Category: Sports

Of course, every four years or so, the media examines the technology used by Olympians to better compete. So here’s the obligatory FoxNews.com story.

I want to know, when will these cutting edge technologies filter down to consumer use? Come on, that Fastskin stuff looks like it would make some mighty yummy lingerie.

Bob Rybarcyzk has a new chant for the Kiel Center:

Let’s go ahead and get one thing out of the way: the Blues will never win the Cup in our lifetimes.

Whew. Boy, it feels good to get that off of my chest.

Let me say it again. The Blues will never win the Cup in our lifetimes.

Anyone who knows me knows that this is what I say any time the words “Blues” and “Stanley Cup” come up in conversation. It’s not that I’m particularly knowledgeable about hockey or am smarter than anyone else. (I think I’ve proven that fact time and again in this space.) I’m just fairly certain that I’m right.

Unfortunately, I am somewhat more familiar with the Blues, and I agree.

Of course, I can entirely foresee the league collapsing with an extended lockout next year, so this year might be the last chance the Blues get to win anything.

The hockey playoffs have started, and the highly-paid athletes have begun puffing themselves and their profession with hyperbolic metaphor.

Tie Domi, the Toronto Maple Leafs enforcer known as the Albanian Aggressor, interjected a little perspective:

Domi did want to get something else off his chest, however. Peter Bondra said he thinks the series could be “a war.”

“Using the word war is getting a little stupid in our game, especially in our rivalry,” Domi said. “Out of respect to the war that is going on, I don’t think it should be used. Those guys are fighting a real war and it is insulting to them.”

I never thought I would utter or type these words, but Tie Domi is right.

(Link seen on Hockey Pundits, whose commenters all attack Domi for the comments. I assume they’re Canadians and don’t need perspective, since they’re ultimately protected in their myopia by their benevolent neighbor.)

As some of you St. Louis residents know, backup catcher Cody McKay pitched two scoreless innings in a game against the Milwaukee Brewers last night.

That gives him an ERA of 0.00, which far surpasses that of Jose Oquendo, the utility infielder (and present third-base coach) whose lifetime ERA is 27.00.

Jeez, I actually remember that game from fifteen years ago. As last year’s advertising slogan said, it’s definitely a baseball town.

A special snicker-out to the weathercaster on the radio that described today as a good kick off to the baseball season.

That’s what we in the professional words biz call an air ball.

Hey, the Blues won. Dallas Drake, Keith Tkachuk, and Mike Sillinger all scored.

I think this team might be just on ex-Phoenix Coyote away from a Stanley Cup.

Can I get a Khabibulin? Khabibulin!

I’m working on an essay on the decline of the NHL, but I won’t post it tonight (if at all–hey, if it’s a real essay, I’ll try to sell it first, werd). Since it’s taken my attention, you, too, should focus on hockey, particularly the violence within it (as illustrated by the Todd Bertuzzi incident).

Go forth and read:

• This letter to the editor in USA Today from Eric Weinrich, a new St. Louis Blue. A letter to the editor? Wow, I might have expected that from Steve “Harvard” Martins, a graduate of Harvard University, or Mark “College Puke” Rycroft, who used to spend time after a game writing papers for his classes, but not Weinrich. He’s responding to a column by Christine Brennan that asserts that hockey could be an easy also-ran in the greater scope of the American sportscape. She’s right (a thesis I touch upon in my essay, or will when I get to writing it instead of amusing you, gentle readers). If the NHL folded, fewer people would miss it than the NHL or the NHLPA and all associated stakeholders would like to think.

  (Link seen on American Realpolitik. Welcome to the blog roll.)

• The Meatriarchy Guy lays into the other American sports in a spasm of defensiveness. Dude, hockey’s not one of the big three sports in the (United States’) American mindset. It never will be. Stop fighting the apathy, and cheer on your (lesser) Eastern Conference team.
• Don’t forget Hockey Pundits.
• Also, you Blues fans out there who bemoan the big contracts handed out to a handful of players (Weight, Tkachuk, Pronger) that deprive the team of midlevel scoring help, you’re barking up the wrong tree. The money’s not the issue. Read the fine print, which offers the players an extra, unheralded extra benefit for signing: four extra weeks of vacation in 2004. A-ha!

The Meatriarchy Guy, who’s Canadian (not that there’s anything wrong with that), has some ideas about how to improve hockey:

1 Eliminate the two line pass offside. This really is the only change you have to make.
2 On a penalty kill the short-handed team can no longer ice the puck.
3 A player has to serve the full two minute penalty even if his team is scored upon.
4 Move the nets back to their original location (they are talking about doing this)
5 Impose a weight tax on teams so that they pay extra if they draft big dumb slow players – the Leafs gave up a perfectly good defensemen Jason Smith and tried to turn oversized Chris McAllister into an NHL player. The only thing he had going for him was size – a trait that NHL GM’s are over enamored with and in the end he failed miserably. Bring in a weight tax.

Some good ideas, but let’s not forget the prospect of enlarging the ice surface.

Fast skaters and skill players can go around the hookers, and hockey team owners get to hold up their cities for even newer arenas. Win-win! Unless you’re a Canadian city and the Americans are about to get serious about the dollar’s exchange rate again, bit who cares about the Canadians, eh? What do they know about NHL hockey?

Does anyone know anyone who enjoyed the Super Bowl halftime show? I need to know, because Bob Rybarcyzk is looking for one single person who liked the show:

You find me a soul on this earth who will publicly admit to liking any part of that halftime show, and I will run through West County Mall wearing a tutu and asking passers-by to please call me Nancy.

Anything to get “Nancy” and her tutu off the streets of Casinoport, Missouri. “She” will catch cold in this harsh, pseudo-winter weather we’re having.

Heather and I went to see the St. Louis Blues lose to the Dallas Stars this evening, and during the course of the evening I came up with some terms that I think should make their way into common hockey parlance. So please update your hockey lexicons to include the following:

• It’s like football with polearms. Heather got four choice tickets from her employer, so we brought along a co-worker from España. I like to boil things down succinctly to apt metaphors which don’t require too much scrutiny. No, stop, don’t closely compare hockey to soccer wherein the players carry halberds and attempt to decapitate each other. The National Hockey League is trying to get away from that image.
• You know, every time someone shoots the puck between the goaltender’s legs, it’s going five-hole, or sometimes when a commentator has a flash of cross-sport brilliance, the puck goes through the wickets. I prefer the puppy’s gone home through the doggie door. How does that work for you?

Sports commentators, you don’t need to pay licensing fees for these terms. However, a mention of my name, Brian J. Noggle, would be nice, or a gift from my inexpensive Amazon wish list perhaps. Thank you, that is all.

When ESPN’s Jim Kelley would report:

1. The kids are all right
We tip our proverbial hat to the work of veterans like Mats Sundin in Toronto, Robert Lang in Washington, Joe Sakic in Colorado, Markus Naslund in Vancouver and Brett Hull in St. Louis.

Danny Flor, an esteemed former co-worker, would smile and thank his lucky stars that the Blues took all necessary steps to ensure the Golden Brett finished his career here.

As I was reading the Febuary 2004 issue of St. Louis Homes and Lifestyles on the cycle at the gym (and I must have picked it up on the cycle, because for what sort of Man reads such a fru-fru magazine–hey, look, the person who left it here has the same name and address as I), I came across the article entitled “Running for Daylight: A light-filled domicile is where Rams’ head coach Mike Martz and wife Julie touch down”. As you all know, I don’t care for the St. Louis Lambs–I mean, come on, any football team with less than fifty years’ tradition in their city is a bunch of tax-sucking mercs. However, I like to look at the pretty pictures of rich peoples’ homes had nothing better to do for 20 minutes of intense cardiovascular working. I mean, aside from looking at the scantily-clad, physically-fit women as they sweat, but once you’ve seen the best, everything else is just furniture.

The text, amid the pictures, included this cute little nugget written by Carla Patton (whose name I included so the next time she Googles herself, she’ll read my blog):

The Martzes arrived here with the Rams from L.A. in 1995; Mike was then the wide receivers coach. With the exception of a two-year stint in the northwest with the Washington Redskins, they have lived here ever since.

You remember those two years, don’t you, when the Redskins played the Seahawks sixteen times?

(Note to Carla: The Washington Redskins are the Washington D.C. Redskins.)

For those of you lamenting your workplace positions and the drudgery you face, bear in mind that somewhere in Michigan, Curtis Joseph didn’t play hockey, but he got paid $48,000 for his day’s nonlabor anyway.

Pleasant dreams.

Angie Everhart’s going to be the captain of one of the teams in the first annual Lingerie Bowl that will be played during the Superbowl.

Well, Would Kim Watch?

Vegas says 12 to 1 he will.

I quote from his column today:

Baseball just can’t match the intensity of football. When the Cards trot out Pedro Borbon in a tie game, you can turn off the tube and say to yourself that they’ll get ’em tomorrow, because even the Yankees lost 61 games this year.

But when Arlen Harris misses yet another blitz pickup and Marc Bulger gets hit so hard you expect him to wind up looking like the cat at the end of an “Itchy & Scratchy” cartoon, you want to have your dog soil Arlen’s lawn, because you know every loss in football is huge.

He’s got a point there. I will wake up in the middle of the night and think about a Packers loss, whereas I don’t do the same for the Blues, and I am a much bigger hockey fan.