Thursday, May 24, 2007

Hock-Key???

I'm told the Stanley Cup finals begin soon. I'm also told that childbirth is really painful - I lack any personal knowledge of either with which to speak with any degree of certainty.

The Ottawa Senators will face the Anaheim Mighty Ducks in this year's final, which is both funny haha and funny strange.

In high school when hockey was actually a sport in Chicago - incidentally, check out Eddie Belfour's personal site, which is linked to from the league site - these teams were a joke.

Imagine a Lions/Jaguars Super Bowl and you'll understand the level of confusion I'm mired in today.

The Ottawa Senators were the class of 92-93, while the Ducks entered the league in the 93-94 season, so good for those franchises, but this goes a long way to explaining why even in Minnesota - the state of hockey - people are looking for something else to do.

I keep meaning to give hockey a chance, but without a respectable - notice I'm not even asking for "competitive" or "winning" - team in Chicago, I can't see that happening.

Call me a frontrunner if you want, but it's going to take one hell of a carrot to drag me back to a sport I loved so much and then did me so wrong. The retirement of Bill Wirtz wouldn't hurt, either.

(Image from ajhs.schools.sd76.ab.ca)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I watched every playoff game with the intent of watching my beloved Detroit Red Wings blow out whoever won the Eastern conference. They were routed by the fucking Mighty Ducks and I couldn't be more pissed off...
But somehow I find myself still drawn towards wanting to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

I wish the Ducks a slow painful death...
Niedermeyer brothers can kiss my chalky white ass on their way down...

Matt G said...

They killed the Wild, too.

It was like they shot the backwoods president up here.

Anonymous said...

I went to a Hawks-Wings game earlier this year at the United Center and you could see how far hockey in Chicago has fallen - for a rivalry game that used to be one of the toughest tickets to get in town even up through the mid-1990s, the UC was barely 60% full and the majority of that were there were Detroit fans. I can only imagine what the place looks like when the Hawks are playing teams like Nashville and Columbus. The NHL (and particularly Bill Wirtz in Chicago) have managed to drive away their core base of fans (i.e. Canadians) while adding almost no supporters from the younger generations. I was never the biggest hockey fan growing up, but it's sad that networks would rather show announcers yap about a preview of a horse race (not the actual race itself) than an overtime playoff hockey game.