When the Shanahammer Falls

Now let me tell you of a man, one Shanahan by name
He metes out fines and punishments, no two judgments the same
Took up a shining hammer when he answered Bettman's call
Now brave men flee scared lest they be the anvil when it falls

It's a breakneck world of hitting in the good old hockey game
One hundred thousand eyes on you and plays shown frame-by-frame
So don't talk back and don't be smart when he got you by the balls
Just close your eyes and hold your wallet tight 'til the Shanahammer falls

He'll shame you public from his throne of the D.O.P.S.
But 'next suspension coming down could be any man's guess
So be warned, goons and thugs from Anaheim to Montreal
You best be scared, 'cause who knows where the next Shanahammer falls

A man may not be looking when you stand up in his way
But you can't be sure on which side Shanahan woke up today
So you better speak in whispers and you tip-toe through the halls
And beware the shadow of the Shanahammer if it falls

So if a game is rough and neither ref is making calls
And you want to smash Hank Zetterberg's damn head against a wall
Go ahead and take a chance! but if you touch Jarret Stoll
Well... you better not be Raffi fuckin' Torres when the Shanahammer falls

 

Thinking of the Fans: Shootout Alternatives

Personally, I think the NHL shootout is stupid.  The shootout is necessary in tournaments that are being played on a single sheet of ice, where a winner needs to be determined but teams can't be allowed to play indefinitely because the next game needs to go on.  In the NHL, there is no such need.  The NHL instituted the shootout because fans don't like games that end in ties.  This, to me, is completely fucking dumb.  Fans don't like losing either, but that's the nature of sport.  I don't see anybody trying to eliminate losses from the NHL.

Oh wait--Teams get points for losing, now.  I forgot.

Okay so anyway losses are being marginalized a little bit and wins are being inflated and ties are a thing of the past.  Thanks, NHL!  You've made your league a happier place to be a fan.  Now will you please expand the playoffs to allow 30 teams?  Fans hate it when their teams miss the playoffs.

Despite the NHL's best efforts to make the fans happy by allowing more than half the league's teams to have winning records, there has been some push-back from people who don't like tie-breaking shootouts, but still don't like ties.  With these idiots in mind, I write an open letter to the NHL...

Columbus Day!

Yo

So this offseason is shit and we can't see the end of it. My sister's moving to new york and i've had a few drinks. deal with it. at a party, by the way, not like, by myself, like a loser or something. Anyway so hockey is cool. It's september 11, now, and I am seriously watching a BEST OF THOMAS GREISS video on the sharks' website right now. how sweet is that? fucking sweet. When he shut down the penguins in the shootout? that was cool. the shootout is cool, even though it's totally stupid. yeah, i said it. It's stupid. Thomas Greiss totally exceeded my expectations last season. The year we got Dany Heatley, I went to the Kings stadium and watched the Sharks Kings game. It was before the home opener. the sharks went down 4-0. my friends and i started talking shit with some kings fans and ended up buying rounds back and forth. This was before the kings were any good (like 2 years ago) and while we were out on a patio drinking crown and shitting on ducks fans (I shook a ducks fan's hand for the first time. it made my lip curl) the sharks came back to 4-3. my friend and I got back to our seats in time to see Heatley's first goal as a shark. that was cool. also those kings fans were cool. fuck the ducks. oh and I got to a railing in time to see brad staubitz pick a fight with ----- ivanans and have jody shelly step in for him to keep his face from being obliterated. jody shelley was a stand-up guy. Is a stand-up guy, for all I know. Anyway that was the night that thomas greiss came into the game at 4-0, had the sharks tie the game in the third period, and let a goal in from behind the goal line in the right corner. That was only the third game of the season, but I never fully trusted him again, until this past season. He wasn't flexible like Irbe. He didn't control the play like Nabby. He didn't make a solid wall like Niemi. He did win a bunch of games though. I noticed. He was good. Plus its cool that the sharks are the only team with German players. The entire starting line-up for the 2010 German Olympic team was sharks draftees and denis seidenberg. They got their asses kicked, but they were up against Sweden, Finland, and... uh...Belarus, but that was also cool, that they were a bunch of sharks draftees. Anyway, I believe in Thomas Greiss. Thank you.


(not seen: thomas greiss probably makes another save, but the shootout and its coverage are fucking stupid.)(yes, the video linked to the Best of Thomas Greiss promotion does not feature his game-winning save.)

Why Are People Mad at the Florida Panthers for Winning Their Division?

These rules have been in place for some time, now.  Every year, at least one team is elevated to a seed that is higher than their accumulated points rank in the conference (and definitely league) standings.  This year, the Phoenix Coyotes and the Florida Panthers have each won their respective division for the first time.  Two warm-weather teams are elevated to top-three seeds and all of a sudden this playoff-seeding format is a disgrace to the league?

Ostensibly, the argument that the come-lately detractors use is that these teams have even fewer points than usual, for a division-leader.  Oh no!  The system is broken!  It's a travesty that playoffs are seeded by geography, rather than merit (as determined by points).  But in all the bitching and moaning about geographical determination of seeds, how many calls have there been to move from the 8/8 Western/Eastern conference-aligned playoffs to a much more equitable 16-seed league format?  Last year, Dallas would have made the playoffs in such a format, bumping an East-Coast team from the post-season, and puting all 5 Pacific Division teams in the Top 16.  I didn't hear much complaining in the media about that!

All the Eastern Conference Fans That Think That the Southeast Division Is Weak, have some consideration for the fact that they are dealing with the incalculable hardship of having to leave their time-zone to play a divisional team for the first time!  They even have to do it after December!  It's so hard!

The schedules are made according to divisions and conferences.  It makes sense that the winners of the divisions should be awarded the top three seeds because, while there are times when a division-leader may be a weak team ahead of weaker teams, sometimes a division-leader is only a step ahead of the rest of their highly competitive division; sometimes, a strong team is vaulted to the top by the rest of their weak division (VANCOUVER).  It's impossible to gauge the fairness of a given team's competition.  Therefore, it is fairest to judge them first among the teams who have similar schedules and competition.  This is not a problem of division-leaders being the top three seeds in the Eastern Conference.  This is a problem of the Penguins and Flyers being bumped down the list behind the Panthers, a team for which nobody really gives a shit.

In conclusion:  Quit complaining, you lousy, coddled, whiny, East-Coast bitches!

/ravinglunatic

81 Games Later

This season hasn't been too up or down, really.  There was a bad losing stretch on the Tennis Road Trip; there was a nice win-streak when Marty Havlat first joined the line-up.  In fact, after 81 games, the Sharks have a regular season record of 33-33-15.  They are dead even!  This final game of the season will determine whether the Sharks end the season with a winning, losing, or even record!

I've had to remind myself the past week or so that this is how I wanted it.  After watching the Sharks coasting into the playoffs with a strong team, only to have weak starts to the post-season, I welcomed the opportunity to enter the playoffs, riding a hot streak.  I was going to be happy to be the underdog--to have a lesser burden of expectation.  Only, I had forgotten what it looks like to be the underdog.  It looks kinda like the other team is going to win.  The Sharks are very likely be playing a team that they have not been able to beat this year, either the Canucks or the Blues.  The Sharks, this year, are 0-3-1 against the Canucks and 0-4-0 against the Blues.

Normally, this is where it is said that regular season match-ups don't matter, once the playoffs start, but, the last two years, the Sharks have been eliminated in the Semi-Finals by teams against whom they had gone 1-3-0 and 0-3-1 (Blackhawks and Canucks, respectively, both from memory).  Lop-sided regular season records such as those give me pause.

But this year, I don't care.  This is what I wanted.  A tight race to the finish.  Something we can ride into the playoffs.  I really am not concerning myself about what the records say, because they're depressing.  Also, because this team is just now coming together; I can tell myself that this is not the same team that lost all those games earlier in the year.  They're hitting people.  They're fighting.  The deadline-acquired players are looking more and more at home.  Most importantly: they're winning games and, from here on out, that's pretty much all I ask of them.  Go, Sharks!

Holy Crap,

Did anybody see that terrible dive from Joe Thornton tonight in Dallas?  The Sharks scored on that power play he drew (the penalty of which, even more outrageously, was assessed to innocent by-stander Michal Ryder, rather than Sheldon Souray), so, on a night where I had plenty of gripes about calls against the Sharks, I'm reminded to count my blessings before I go to sleep.

1. I am grateful that the Referees did not call goaltender interference on Tommy Wingels for tripping Kari Lehtonen or negate Daniel Winnik's goal.

2. I'm happy that, to my knowledge, the team plane was not injured in any of the tornadoes in Dallas, today.

3. I am relieved that Joe Thornton got away with that crazy dive in the second period!

4. I'm glad we had these two consecutive games against Dallas to get back into form.  Dallas always plays the Sharks physically, which brings out the best in the Sharks and also brings out a lot of penalties in the Stars!  This Sharks team has completely failed to hit people on game-to-game basis, which is very frustrating to watch--extremely so when they're losing.

5. I am so fucking grateful we won!

What I Would Trade for Rick Nash

There has recently been a Canadian metric ton of speculation regarding the trade of Rick Nash to San Jose.  He is a winger making an average 7.8 million dollars a season and has a no-movement clause for the remaining 7 years of his contract.  Here's what I think the Sharks should offer Columbus GM Scott Howson for Rick Nash:

"He's obviously an individual whose IQ is probably the size of a birdseed."

- Alain Vigneault, in reference to Dave Bolland.

Montreal Canadiens @ SJ

Sharks @ L.A.

"So Long and Thanks for the Goalie!"

The Blackhawks lost 1-0 to the Sharks.  Antti Niemi got his first shutout of the year and earned it.  And this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for Doug Wilson.

Doug Wilson, you have no idea how happy I am to know that you are in charge of making the San Jose Sharks a better team.  Your class and professionalism are a tribute to the sport and the Sharks organization.  I love that you don't give people ridiculous contracts, and that Heatley contract that I didn't like that featured a no-trade clause?  you found a way out of it.  and you got Martin Havlat!  You're the greatest.  Most sports fans don't know the warm, comforting feeling of having complete faith in their team's management and I feel lucky to have it.  Thank you, Doug Wilson, for making this team a fun one to watch, year after year.

In other news, the NHL spent a great deal to advertise the "new tradition" that is the NHL Thanksgiving Showdown on NBC, because apparently something can be a tradition even if it hasn't been done twice or, at the time of advertising, once.  I didn't watch the parade and thus, sadly, missed Cee Lo Green's performance on the NHL float, but I did watch the game on Friday.  It was a good match-up between the Bruins and the Red Wings in Boston and yet I found it very tedious.  It really made me realize how much I dislike the NBC crew.  Pierre McGuire is insipid.  Mike Milbury is a blowhard.  Emerick and Olzyck are not very pleasant to listen to.  And maybe I just don't like that they're not on any one side.  It's not football.  It's weird to have a nationally televised game presented as an NHL showcase, because that's not typically how we watch hockey.  I'm happy to tune into another team's broadcast and check out what's happening elsewhere in the league or when I need something in the background while I'm cooking.

NBC spent a lot of time pushing the Tim Thomas/Jimmy Howard angle of this game, possibly because they're both American.  At any rate, the Bruins played Tuukka Rask in net and NBC didn't seem to pick it up until half-way through the first period, so engrossed were they in their own talking points.  No back-up goalie was going to stop them from talking all about Thomas and then asking about him in the behind-the-bench interview with Bruins Coach Claude Julien.

I skipped ahead and then turned it off at the end of overtime.  The shoot-out would have only made the game seem even more like an exhibition.

A Proposed Solution to Defense in the NHL

I wanted to touch on the big buzz-story around the NHL that began this past Wednesday, the night of November 9th.  In a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Philadelphia Flyers refused to even attempt to break out of their zone on multiple occasions because the Lightning were playing defense in what is known as a 1-3-1 formation, in which one defender pressures the puck-carrier, three defenders stand at the red line to break up long passes, and one defender stays deep in their own zone in order to be the first to the puck in the event that the offensive team dumps the puck into the zone.  The Flyers, when presented with this defense, simply stayed in their own defensive zone and skated around with the puck for whole stretches of the game.  I thought it was a funny little story, a quirky side-show that happened in Florida when Flyers Coach Peter Laviolette realized that he had no idea how to beat a "neutral-zone trap" defense.  "No big deal," I thought, watching the highlights.  "Chris Pronger is a whiny bitch whose team refused to play, thus exposing and even highlighting the limits of Peter Laviolette's competence.  And they lost the game and looked like dipshits in the process, so justice is served!"  What produced a stronger reaction from me and drives me to address the subject here, is that the media (and according to Pierre LaBrun, the General Managers) are widely blaming the Tampa Bay Lightning for the lull in play!  That absolutely dumbfounds me.

Hey, Amici's! You Suck!

The Sharks are now 7-5-2 (W-L-T) on the season and appear to be playing well.  But I don't care to talk about that.  I expect them to play well.

The Jack-in-the-Box Taco Minute has become the Jack-in-the-Box Taco Minutes!  I made it clear at the beginning of the season how I felt about the promotion as it was first presented.  Now, there is something to add: The crowd took to booing the announcement of the Taco Minute, which was announced during the last TV time-out of the second period of each game.  People of the Arena, I thank you for booing this awful promotion and our voices, apparently, have been heard!

The End of a Road Trip

The Sharks are now 5-4-1 (W-L-T), after going 4-1-1 on a two-week road trip that featured tough-fought wins over the Bruins, Predators, and Red Wings.  All in all, it was a pretty confidence-inspiring trip!  Havlat looks good, Joe Thornton is taking control, and Joe Pavelski is scoring like a madman.  Brent Burns continues to make conspicuous defensive errors; I continue to have faith in our coaching staff to coach the crappiness out of his game by the end of the season.

Tonight, the Sharks are at home to take on the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Even though he is still not playing in NHL games, Sidney Crosby is travelling and practicing with the team, which means that he will be in the building to witness the Penguins' soul-crushing defeat.  I recall fondly the Penguins' last visit to San Jose, in which they were handed a 5-0 loss so devastating that it gave their team president a heart attack.  Obviously, I wished him a full and speedy recovery, but damn that was an epic win!

Game Recap

I was in Oakland most of the day and night and only shuffled back in through my front door to watch a recording of the Islander's game at 2:30 or so.  Needless to say, I was in no condition to sit through a 2.5 hour hockey game.  But in the first three minutes I watched, they won face-offs, earned a powerplay, scored on that powerplay, and killed a penalty, so I am going to infer that the Sharks opened a Costco-sized can of whoop-ass on the Islanders and ran away with the game to a 5-0 victory, perfect on special teams.  Good job, Boys!  Keep it there!  Only one more win to make this a perfect* roadtrip!  I'm so proud.

Sharks now 5-3-1. (W-L-T*)


*Fuck the shoot out.

Texas Rangers Lose Second Consecutive World Series

Did anybody catch the game, tonight?  It was amazing!  Another brilliant display of skill and determination between two ferocious competitors.  The level of play has been so elevated in the games between these two clubs that it saddens me to even think that one of them might be moved to the Eastern Conference next year.  Yes, the Sharks and the Red Wings have become a must-watch match-up for anyone in love with the sport of ice hockey.  They have looked to each other as measuring sticks for the past several years and are coming off of the most closely competed Stanley Cup Playoff series in history.  Tonight's game did not disappoint.  Sharks won 4-2, including an empty-net goal.  I eagerly await the Red Wings' first visit to San Jose this season, November 17.

Also: Somewhere in the World, baseball was played.  And Texas was eliminated in the final round for the second year in a row!  I know this because they lost to the Giants last year.  It's too bad that they didn't lose at home again so I could watch Sad George Bush's sad reaction shots.  I guess there's always next year...

In real news: The Sharks are on a roll!  The first four games of this road trip are done and won.  The Sharks came back in the third period to tie the Devils (then win the shootout).  They earned a 2-0 lead over the defending-champion Bruins and, when it evaporated in a moment, responded with poise and a game-winning goal.  They did a similar feat against the Nashville Predators, regaining the lead only a minute after surrendering it.  Now they've defeated the Red Wings in another hard-fought, high-tempo game of the caliber we've come to expect (and demand) from this rivalry.  The second back-to-back game is on Long Island tomorrow and it's up to the Sharks to not overlook the Islanders, who have sucked for some years now.  The Sharks have a history for playing down to less successful teams even as much as they play up to perennial powerhouses like Detroit.  But I don't think they will.  I'm sure they've been looking forward to facing Evgeni Nabokov, whether he ends up playing in that game or not.

A couple things overlooked in all this:
- Martin Havlat is a fucking boss and possibly our lord savior in disguise.  This win-streak began with his first game as a Shark and he has assists in all four wins.
- The Sharks have been losing face-offs.  I seriously can't remember when the last time was the Sharks were under 50% on face-offs.  It's not something worth worrying about, as long as we're winning, but that was a real shock to me.


The Sharks are now 4-3-1. (W-L-T)

The Uncanny Valley

Have you ever wanted a robot friend?  One that could talk to you and empathize with you and give you hugs and do your work and possibly have sex with you?  How 'bout one that just chats with you on the internet about how nice bunnies are?  Well, Cleverbot.com is home to just that!  The latter, I mean.  It's the product of Man's desire to bridge "the uncanny valley," that point at which artificial humanoids become life-like enough to be creepy, before they become indistinguishable from the real thing.  Cleverbot is a robot designed to have natural-sounding, human conversations.  It mimics humans by generating responses from previous conversations it has had with other people, so it supposedly "learns" from people, like the Terminator.  It just fooled 59% of a test group into thinking it was human. (Source)

The tested version runs 42 searches of its databases before it answers.  The free, online version makes considerably less of an effort.  Here's what people are saying about it, from the Cleverbot website:

"CleverBot is freaking amazing! I believe it knows the secrets of the universe. I had an entire conversation in Japanese with CleverBot. It is awesome. Not to mention that it is a great role-player and knows all the spells used in Harry Potter. Lol. Best app ever!"    12th July 2011

"The app is amazing. And she/he (Cleverbot) is more fun to text to than my actual living friends. Haha."    25th June 2011

"Cleverbot has earned a whole new level of respect from me- mostly because she knows the lyrics to David Bowies songs."    24th June 2011

Naturally, I was intrigued.  I had to meet and interview this robot, probe its knowledge-base and find out what makes it tick.  Or at least try to chat hockey with it.

Games 2 & 3: Back-to-Backes

Last night's loss to the Blues comes after the 1-0 road loss to the Ducks.  It's no big deal.  It was the first of three instances of back-to-back games the Sharks have in three weeks.

I was at the ducks game, at least the second two periods.  Greiss looked good in that game, but the Sharks' coordination, especially on the powerplay, looked really bad.  There were many passes to no one and even more directly to or through ducks players.  Brent Burns, in particular, seemed to be struggling to coordinate with the others.  He will get it together, I have faith, but it looks like it may be a much slower process than I had anticipated.