A Dose of Parody to Celebrate the 2013/14 NHL Season

This short piece was originally written for Mile High Hockey to commemorate the start of the 2013/14 NHL season. Read it with tongue firmly embedded in cheek.

New Colorado Avalanche head coach remedies a bout of cupearitis.

The worst team in the history of hockey, the Colorado Avalanche, are set to open their season against the Anaheim Ducks tonight. The unfortunate event will take place at the Pepsi Center, at 19:30 MT (21:30 ET, 02:30 BST), and be the regular season debut of new rookie head coach Patrick "Wah" Roy, who replaces “No Emotion” Joe Sacco, as well as the debut of first overall bust Nathan “Soon To Be Waived” MacKinnon. Roy, who requires treatment for cupearitis, enters the league with experience in the QMJHL, a hockey league so devoid of talent, it needs to compensate by adding extra letters to its name. His record in the league was impressive, but who cares. MacKinnon, meanwhile, succeeds Sidney “Kobasew” Crosby as the most-hyped player to enter the NHL as a first overall pick. MacKinnon grew up in the same town as Crosby and played in the same junior league, which has led to speculation that he is merely Crosby in a blonde wig.

A Hacking in Ottawa

S

henanigans? Shenanigans. This is an odd story that harkens back to the days when the NHL was the only sports league in which the owners went to prison more often than the players, starring a writer for the famed unreliable hockey blog, HockeyBuzz, known as Travis Yost, and the owner of a poverty-stricken hockey team, known as Eugene Melnyk.

It all started on the 2^nd of July, when, in response to news that the Ottawa Senators are "operating on a self-imposed $50 million salary cap", Yost wrote, "The reason for Ottawa's lack of spending obviously stems from owner Eugene Melnyk's either unwillingness or reluctance to open up the checkbook." Yost followed it up with a second article looking more closely at Melnyk's finances in an attempt to answer why Melnyk has been so reluctant to spend money on his team now, when just four years ago he emphasised spending to the cap as essential to competing for the Stanley Cup. Not done there, Yost added another six articles digging into Melnyk's financial rabbit hole (found here, here, here, here, here, and here), before the story culminated in Yost reporting that Melnyk is under NHL observation (that is, placed the team in a "watch-list") for the very reasons covered in his articles. According to his source:

It was this year when things really escalated with the NHL keeping a careful eye of ownership and the dollars-in, dollars-out. The team was expensing anything and everything to the league. And the league bit the bullet, stepped in and paid into it, because they're really worried about any missed payments. And they couldn't deal with another immediate disaster with Phoenix and New Jersey cooking.

Links: Of Detroit, Eibenstock, and Hoffenheim. Of Musicians and Bears.

Look at your favourite team's stadium, and it's likely that you'll find a building paid for by the inhabitants of its neighbours. And yet, in cities that can't afford the bankrupt teams they're hosting or are bankrupt, themselves, people are convinced or threatened into believing that their cities need to help pay for facilities from which only billionaires will profit. As Aaron Gordon illustrates, while new arenas and stadiums are built to pacify the owners of sports teams, the problems of the common people are ignored. Citizens of cities like Chester and Detroit, and counties such as Hamilton County, are expected by the state to carry a large portion of the burden, despite the latter's inability to support the former, whether economically or socially.

There is nevertheless a perceived benefit (on the part of the former) to subsidising privately-owned facilities, however, in job creation and growth of the local economy. Is this economic benefit worth reducing education, police, and firefighting budgets? Economists argue that it's not, since most of the created jobs are "either temporary, low-paying, or out-of-state contracting jobs". Neither does a city like Chester benefit, when, after a game, "everyone makes their way to the highway that spans the bridge, not spending a dime" in the city.

Rather than continue to blather on, I suggest you read Gordon's article, and check out Neil deMause's excellent blog on stadium funding if you're further interested in this "$2 billion a year" matter.

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Meanwhile, in Eibenstock, police encountered a BMW convertible that had been converted into a moving swimming pool, when a motorcycle cop noticed water spilling out of it as it rounded a corner. Filled with around 2,000 litres of water, the sealed pool was decked with wooden panels and railings, and decorated with (presumably plastic) flowers, allowing for a driver, two submerged passengers, and a third one, whom the officer found "sitting on the trunk, dipping his feet" in the water.

Interestingly, whether this vehicle is even illegal remains debatable amongst police experts, as Spiegel Online asks, "Is it illegal to drive a swimming pool?" Possible charges presently concern driving without insurance and under the influence of alcohol.

Josh McDaniels: How he Built the Broncos, and How he is Rebuilding the Patriots Offence

This article was originally written for Pats Pulpit. Because it is a blog focused on the New England Patriots, this piece was written with that in mind.

Misdirection, use of multiple players, running a multitude of plays out of the same packages. McDaniels' philosophy has always been to keep opposing teams on their heels. But his attempts to implement that philosophy have come under fire, both today and in previous years.

When we look at the team he was building in Denver and compare it with the one built by Shanahan, the difference was this:

Shanahan built a team that was top heavy, and had almost no depth

This meant that when the team was completely healthy, they would be supremely talented and difficult to beat. But the moment injuries occurred, cracks would start appearing. Because all the budget was going to the starters, little was left for the backups, who were, therefore, not very good (in fact, many of the players McDaniels cut from the 2008 Broncos team couldn't find jobs in the NFL afterwards).

It was a philosophy that depended on having its players overcome their predictability. Shanahan knew the team was predictable, but also knew that players like Terrell Davis and Champ Bailey were good enough to overcome it.

(As an aside, Shanahan's offence is also the complete opposite of McDaniels': it has a small number of plays, but runs them out of many different packages.)

McDaniels built a team that sacrificed top talent for top depth

This meant that when the team was competely healthy, they would have to rely on good coaching, game-planning, and playing mistake-free as well as smart football, since the top-level talent against a team like the Indianapolis Colts (who, incidentally, also followed the Shanahan model) would always be a step below, at least until young players started to mature. (Belichick's early Patriots teams are a good comparison, here.) But, what happens when the season gets long and players start going down? No problem. Because the backups were expected to play as well as the starters, the team would plug the next guy in and the machine would continue running.

This was a philosophy that depended on its players overcoming talent deficiencies through scheme and good old-fashioned hard work. The team may still have had enough talent to compete on that alone, but in order to be a Climax team (we will discuss the meaning of this later), they needed more than that.

Simply...

Jim Thorpe, more than an Unrecognised Champion

I

had a friend, once.  We went to primary school together, and then high school, before she left, one year earlier than me, to pursue her future, again, one year earlier than me.  She wasn't my best friend, and neither was I hers, but I always felt a strong bond with her.  Our conversations never got old, and to this day, I regret not spending more time with her.  She was, and would still be, one of the few people in my life whose integrity and intentions I would never have to question, whom I could spend an infinite amount of time with and never get to a point where I had to crawl into a boxed room, where I felt my inferiority complex create an invisible contest between myself and the other because they had more of whatever than me.  (This was an unfortunate product of my social status, a mirage that often failed to conceal my family's unshakable position at the top of the totem pole that hung from the peak of the little hill guarded by little kings.)  She was, simply, one of my few, true equals.

She was also a talented gymnast.  This was evidenced by the fact that she decided to leave her home and friends for more competitive pastures.  Her goal to be the best was obvious, and, getting to the topic at hand, so was the presumptive desire to make the Olympics, one day.

Now, I have a tough relationship with this event.  I feel it is a sham, with no connection to the original games from which it stole its name.  It has only ever succeeded in breeding hostility between nations (or, at least, the inhabitants of these nations), as well as leaving cities to writhe in their deflating economic bubbles in its wake.  And its corrupt leadership leaves much to be desired.  When I observe the obscene popularity of the Olympics, I'm, frankly, rather mystified.

But then, I think about this old friend, who is still on my mind some years later, who I hope managed to reach their goals, and my distaste lessens.  It's not our place to spit on the dreams of others, no matter the darkness of the walls within which they occur.  Which is why, regardless of my personal feelings, I can still imagine how gut-wrenched Jim Thorpe must have felt after being told that his performance in the 1912 Olympic Games, the greatest ever, was henceforth to be forgotten by the historical record, because he was a no-good cheater.