biting satire

All hail Bogdan von Pylon. Source material from Down Goes Brown.

as heard on Puck Daddy Radio

(Whenever I can, I spend an hour a day listening to Puck Daddy Radio. Sometimes, I even answer their Question of the Day. Today, host Rob Pizzo read the following and followed it up with "and Chris Collision can kiss my ass".)

Today's question, the not-leading-at-all "What aspect of Nicklas Lidstrom (stats, intangibles, etc.) impresses you the most?".

By far the most impressive thing about Nick Lidstrom's game is his incredible aura of saintliness. He's completely immune to criticism or accusations that his game isn't what it once was, unlike every other 40-year-old defenceman in the history of the game. Reagan was the Teflon president, because no criticism ever stuck to him: Lidstrom is the Teflon Dman, the only player of my lifetime who is a more obvious candidate for canonization than for the Hall of Fame.

I bet Lidstrom could skate on water that *wasn't even frozen*. His slap shot heals the sick and his outlet passes sometimes take flight as Lidstrom's angelic brethren descend from the heavens to honor their glorious leader. We are all literally blessed to receive another year-long reason for guys like Pizzo & Wysh to explain over and over again that plus/minus is a poor way to judge a defenceman's skill.

Unless he actually posts a decent plus/minus this year. In which case they won't say a word about how misleading it is.*

All Hail Saint Lidstrom!

--Collision, who thinks Lidstrom is simultaneously great and overrated

*Note: this was written before Pizzo & Wysh opened the show with gushing about how Lidstrom's career plus/minus was like plus a million. Which apparently matters, even though 10 minutes later his minus rating for last year didn't matter.

le sigh: Grantland on hockey is garbage

Oh, and I'd had such high hopes for Grantland. I mean, the rambly, insight-free Katie Baker writing about hockey--how could that possibly go wrong?

Well, it starts going wrong with calling the explicitly-identified audience for your writing "idiot".

Dear Hockey Idiot: Here Are Answers to All Your Questions About Game 7. You're Welcome.

While that's a half-okay blog move--hey, idiots, thanks for reading--from the classed-up joint named after El Deano de NorteAmericano DesportesEscribo, I would have expected (and as a reader, I'm going ahead and demanding) something really hard to think of and difficult to pull off, something like:

Since there's nothing as wonderful as playoff hockey, and nothing as agonizing as a playoff elimination game, and since a game 7 being played for the Stanley Cup is nearly painfully intense, we here at Grantland want to prepare you for a terrific experience.

But no. Katie Baker, standing here metonymically for Grantland, needs to establish that she's smart, we're dumb, she knows, we don't, she's big, we're little.

Then we get nearly an entire paragraph into her piece, we get our first jarring formatting glitch:

On a darker note, both teams have seen a player go down in terrifying fashion & # 8 2 1 2 ; Boston's Nathan Horton was concussed in Game 3,

Good to see this prestige project is getting the same shitty proofreading and quality control the mothership is known for.

The rest is standard Baker-mush. A couple canny links establish her bona fides (again), and she basks in the reflected glow of Down Goes Brown and Greg Wyshynski, while stirring in a not-exhausted-at-all question/answer format and worthless comments like "keep an eye out for Marchand and Seguin". Uhm. How is the supposed audience supposed to keep an eye out for players they're identified as having never seen? Throw a jersey number out if you actually want to be helpful--otherwise, delete this section, because all it does is waste my fucking time.

Then we've got some Grantlandian lexical play that's undercut in the very same sentence by an infelicitous usage:

it's a toss-up whether skilled and despised (skilledespised?) agitators such as Alexandre Burrows and Maxim Lapierre will be featured or swept under the rug, though their valuable play is likely to earn them some mentions.

Valuable play?

D+, Baker. People seem to like your work, so I am going to assume you're capable of more.

--Collision, still waiting to get hired

the Ivy Leage is for chumps

Seriously: fuck Princeton. As a hockey writer, Anaheim Duck and Princeton alum George Parros is a pretty good hockey player--and as a hockey player, he's one of those goons who makes your Georges Laraque guys look like legit power forwards. All italics mine, because I didn't have the heart time to go through and explicitly mock every one of his clichés.

Hello Times readers! What a Game 6 on Monday night, a 5-2 Boston Bruins victory over the visiting Vancouver Canucks.

Is he going to write in this weird, atavistic hack voice the whole time?

The first period was certainly action packed

Yup. He sure is. *reaches for Scotch baster*

and unfortunately for the Canucks, it was the same old story at the TD Garden.

Which story? The one where they kicked the shit out of the entire league all season? *checks list of media-approved narratives* Oh, I guess the story you mean is the one where Vancouver's Kryptonite is high-pitched Massholes.

I actually thought Vancouver had a dominant start (first shift, I guess would be more accurate)

Dude? Thomas Pynchon gets self-correcting parentheticals. William Gaddis gets self-correcting parentheticals. Marcel Proust gets self-correcting parentheticals. George Parros doesn't. And a dominant shift = a dominant start? Guess you didn't take a lot of Saul Kripke's logic classes at Princeton. (Clear the Crease: more analytic philosophy joaks than any other hockey blog or your money back, homie!)

until the Canucks’ Mason Raymond went down in a heap at the hands of Johnny Boychuk and missed the remainder of the game. It appeared like his spine was crunched up as he crashed into the boards - never a good way to start a match.

Ah, it's insights like this that make player commentary such an indispensable resource. Without reading this, I would hardly have concluded that apparent spine trauma, followed by a guy requiring help to move and being unable to continue competing, is somehow a sub-optimal component of a competition.

I think Raymond’s absence ruined the bench chemistry for Vancouver Coach Alain Vigneault. I know it often does the same to our bench with an odd number of forwards, and trust me, I know a thing or two about bench chemistry.

Is this supposed to be a joke? Like "hey, guys, I know what it's like to spend most of a game on the bench" (because I'm bad at hockey playing)? Or is he actually bragging about how much he knows about chemistry?

All of a sudden the lines get screwy and that leads to too many men on the ice calls.

A-ha! That explains the...checks the box score...one penalty called for too many men on the ice that night. I knew something had to account for that!

Things went haywire for Vancouver in a hurry. It was a tough pill for Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo to swallow, I am sure.

The Bruins played a great second period as well. It can be challenging to cling to a four-goal lead;

I mean, sure. But at least you've got those four goals to fall back on: no matter how easy it is to play when you're four in the hole, you're unlikely to come back. Is that stupidly, insultingly obvious? Yes, but at least I'm not presenting it as some kind of significant insight. Also: who "clings" to a four-goal lead? Do football teams "cling" to four-touchdown leads?

playing too safe will lead to more defensive zone play and more goals against.

Remember this, kids: according to George Parros, playing defensively leads to getting scored on. Looking forward to his coaching career already!

But Boston stayed true to its system and kept applying pressure.

An unimpressive power play for the Canucks hasn't helped their cause throughout the Stanley Cup Final. But things finally clicked early in the third period and it’s always a momentum swinger to score early or late in a period. Vancouver’s Henrik Sedin finally got on the stat sheet, which by all accounts was overdue for a player of his caliber. It was simply just bound to happen.

Speaking of high-caliber players, I have to give some love to Boston’s Mark Recchi. He has been playing so well for a Bruins squad that has obviously benefitted from his leadership and solid play. I have to believe he is like a Teemu Selanne for their team in many respects.

Sure, except for the respects involving scoring and skating well. Which I guess leaves advanced age and superlative ability to consume liquor.

*thinks about it*

Confidential to Mark Recchi: will you be my friend?

I was very excited about the outcome of Game 6 because who doesn't love a Game 7?

That sentence was written by an Ivy League graduate. I point this out because if I didn't, you'd probably mistake it for a Grade 4 "what I did on Wednesday night" report. Oh, and you know who doesn't love a Game 7? The team that could have won the series in Game 6 and didn't. Also that team's fans. Also anybody who left their car in downtown Vancouver the other night.

There's nothing like it in the world. No other sport has this much emotion wrapped into one game than a Stanley Cup Final Game 7.

Not so much a series of lexical clichés there, but a sentiment that is kind of tiring and that turned out to be false: Game 7 was an adequate series-ender, but neither team seemed notably emotional--Kesler might be an exception, because he played a monstrous game, looking fast and physical and committed.

Everyone hold on tight and watch the drama unfold in Vancouver Wednesday night!

Over and out.

inSANE

The idea that a GM gets a B for a season when his team was the second-worst team in the league and were positioned to go into the next season without an NHL-caliber goaltender on the roster is preposterous nonsense.

Except for Iraq, Afghanistan, and a banking crisis, I give Bush II's presidency a B.

Except for how the Stones' set got cut short, I had a B time at Altamont.

Except for the premature ejaculation and all the crying, and the getting beat up by her dad, I give the night I lost my virginity a B.

Except for the bad scripts, awful timing, and complete lack of screen chemistry, I thought Ishtar and Hudson Hawk were pretty good--B for both!

--Collision, who actually in real life gives Chinese Democracy an A-

are the Canucks the Bruins?

No, I'm not suggesting the Canucks are playing with against themselves.

(Alain Vignault pulling Luongo yet again.)

It's just that this season reminds me strongly of 2008-9, when the Bruins dominated a shit-ton of the individual-type awards (Norris, Vezina, Jack Adams) and then got upset in the playoffs.

As I write this, it's the first intermission of game 6, Bruins up 4-0, and I don't think anybody would bet against Vancouver to take the series. But if they don't pull it out (see illustration above), look for them to have a horrible rash of injuries all next season and then dominate the league in 2012-13.

YOU HEARD IT* HERE FIRST.

*"it" = drunken speculation. Iced Earth rules; In Solitude drools. We love you all.

--Collision, whose agent won't return his calls anymore

stop what you are doing and read this

All of this. Essential.