by process of elimination. Each and every Sabre is a hero, but in the end, there can be only one favorite.)

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Before I delve too deeply into the third round of Favorite Sabre cuts, I have something to say: I’ve been feeling quite guilty about my early dismissal of the delightful Jochen Hecht. In retrospect, he deserved better, and I wish that I had kept him around for a few more rounds. But what’s done, is done. I don’t think Yo-Yo was going to go the distance anyway, so all his early exit means is a few extra days on the golf course, right? I don’t want to lead him on, only to disappoint him later when he is more emotionally invested. Jochen seems like he might take rejection pretty hard, and I hope he knows I was just looking out for his best interests. And again, just because I haven’t chosen him now, doesn’t mean he won’t become my Favorite Sabre the second the season begins. Let’s not forget, this competition is utter bullshit.

So without further ado,

In the third round I present to you a trio of men for whom I have feelings that are quite out of step with the average Buffalonian. Let’s meet them now….

Dmitri Kalinin #45

Oh, poor Dmitri Kalinin! When people around Buffalo aren’t bitching ruthlessly about his rotten defensive prowess, they are speculating on the fragile state of his psyche. Sweet, sweet Dmitri is prone to devastating lapses of confidence that effect every aspect of his play….or at least that’s what they say on AM 550; and this is the problem as I see it for Dmitri Kalinin. I mean, honestly, can life get more undignified than when Schopp and the Bulldog are speculating about your mental health?

Poor, baby.

I am a professional violist. Playing music for a living certainly isn’t as stressful as playing hockey, but I can relate on some level to buckling under the pressure to perform. I genuinely feel bad for this poor guy. Here he is, clearly struggling, and the whole town is angry and disappointed, and he’s letting everyone down, and the more he tries, the worse it gets, and it’s all just a vicious cycle.

Sadly, a desire to mother Dmitri really doesn’t translate well into holding him up on a pedestal as my Favorite Sabre, so I have no choice but to eliminate him from the competition. I am cutting him from the competition, but I do so with tremendous love and tenderness in my heart. Dmitri, just because you’re not my Favorite Sabre, doesn’t mean you aren’t a great guy. Seriously. If you ever need to talk, you know where to find me. I’m here for you, buddy.

Andrew Peters #76

Petey’s job, as far as I can tell, is to punch people. In regular life, he would be called an “asshole”, but in hockey, he is called an “enforcer”. Accepting the idea that fighting is a genuine part of the game was one of the most startling tasks for me as a beginning hockey fan. I am the child of Minnesota hippies. We do not punch. We talk it out. Discovering that I have a taste for hot guys punching each other has been….borderline alarming, to be honest.

The thing I like about Andrew Peters is he really doesn’t seem like a tough guy. He actually seems like a little bit of a clown….a cocky clown, but still, a harmless goofball at heart. People in Buffalo LOVE to complain about how much he sucks at skating, and I’m sure he does, but if he sucks so bad, why are the Sabres keeping him around? It would seem that they are keeping him around because everybody in the organization really likes him……and that makes me like him a little too. I think that instead of punching, Petey’s primary role is to be a good teammate and to keep things light in the locker room. I could be way off base with this, but I think Andrew Peters might be a pretty decent guy.

All that said, Kate’s Favorite Player can NOT be a sucky enforcer.

Andrew Peters, you are out. Auf Wiedershen!

Thomas Vanek #26

I really thought that once I wrote a letter explaining my anger, I would be able to forgive Thomas Vanek for his recent slutty behavior. Well, it turns out I’m just not ready. I am certain that once the season begins and TV gets an opportunity to earn his contract, he will find a way back into my good graces, but for now, he is going to have to live with the fact that he is being cut from the Favorite Sabre Competition in the same round as Dmitri Kalinin and Andrew Peters.

We reap what we sow, Thomas. (Oh, and congratulations on the birth of your son.)

Round three is complete! The competition is heating up as we get closer and closer to the start of hockey season. Stay tuned to learn who’s dreams will be dashed, and who will ultimately be crowned: KATE’S FAVORITE SABRE!!!!