blogovich

Playoffs: At a certain point, aesthetics be damned, it's a case of just moving on

Loved Boston Bruins coach Claude Julien today when, during a media conference before Game 1 of second round NHL Stanley Cup playoff series vs. New York Rangers, he deflected questions about his team's first-round scare and rally to win against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

As if, somehow, the questions intimated, the Bruins did not deserve to be here.

Julien said the Bruins - who improbably rallied from a 4-1 third period deficit to beat the Leafs in overtime of Game 7 - don't need to apologize to anyone, or justify their advance to the second round.

And they don't. They advanced. The Bruins' comeback is already part of NHL historical lore, as it should be, and the further Boston advances this playoff year it will only gain resonance, but in the end it is simply what it is - Boston won round one and advanced.

That's all that matters. It reminds me of something a basketball coach, not a professional coach in NBA terms but definitely a professional one in terms of approach and results - former Canadian national team player and then two-time national college champ as coach of the Sheridan Bruins Wayne Allison - once told me, in my days as a reporter.

His team, heavily favoured, had struggled in but ultimately won a playoff game to advance on what would become a road to a national title.

It wasn't the performance Allison, the team, its fans or the media expected. But they won. And at that point, in the playoffs, ultimately that is what mattered, Allison said. We won, no matter how we did it, but at this point, sure it would be great to play the perfect or as close to perfect game as we can play but in the end, I just want the 'W'. After a title is won, let's face it, few if any spend much time analyzing the specifics of the final triumph. It's more a case of analyzing the title team in the context of the championship overall achieved.

So Allison was right. As Julien was right today, before round 2, Game 1 against the New York Rangers.

The Boston Bruins won Monday against Toronto. They advanced. Nothing else matters now, except the next game, the next series.

Until the next game, the next series.

It is cliche, but cliches are grounded in fact and, well, facts are facts. Just a for instance...

1989 NHL playoffs - first place overall Calgary needs overtime in Game 7 to beat Vancouver in round one to keep the Flames' ultimately fulfilled Stanley Cup run alive.

Calgary won the game. Could have lost the game and been eliminated, overtime being the crapshoot it can be.

But Calgary won. The Flames advanced, as expected, by the skin of their teeth yet without apology. They eventually won the Stanley Cup which likely makes the first-round Game 7 escape more memorable than it otherwise might have been.

Same with the Bruins, now (with potentially three rounds to go).

As Julien understands.

Raffi Torres and not just him: the NHL and its ludicrous inconsistency - laughable, sad, typical and a blight on an otherwise great game, ruled by moronic, outdated and unsupportable ideas

So Raffi Torres has been suspended again.

Fact is, he's a menace on ice, a dirty player, a repeat and constant offender and should be banished from playing hockey. He's had enough chances to reform, either can't or won't, hence his privileges as a professional hockey player, at least at the NHL level, should be permanently revoked.

Like that will happen. Sadly, while he is decried, Torres is exactly the player every team wants, someone whose, when it comes right down to it, sole purpose is to occasionally pretend to be a real player but who when the time comes and opportunity beckons, takes out the opposition's top players. It's a variation on the theme propogated by Al Davis's credo for the NFL's (always over-rated in my book) Oakland Raiders - just win, baby.

It's actually sickening when you really think about it. Because it's not necessary, if you analyze sports and life and those who are successful, and not, and who has accomplished what by honourable and dishonourable means.

Anyway . . .

Hockey, beautiful game though it is and can be, is in terms of policing itself and protecting its assets - the players - an abject failure despite constant calls by those very players to 'respect' each other. It's a word these folks toss out by rote but refuse to understand.

Back to Torres. What makes me howl is the reaction; the so-called analysis which today on the various TV  'panels' overpopulated by ex-jocks consisted of the usual breathless comparisons to previous rulings and whether this one, cause and effect etc. etc. etc. considered, was the right one.

And the 'right' ruling would be?

Hockey doesn't know. Never has, never will. There's no standard. Never has been, never will be. It's made up as it goes along.

Because there's no consistency in any hockey rulings, any league, particularly NHL and it filters down.

It can be summed up in the misguided ethos regarding the relationship between actions, rules and referees that rules an otherwise potentially and in reality truly wonderful game of men and women doing amazing things requiring myriad skills (to be able to skate, for one): "Let the players decide it."

Er, are players not deciding it by either abiding or not abiding by the rules of the game? If they commit an infraction based on the rulebook, are they not breaking the rules and thereby deciding it?

Of course they are.To any thinking person.

Hockey does not have enough of those, alas.

NHL Stanley Cup playoffs: The comedown from round 1, the attempts at regaining the intensity for rounds 2 and beyond . . .

We are into that NHL playoff phase where people "come down" from round 1 and then have to 'get into' round 2. a natural function of so many games on at once, then slowly but surely whittled down to fewer and fewer, with less and less interest unless one is a fan of just the game or one of the remaining teams involved, complicated by the advent of (this year anyway, relatively) warm weather, etc.

I will say that there are always exceptions. I recall the 1999 Buffalo-Dallas Stanley Cup final where people as usual were complaining about hockey in June but when the infamous Brett Hull in the crease Cup winner was scored, sure seemed like millions of folks were interested and that would be multiplied by factors unknown in 2013 days of widespread web, social media, etc.

If you don't want to be disturbed, turn your phone off! Pretty simple

I'm on the elliptical machine in the gym today. Woman next to me is chugging along, her smartphone rings.

She picks up. She berates the caller (obviously someone she knew) for disturbing her.

"I pay for this!" she screams to whoever is at the other end, and to nobody in particular.

I was proud of myself for not saying, 'so turn your phone off, then."

We are all in modern society somewhat slaves to our gadgets, but c'mon. You can maintain control. Do it.

Besides which, don't you go to the gym to escape from information/24/7 overload?

 

Meaningless sports tidbits (Boston vs. Toronto, NHL)

A radio sports reporter this morning trumpeted this tidbit heading into tonight's Game 4 of the Toronto-Boston NHL Stanley Cup playoff series.

The Leafs haven't beaten the Bruins in a playoff game in Toronto since 1959.

Sounds impressive. It isn't, really.

The Leafs and Bruins have met three (3) times in the playoffs since then. Three times in 54 years. If they were playing each other every year, or even every few years, the tidbit might mean something. But it doesn't.

Boston, a brutal team for most of the 1960s until Bobby Orr and then Phil Esposito arrived as cornerstones of a powerhouse, didn't make the playoffs in the old six-team NHL from 1960 through 1967, while the Leafs were in their heyday, winning four Stanley Cups.

Two years later, with the Leafs a fading force and Orr and Esposito leading the resurgent Bruins, Boston blitzed Toronto 4-0 in the first round. Then in 1972, Boston beat Toronto 4-1 en route to its second Stanley Cup in three years, the Bruins' only loss an overtime setback in Game 2. In 1974, the Bruins again swept the Leafs 4-0 en route to an appearance in the Stanley Cup final where Boston lost to Philadelphia.

The Bruins and Leafs haven't met since, until the current series.

 So the tidbit, while perhaps mildly interesting, is meaningless.

Well, no fights yet in Game 4: Habs-Sens

Just dropped the puck and so far, no fisticuffs between the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators in Game 4 of their Stanley Cup playoff series tonight.

Predictable, because calm usually follows the storm of a fight-filled game, though pre-game hype usually tends to try to promote otherwise.

Still, and I had a good rhyme in here someplace before I started typing but I've forgotten it, while I find fighting in hockey silly, Game 3's fights did make for compellling - and funny - viewing, somehow; perhaps because I missed the game and saw the fights all strung together in highlights packages.

 

 

Meantime, in the actual Game 4 Hockey Night In Canada broadcast right now, and in a classic Bob Cole-ism, states the obvious when he noted that the Habs, down 2-1 in the series, want to head home tied.

Really, Bob.

UPDATE on previous Trudeau-Harper blog post; wonder what Harper will say about Obama? Don't hold your breath

UPDATE on my previous post about Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper:

U.S. President Barack Obama today, Saturday April 20, as quoted by The Associated Press on the Boston Marathon bombing situation: 

President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers — ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and lived in the Boston area — had help from others.

“When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right,” Obama said. “That’s why we take care not to rush to judgment — not about the motivations of these individuals, certainly not about entire groups of people.”

Hmm. Wonder whether Canada's black and white law and order leader Harper will weigh in and criticize Obama for saying essentially what Trudeau did a few days earlier.

Don't hold your breath.

Harper, Trudeau spar over Boston Marathon tragedy. Winner: Trudeau

This is about all that need be said over this: Harper, Trudeau exchange barbs over Boston bombing

Fact is, Harper and his cronies are afraid of Trudeau, and they should be. He will take them down and they know it. They weren't afraid of recent previous Liberal leaders. And if Justin has even one-quarter the intellectual capacity and toughness of his father, he easily outpaces Harper - who is immensely over-rated, for reasons I cannot understand, by many in this category and judging by today's comments re Boston (and on many other topics) is at best narrow-minded; certainly he is one who appeals to or tries to curry favour with those who think simplistically.

What Trudeau said about Boston, to any thinking person does not obviously mean he supports the acts of violence, as Harper seems to be trying to imply, for political gain. It means Trudeau is a thinking individual unafraid to speak the truth - because root causes of violence, or any harmful activity, do need to be found and understood if there is to be any hope of them being eliminated.

Today's exchange crystallized the difference between the two men.

And this difference means that at some point, or by an accumulation of points, Trudeau will fatally wound Harper, figuratively, subtly, and Harper won't even know it or see the blows coming. Just watch as things play out. The Conservative Party bullies, whose first negative anti-Trudeau ad appears to have backfired, have finally met their match.

UPDATE: U.S. President Barack Obama today, Saturday April 20, as quoted by The Associated Press on the Boston Marathon bombing situation: 

President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers — ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and lived in the Boston area — had help from others.

“When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right,” Obama said. “That’s why we take care not to rush to judgment — not about the motivations of these individuals, certainly not about entire groups of people.”

Hmm. Wonder whether Canada's black and white law and order leader Harper will weigh in and criticize Obama for saying essentially what Trudeau did a few days earlier.

Don't hold your breath.

And then, there is amazing stuff from dead folk - Hendrix!!!

Best career move in entertainment, die young...anyway, 'new' Jimi Hendrix out last week, best album out in 2013 likely.

People, Hell and Angels it is called and for a guy who's alas been gone for 43 years, damn good. Nothing will ever match the first three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums (the only three studio albums he released in his lifetime) and the endless posthumous releases by the Hendrix family trust do smack of grave-robbing. But of the "Experience Hendrix' family trust from the vaults releases several are worthwhile and, this one is, quite simply, the best so far.

Far superior to 2010's Valleys of Neptune to these ears.

Some of the tracks on People, Hell and Angels have previously been officially released in other forms - Izabella, Hear My Train A Comin' - and others, in whole or in part, have found their way to the myriad posthumous Hendrix releases both offical and not. But you'll want these versions, for if nothing else the smokin' guitar on Hear My Train A Comin'.

 

And then there is Somewhere, originally targeted for Electric Ladyland and then released in myriad forms on box sets and versions not approved by the now officially acknowledged purveyors of Jimi's work, the Hendrix family trust.

 

Somewhere and forever, Hendrix will entertain us. Wonderful stuff. Pick it up if only for the first three tracks - Earth Blues, Somewhere and Hear My Train A Comin'. If you are disappointed, you don't know or appreciate music or creativity.

 

 

New David Bowie album . . .

First studio album in 10 years for the Thin White Duke, Ziggy, etc.  . . . out Tuesday . . . early reviews suggest it's of his "Berlin' period - the Low, Heroes, Lodger albums. And the cover IS the Heroes album, whited out with the new album's name, The Next Day, superimposed over top.

The contents? Well, ignore the lyric sheet, for one, if you are buying the CD and of course nowadays few do. But anyway, the lyric sheet is just a mass of type with no breaks between songs so it's essentially useless. Creative, yes, one supposes, but akin to Aerosmith's Done With Mirrors album which, when it first was released in 1985, was, natch, all backwards - you needed a mirror to read anything on it, the cover, etc.

Naturally, though it is an underratedly good Aerosmith album, it bombed.This is all akin to 'hidden tracks' which some artists still insist upon. No, sorry, I'm not waiting x-number of minutes for your 'hidden' track. If it's any good, put it on the album proper. There is no hidden track on the new Bowie.

All that aside, the new Bowie is, on one listen, OK to good but nothing special. Certainly not on the order of the praise already being heaped on it by music critics. But let's face it; most 'classic' rock music critics 'want' their old artists to do well, to continually be seen as pushing the envelope instead of falling back on past catalogue glories and it's understandable.

So people like Bowie and Neil Young, for example, are still seen by rock critics as cutting edge when that is not necessarily so, while bands like The Rolling Stones (full disclosure, my favorite) are seen as passe creatively.

Fact: if you like an artist, like their sound, generally speaking you like whatever they do, past or present, whether it is considered 'relevant' or not. There is so much great new music being done by old-line bands that never see the light of air time.

All that said. Back to Bowie. Songs on the new album: Boss of Me,

 

Set the World On Fire and Heat are, to me, one listen, the best tracks of the 14 tracks on the album proper. There are three 'bonus' tracks which to me seems a tad weird. I mean, who releases a new album with bonus tracks? Isn't that the strategy when you RE-release something with a few extra guitar licks or demos or whatever to try to induce fans/completeists to have everything?

Whatever. Overall, a decent new Bowie effort. I imagine it might grow on me. That is, if I can get over my 'stuck in the past' nature with all the music I grew up with and decide to put this on again instead of, say, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, etc. etc. or a compilation of Bowie's most fertile early to mid-70s period, or even Heathen, his (to me) brilliant 2002 release. Unlikely.