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Signs the NHL lock-out is starting to bite

November 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The 2009 Winter Classic: New Year’s Day’s planned Classic, hosted by Detroit, ain’t gonna happen.

So, as sure as the weather is shitty in New York right now, on Friday (American time)/Saturday (Australian time), the NHL will announce that the Winter Classic is cancelled for New Year’s Day, 2013. This is a crappy development, on many levels, except for the fact that it gives me another year to save up and try to get there in 2014, assuming Detroit still gets to host the Classic, if and when the NHL lock-out finally ends.

But the Winter Classic was always a signature event in terms of the lock-out, as it provides so much in terms of TV ratings, revenue and interest. Letting it slide away without doing a deal means the NHL owners and the players can now drift for the rest of the fast evaporating northern winter without doing a deal and playing some hockey. Yes, I’m calling it: season gone.

So at a time where Red Wings fans like me should be debating how our team is looking deep into the season, post-Lidstrom (The Perfect Human), whether Patrick Eaves will ever come back from concussion, what a genius Datsyuk is, and so on, the Joe Louis Arena is hosting public skating days and gathering cobwebs.

It sucks, and there are signs that the world is starting to unravel without the best hockey league in the world. Such as:

1. Vancouver shooting fans have embraced an offer to have NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman as a target at a shooting range.

2. NHL.com is reduced to reviewing hockey films from two decades ago.

3. Starved of hockey, Manhattan folk have lost their minds as Hurricane Sandy blows out of town.

4. Some idiot decided to close the Elwood RSL Club, one of the better memories I have of hanging out in that suburb.

5. The Grand Rapids Griffins continue to attract a surprising amount of interest, as they head to Texas for a road trip. The Wings have just swapped out starting goalie Jordan Pearce for wunderkind Petr Mrazek, which is interesting in terms of Detroit’s future development.

6. Detroit Tigers fans, still hurting from being swept in the World Series, at least got to snigger when the parade for their conquerers, the San Francisco Giants, went horribly, horribly wrong. Like the manager’s car in the parade running out of petrol. No, really. It didn’t occur to the parade organisers to make sure cars had enough petrol to make it down a street?

7. People are doing weird things with pumpkins, in the name of Halloween.

I could go on … we really need to start watching some hockey. Damn you, NHL and, for the sake of fairness, NHLPA.

Me? I missed my Wednesday night dev league hit last night, to go and watch the Black Keys at the Myer Music Bowl. I loved it; partly because I’m just really into their music and have been from their first album, and secondly because I was pumped that they stripped back their sound, instead of adding 10 band members for a bigger sound. Big Cat being Big Cat, he spent the last few songs looking at his watch, calculating whether he could get home to grab his gear and still make the 11.15 pm dev league.

The Black Keys: a fine way to fill in those lock-out hours. Pic: Brisbane Times.

We didn’t and it was strange to wake on a Thursday morning without that post-dev league hockey hangover. I’m used to creaking around and lacking sleep on a Thursday. I’m not sure I like this don’t-actually-need-coffee-to-survive feeling.

To compensate for no dev league, I went for a skate yesterday afternoon, sneaking onto the smooth ice of the Henke Rink because the Bradbury Rink is being relaid. It was just me and eight or 10 skaters who looked to be total newbies, so I was able to really let myself go, skating as hard and fast as I could for 40 minutes. I felt fantastic; really concentrating on correct form, bending my knees, lower centre of gravity, pushing all the way with my stride. That pleasing crunch that digging a skate in provides. After feeling, post last weekend’s game, that I hadn’t moved well enough, hadn’t been mobile, I was intent on just trying to fly, and to skate sprints up and down the ice. I even found a few minutes at the end for backward crossover toiling, seeing as to how I wasn’t in the usual crowded general skate environment.

My slates are being sharpened today and I plan to get out there at least once more before Sunday’s game against a Jets team, to keep working my legs and feel comfortable on my blades when it matters. I think I need to hit Sunday’s game in a puck-hungry mood. Ready to hustle.

If only Bettman and his cronies had the same sense of urgency.

Oh well … crank the Black Keys on iTunes, and fill the non-Red Wings time with crappy internet reads like this. Nothing personal, Cindy, but I’d rather be reading about Zetterberg and Dats destroying defences.

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Mullets, Tigers, scattered Wings and future dreaming

May 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Pavel Datsyuk enjoys his off-season, getting maybe a touch careless with a high stick while playing for Russia. Pic: Gettys/Detroit Free Press.

There’s a fundamental difference between supporting the Detroit Red Wings in the National Hockey League and barracking for the Richmond Tigers in the Australian Football League. And it goes way beyond the teams’ dramatically different (but both way cool) colour schemes.

Detroit is all about winning, where any year that doesn’t bring a Stanley Cup is met with blinks of disbelief and then the disgruntled shaking of collective heads, by management, players and fans.

Richmond used to be like that, in the 1960s and 70s, but over the past 30 years has sunk so that expectations are much, much lower. Put it this way, Richmond has made the finals twice since 1982, while Detroit has made the play-offs in 26 out of the last 28 seasons, including a ridiculous 21 years in a row, including the season just completed.

Right now, all is quiet in Detroit, as a result of the Wings being uncharacteristically bundled out of the first round of those 21st-straight play-offs by the uppity Predators; Nashville out-winging the Wings by being hard and tough and skilful and uncompromising and just frickin’ wanting it more. My guys looked slow and flat and out-psyched and out-muscled. Yes, I am still steaming about Weber’s Ultimate Fighting head-slam of Hank Zetterberg but – deep breath – it’s now history.

Talk has turned to whether the Wings can snare a big name Unrestricted Free Agent in June, and whether any of our very promising draft picks can make the next one, two or three steps to move out of the minors, into the Wings roster and then into serious Stanley Cup-contending form?

In my opinion, we need to pay attention to hair. Last summer, the Wings drafted a big-bodied defenceman with a ranga-afro, Mike Commodore. Wings fans tried to love him, even after he refused to wear the number 64 in honour of the old video console, but then he was in and out of the Wings line-up and eventually traded for not much more than a couple of free beers and maybe a book shop voucher and is now plying his trade with Tampa Bay. (Big Cat Place remains as filthy about this as I am about the Weber hit on Zee. We’ve had a lot to seethe about lately.)

The Tigers also badly needed a big body after the 2011 season and got one in Ivan Maric, a ruckman with the best mullet hairstyle going around in football and maybe in sport.

Big Ivan Maric: bringing mullety goodness to the Tigers. Pic: The Age.

In fact, after Ivan dominated (46 hit outs in the ruck, 20 possessions) yesterday’s game against Port, which the Tigers won, the Richmond coach, Damien Hardwick, was moved to say: “He (Ivan) still has some areas he can work on, mainly his hair, but other than that we move on. He seems to be getting better the longer the mullet.”

Of the Wings stars, an early start to summer has meant a chance to compete in the IIHF World Hockey Championships, Division 1. This is the main stage of the world titles that Australia recently competed in. Zetterberg, Franzen, Ericsson, Filppula, and even prospect Tomas Tatar are all among those playing. The Wings’ goalie, Jimmy Howard, made 40-odd saves as the USA beat Canada, so at least he’s hit top form a month too late.

Pavel Datsyuk is playing for Russia, and seems to be enjoying not being in official NHL competition and therefore not having to worry about trying to win the Lady Byng, the NHL sportsmanship award. At least if the picture above is any indication. He scored Russia’s first goal and they won …

All I care about is that Datsyuk, Zee and the rest have months to gear up for the 2012-2013 NHL season. Hopefully he’s joined in September’s training camp by a few of our better prospects who surprise everybody by being fitter, stronger, bigger and hungry, ready to be genuine NHL stars. Plus a big name or two from free agency, to add extra two-way grunt up forward. And ideally even Nik Lidstrom, fit and eager for at least one more brilliant season in D.

They Wings gather in September for training camp. By then, I will have spent an Australian winter belting up and down the ice at the Icehouse and Oakleigh, getting ready to join the Rookies, my very first actual team, in summer league competition. Plus I hopefully will have watched big Ivan and the Tigers continue to build into something resembling a genuine finals prospect over the next couple of years.

Is that too much to ask?*

* Don’t answer, re Richmond. I know the answer is almost certainly yes.

 

UPDATE: Ivan Maric wallpaper now available. Respect the Mullet! … click here.

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Playtime for the Sporting Gods, Part 2

November 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Red Wing Darren Helm slots a nice goal, now we're gone. Pic: Detroit Free Press

Writing from America, a couple of posts ago, I pointed out that the Sporting Gods had enjoyed messing with the boys and I as we sat, somewhat bemused, through four straight Detroit Red Wings losses. Covering six games, including away games, the lengthy losing spell was the worst streak in quite a while for the Wings and was even more bizarre because the team, which bristles with world-class forwards, managed only a measly six goals in those six games.

When we arrived at the Verizon Centre in Washington DC, for our first ever Wings sighting on October 22, Detroit was 5-0 after a brilliant start to the 2011-12 NHL season. They lost that match to the Capitals, 7-1.

Then lost to the San Jose Sharks, in our first game at the Joe Louis Arena, 2-4. Then lost to the so-so Minnesota Wild, 1-2 (utterly robbed in overtime), and then finally managed to put in an absolute stinker against the Calgary Flames, while we were sitting in dream seats, right on the glass, losing 1-4 and being booed off the ice by the Detroit fans.

As mentioned previously, I didn’t actually care that much. It was so much fun to be there and to be watching the team live, that the losses were annoying but not devastating. Yes, I would have loved to have belted out “Don’t stop believin’” but the fact we didn’t just leaves some wriggle room on my Life List. I guess I’ll simply have to somehow return to Detroit and watch some more games … sigh.

What’s been truly funny – and I genuinely tip my Red Wings beanie (bought at the Joe) to you, Sporting Gods – has been what’s happened since we packed up and headed for LA and then home.

The Wings promptly beat the Anaheim Ducks, 5-0, in the first game after we vacated the Joe.

Then backed it up with a 5-2 belting of Colorado. Then beat Edmonton, 3-0, and finally beat Dallas, 5-2, on Sunday. Defender Ian White showed the commitment that has seen the team roar back by diving in front of a Dallas goal-bound puck and stopping it with his unprotected face. One broken cheekbone later, he’s out for maybe seven games, but he protected the lead when it mattered. Full respect.

Our crappy seats at our last Wings game ...

Tomorrow, our time, the Wings play an away game at St Louis and I have no reason to think they won’t rattle home 9 or 10 goals.  We are half a world away …

The Wings are back in it, as one of the form and most feared teams of the competition, with some kind of early claims for Stanley Cup contention.

Me? I’ll do my bit and bunker down in Melbourne, a long long way away, working on my pivots and other moves, trying to improve my on-ice balance and waving flags that I am no longer on-site at the Joe. As long as Will, Mack and I don’t go anywhere near the Wings, they’ll be fine.

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