Snowman On Fire

In t-shirt form, at least. After sitting shiva (electronically) for Jewish Fashion Conspiracy, the company that originated the “Jews For Jeter” t-shirt I was faced with a quandry about my favorite Yankees t-shirt: wear it and risk Premio sausage stains rendering it unfit for a trip outside, or retire it like an out-of-print Beanie Baby? Fortunately, the shirt has been picked up by Pop Judaica’s store. So the shirt is outdoor-safe, but I have to lay off the Carvel: it only comes in sizes up to XXL.

If you’re wondering what the fakokta letters are on the front, it’s not a funky pair of silent hebrew letters - it’s the two loudest letters on the East Coast - a stylized NY. I guess interlocking them would have been confusing to the reader.

Three years ago, Bubba and his teammates had some fun with Garrett Beckwith attending their practices, working with the goalies and generally playing the role of “hip high school kid” to a team of middle-schoolers. At the time, I speculated that Beckwith was bound for bigger and better things, most likely west or north of New Jersey. And then things went quiet for a while.

Tonight I received an update from Coach Barry, a/k/a Garrett’s Dad: Garrett was the top-ranked goalie in the Kootenay International Junior League this year, with a scary 1.84 GAA in 20 games, and now Trail Smoke Eaters of the KIJHL. It’s great to see a local hockey player continue on at the next level.

Stupid but serendipitous sidebar: The Trail Smoke Eaters are based in the hamlet of Princeton, British Columbia. The NJ Devils Youth club now has goalie graduates in a pair of Princetons.

1. Denial. That didn’t happen, it was the strangest game I’ve ever seen, and it must have been a dream.

2. Anger. I am so pissed off that the Devils blew two leads and lost in the last minute that I cannot speak.

3. Bargaining. John Madden, Colin White, and Niclas Havelid. Follows Anger and Denial closely, usually involves promises of renewed loyalty, wins, Stanley Cups, custom jerseys, nicknames and other mildly nonsensical things we promise ourselves to make sure we have something to look forward to — or at least some reason to throw the remote at the television starting October 5th.

4. Bandwagon-Jumping. If the Devils are out, we can cheer for Ovechkin. And the Bruins. And hate the Red Wings, and most of the Western Conference.

5. Renewal. Next year’s season tickets are due this month, as if that wasn’t insult on top of mental injury.

I watched the first two periods of the Canucks-Blackhawks game last night, in high-def, with the sound off and the lights down; not a romantic evening but a slow re-entry into the world of hockey. And I’m thinking of Chico Resch, who loves to sprinkle Hebrew and Yiddish lexicon over his telecasts. Here’s a new one for you, Chico: sitting shiva.

In the last decade, the Devils were a scouting machine: they found Brian Rafalski in Europe. They drafted Zach Parise after the Rangers and Islanders both passed him over. They signed Mad Dog as a free agent out of the University of Michigan. In 1994, after drafting the ever-popular Sherriff (Vadim Sharifijanov, one in a long line of guys who wore #8 and shares the distinction of being trade bait for Mogilny in 2000), they picked up some Czech dude named Elias in the 2nd round (Elias was the 54th player drafted that year). What does all of this mean? The draft isn’t a sure-fire thing, unless you look at the few 2-3 players in the last few years. Even Milan Lucic, who gives hope to the spoked B in the Hub of the universe, was a 2nd round, #50 pick by the Bruins in 2006. It’s about scouting, talent development, and picking up young free agents — guys out of college, guys with grit, guys who are going to fight for ice time. Guys who don’t let their season slip away because they’ve banked their money; guys who need every penny of the entry-level salary because they’ve been thrust into a spotlight that might not last.

Why not spend more time scouting the ECAC and Hockey East players? The Flyers managed to sign Darroll Powe out of Princeton, who not only played 60 regular season games but had 3 points in the Flyers’ first-round playoff series. That makes him the equal of Langenbrunner, Elias and Shanahan in terms of production, and the kid can skate, hit, and has an attitude. Being 5′ 11″, undrafted, and having to survive a season and a half in the Philadelphia AHL system would do that to you.

Let’s stop discussing this year’s John Madden. I want the Devils to find the John Madden graduating this year. And sign him as a free agent. Let’s stock the shelves with young guns.

Tom Gulitti covers the Devils for the Bergen Record, and in addition to fulfilling the dual roles of a beat writer and blogger, he brings a lot of hockey sense to the net, electronic or nylon. He’s a great read; he listens (reads) his comment threads; and he (I think) genuinely cares about the team. I’m much prefer to see him get the stringer job for The Hockey News over Rich Chere of the Star Ledger. Bottom line: Gulitti tells it like it is, in the words of Howard Cosell, and when TG is posting at 3:00am, you know there’s something to be told.

Read his last post deconstructing the destruction in the last 80 seconds of last night’s game. He says “Colin White ran out of position to hit Chad LaRose in front of the Devils bench. LaRose made a good pass to Staal, who had a lot of room to carry into the Devils’ zone with speed before letting go his shot for the winning goal from the right circle.” I had it wrong; I thought it was Havelid who made the season-killing decision to play the body instead of the puck, but it was White.

White can’t race anywhere. His perception, and puck play, were miserable for the entire playoff series. How many times did he attempt to clear the puck out of the zone with a saucer pass that either lacked height or distance, typically landing along the boards to be kept in by the Canes? I expect to see that in PeeWee hockey, when they’re learning how to clear the zone and play the body properly. One of the maxims of coaching younger levels of hockey is that there’s a difference between “contact” and “checking”; at Mite and Squirt levels there’s contact (body position) but no checking. Hockey is a contact sport, not a checking sport. White fails to grasp the difference, and he let his guy get off the game, series, and season-ending assist.

Rip that “A” off of his jersey. Give it to Parise. Show him the door, along with Havelid and the random smattering of free agent signings who moved this team backwards this season.

To quote Patrik Elias in the post-game interview: It was the worst loss ever. Worse than the 2001 Cup Finals versus Colorado.

Why can’t the Devils win these games? They lose one with 0.2 seconds left. They blow a lead - in a series-clinching game - with 80 seconds left, and then cough up the losing goal one shift later.

Here’s where the fans and the players are alike tonight: neither has any heart left. The players - not all, but enough of them making millions of dollars a year, paid to play a sport they love, a sport for kids and adults alike - skated without fire, passion or heart. The fans had their hearts ripped out. Supposedly the Devils are looking for someone to drive the face of the franchise locally, from sponsorships to community development. Why not start by giving the franchise a hockey face, some grit, some determination, some passion that mirrors what the fans brought to the Rock tonight?

Quite simply the defense was horrendous. Out of position, bad decisions, and unable to keep up with a fast-skating team like Carolina. Havelid didn’t keep his eye on his man on the game-tying goal, and then made an equally stupid mistake letting the play come up the boards on what turned into the game-winner. We traded for this? This was Lou’s big trade deadline deal? This guy isn’t fit to play defense in my adult league making mistakes like that. Colin White looked like he had already spent his paycheck and could really care less whether the season ended or not; he skated lazily all night and again, was out of position on the 2nd goal. The only reason he was on a 2-on-1 with Madden was that he never got back into the play deep in his own end. And while Shanahan had two assists, they were more a function of being in the play rather than creating the play. For most of the night he looked like he was skating with training weights on his legs.

Want to get some season ticket holders back next season? Want to avoid yet another first-round loss? (these are getting really, really, really tiring; we’re becoming the Sharks of the Eastern Conference) Want to bring some excitement onto the Rock Ice?

Get rid of White. Eat the contract if you have to; clearly he has no trade value or he would have been gone in March.

Don’t bother resigning Havelid, Holik, or Shanahan. Admit the mistakes and move on.

Get a young, play-making, fast-skating center. 35 goals would be better than 35 years old, as a hint.

Bulk up on defense. And if Greene comes back to camp without having put on some mass and upper body strength, or without having learned to control the puck at the blue line, send him on a one-way trip to Lowell. Let Kurt fix him.

It was the worst loss ever, on so many levels. I feel more let down than after the lockout season. It’s not even May and the Devils are done. Six years since the Devils made it more than two rounds in the playoffs. Three years since they made it out of the first round.

Lou, Jeff, Brent: I deserve better. Bubba deserves better. Bruce, Bob, Ernie, and the 11 other guys who chip in very hard-earned cash to keep our season tickets, and think about this team from mid-August until sometime in the spring, deserve much better. If the organization is going to have a heart, it starts at the top. Show us you care about the fans and give us something to be proud of. Early playoff exits, late-game collapses, random free agents and old guys with “experience” don’t cut it.

I will live. I will get over this (probably not before Mother’s Day, but still). I have been denied jobs, dates, or promotions for nearly 30 years; they are all more important than the result of a hockey game. I’ll talk to my friends Bob and Bruce and Ernie again, but not about hockey. But as the Devils clean out their lockers later this week, I want them all of think of Bubba and Bruce’s son who were there with us tonight, to watch their heros skate, to see what sportsmanship and true mettle are about. What they saw can’t be explained, not by the players, not by the fans, not even by Chico Resch. Our experiences as young adults shape us as fans for the rest of our lives; we remember the profound sadness and joys we experience simply because our limits haven’t been set higher by children of our own, the stresses of a job, the intricacies of family life. Our sports heros proxy an emotional thermometer within us, until we regulate that passion ourselves.

The Devils left their young fans ice cold tonight. And I hope the franchise does something to turn the heat back on for the fans.

Kippy, the Flames goalie with a goofy nickname, has given up 3 goals on 9 shots tonight. One was on a power play and one was a misdirection that fooled all three Flames pretending to occupy the slot, but this isn’t good for those of us who wanted to see Mike Cammalleri do his thing late into May.

There are two characters nicknamed Kippy. One is a goalie, the other is a Hebrew-speaking, 5-foot tall porcupine. Tell me which is more whacked.

Another in a continuing series of craps references while writing about hockey….

I gave it my all in the last 10 days as a Devils fan. I had scores texted to me so that they were waiting when I landed in strange, horrible, anti-hockey (and anti-people) airports like Charles de Gaul in Paris; I stayed up until 3:00 AM listening to last Friday’s game from South Africa; I had the pilot on my Continental flight from Mumbai radio ahead to get the score of Game 5 (and bless him, it was good news, or there wasn’t enough cheap booze on board to keep me from going non-linear). But through this all, I did not repeat the superstitions, the rituals, the motions, the minor religious observances that truly mark me as a fan of the Devil. Bubba and I will not be denied tomorrow night.

Patrik Elias Russian jersey (for me) and Czech jersey (for Bubba): ready.

Czech flag to wave triumphantly when Elias connects: folded neatly.

Proper t-shirt underlayment for above-mentioned jerseys: ready, and already being worn (me in Devils Elias jersey tee, Bubba in the whats-a-matter-Sioux Notre Dame hockey tee)

Diet of chicken fingers, Carvel ice cream, and pretzels: already saving calories for tomorrow night’s intake.

Does any of this matter? Of course it does. Sports mixes belief and intent in a unique way; players believe that they can (or they can’t, as evidenced by Colin White’s complete refusal to move his feet last night) and carry that belief into a melange of physics and passion. From intent and belief it’s only a small (vertical) leap to ritual and religion, passing by tradition on the way to fervor in believing our actions affect what happens on the ice.

This minor insanity runs deep with me. As captain of the high school math team (stop laughing) I carried a small alabaster egg in my jeans pocket for every competition. I did it once, and we won, and after that it was accepted practice (along with the playing of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird the night before - don’t ask). In 2003, Bubba insisted that the Devils hadn’t score a goal in Game 7 of the Cup Finals because we had failed to eat a pretzel at the intermission. I ran out to the concourse, picked up a soggy excuse for a pretzel, and minutes late the Devils scored - we threw the ends of the pretzel into the rows behind us, possibly into the laps of unhappy Ducks fans, and for once felt no guilt about wasting food (even Meadowlands fare). The Devils have not lost a game at the Prudential Center when Bubba and I are both there. Not even down two goals to Tampa Bay, with their energy and division lead seemingly draining away, did the Devils fail to deliver on their end of the disconnected cause and effect (our last game at the Rock, April 3).

Joshua Prager’s The Echoing Green weaves the story of Morty Rothschild into that of Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca during the last game of their 1951 baseball playoff game, the season in the balance. With his beloved New York Giants losing in the bottom of the ninth, Rothschild left the ballpark, considering that the Giants had never lost a game he’d listened to on his car radio. And so Thomson’s “shot heard round the world” was heard by Rothschild over the air waves, not seen in person. But his team had won, his own superstitious behavior no doubt contributing, from his point of view, to the team’s come from behind victory and the pennant. The rational among us dismiss such behavior as irrational and physically impossible, as well as statistically improbable and mildly irritating.

Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman, a noted molecular biologist, was asked to speak about evolution and its detractors. Her comments in the speech The Assault on Evolution do not dismiss viewpoints that some see as irrational or physically impossible, but rather explain that “science and religion are merely two different manifestations of the human experience.” We all see and hear the same events on the ice; we slam into our seat-mates with the same feelings; we choose our own interpretations of the causes of those effects.

We know the science: chemistry that causes ice to form a miniscule layer of water beneath Gionta’s skate blades; elastic collisions between Elias’ stick and the puck; inelastic collisions between pucks and Oduya’s shin pads; optics of the red light behind Cam Ward; wave mechanics of 16,000 screaming fans.

We know the religion: pandemonium, the time of all demons, the house of all possible Devils.

Tomorrow night, we dance this dance one more time, mentally and physically prepared for our role as fans.

Let’s go Devils.

Every year, the good folks at The Hockey News make their predictions, and like all predictions, they are based on a limited view offered in August, before training camps open, before we see who the shining new rookie lights are, before we see who is a step slower and older and who is playing like it’s their last season.

The table below isn’t perfect because it only reflects results as of Saturday afternoon, and there are another half dozen games left to play that might move teams one spot up or down. But it’s close enough for editorial scrutiny. I sorted the table by the gap between where THN predicted a team would finish and where they actually closed out the 08-09 campaign. A negative gap means THN under-appreciated the team and their actual finish was higher than predicted. Positive gaps mean disappointed fans and over-zealous reporting; the team didn’t live up to someone’s expectations.
Before analysis, here’s the data:

I chose this sort order because it dismisses the no-brainers, like thinking the Islanders and Avalanche would be learning how to spell “Tavares”, while also discounting an innocuous call like putting Nashville or the Rangers on the playoff bubble. Gaps in the -2 to +2 range mean that within the boundaries of journalistic science (there’s a statistically improbable phrase), THN got it right. Not interesting.

But look at the bottom of the pile: Dallas, Minnesota, Montreal, Ottawa all severely underpeformed. Was it injuries, goaltending, scoring, team chemistry, or all of the above at various times? Maybe the only consistent theme in every one of those cities is that there wasn’t a single break out player or defining event. Sure, Backstrom had a good year in net for the Wild, and Montreal was celebrating a century of the rouge, blanc et bleu, but “bleh” seemed to appear much more than it should have in the hockey coverage at the bottom of the list.

On the other end: Boston had a great year with Krejci, Wheeler, and Thomas becoming household names to rival those on Red Sox jerseys. Calgary just missed a 3-spot finish, and the addition of Mike Cammalleri (as well as Big Bert and Jolli Olli Jokinen) turned them into a team that will go as deep as Kippy’s goaltending allows. St. Louis moved up higher than anyone predicted, and broke a Bluesy early spring.

Starting Sunday afternoon, none of this really matters. It’s who wants to play break out hockey from now until June.

It was a strange week. Last week was actually stranger, as I had a few rough work days strung together by red-eye, delayed and over-booked flights across the country. But it ended well, if not equally strangely, when the Devils broke their 6-game losing streak by grounding the Bolts. But even for a Devils game, it was a strange day, indeed:

Bubba announced, publicly, that the Devils would end their losing streak as he was attending the game. The Devils have never lost with little Bubba in the (new) building. Not once in 19 tries, and last Friday was indeed a try. When the Devils went down 2-0 Bubba was bent, but not broken. He’s got more of what my grandmother would call koyach (strength, backbone) than his dad.

Before even departing Bubba-dom, I wavered on my jersey selection. Yes, I wear an appropriate jersey to each game. Yes, it looks like I’m 4 months pregnant and wrapped in nylon. Normally, Bubba picks up his Czech Olympic Elias jersey and I wear my Metallurg Elias jersey, but for some reason I went very — very very — old school: The red Koho Devils jersey from 2000, with a crest more wrinkled than the face you make when Rupp takes another dumb roughing penalty. Bubba talked me out of it. Czech mates we were.

As soon as we landed in our seats (last row of Section 21), Chico came by ostensibly on his way to the bathroom. We got high fives. A period later, NJ Devil came by, and gave us more high fives (although in his larger than life state, they count as seven and a halves, I think).

Despite Holik taking (another) dumb penalty, the Devils wrangled a power play out of it when Jeff Halpern came flying in from the far circle to rough up Holik. Halpern? The Princeton guy? Bubba’s quote: He didn’t learn that in Hebrew school.

Shanahan scored on a penalty shot, becoming the oldest player to do so in the NHL.

Throw in the other strangeness of the night — Weekes getting hurt and Marty playing in a game he was meant to sit back and enjoy; two blown leads in the third period; the thrown stick resulting in the penalty shot; Elias coming onto the ice in a suit (nursing a leg injury) to honor Marty — and the net result should have been something bizarre. A goal overturned by Toronto. Holik or Rupp bouncing one in off of Marty’s rear end. But none of that happened; if there was a bottom to be found in the market for Devils wins, we found it. It was good. Weekes isn’t down for the count. Devils won in OT. The Bubba streak was preserved. It may have been a weird week, but upon further review, it ended well.