The Bodies R Flying!

Woodpeck is getting more & more frustrated with the sheer volume of retaliation scrums after clean hits in NHL games of late.  We just don’t get it.  Its a legal move so live with it.  Sure your teammate just got rocked and some retaliation might be nice.  But how about later in the game?  Not right after the hit!  Take a number & head to the bench to stew it over.  It does nothing for the flow of the game for every1 involved (you, your team, the fans) to have a scrum after a clean hit.  The refs need be putting an end to this & calling all the players into the box that are involved in these scrums.  That is what the penalty is in these situations. 

What we want to see after a clean hit is the play that follows.  Whether or not it results in a good offensive chance for the aggressor or the offender gets his revenge by putting the puck in net.  Not a silly scrum!  SCRUMS ARE KILLING THE GAME!  Its childish, embarassing and proves the hockey players can’t contain their emotions.  Get a grip and play on! Stop killing the flow of the game with scrums!  We want to see hockey played.  Period.  These scrums are robbing the fans of what could have been.  Robbing us of what could have come of a clean hit & a legal play.  Kudos to the players out there that take the chance & make these clean hits.  Thumbs down to the instigators of the melee’s afterwards.

Here’s a video compilation of some of what we’re talking about.  We’re sure all of these hits (some illegal hits are included here) resulted in scrums.  Also, some dude from the Hockey News had this to say about after whistle scrums.  Not quite what we are talking about but close.  Though those scrums are also an issue, we are more concerned about the scrums that STOP play.  It should be an automatic penalty for any players starting a scrum after a clean hit!  Now where did we put that phone number for the NHL head office…

This Team is Showing Flashes of Brilliance

We were late arriving to the EPL scene but once there, it was love at first sight. Once upon a time, the BLUES were the team of choice.  Always in the title hunt but never the bride.  But the Russian era changed all that in a heartbeat. Zola-era Chelsea were something we’ll always remember fondly of.  The cash-inspired and seemly heartless Blues of today are not something we ever could get behind so we went our separate ways.

Nowadays the gloryhunting has gone the way of the Gunners. It seems by chance that it has gone that way personally. From meeting fellow fans in the oddest places to seeing numerous games on the telly and finding jerseys on sale, it just came to us one day that we’d become an Arsenal fans. Arsenal seems to follow what we like best in football and therein lies the reason to join the gloryhunting fray for better or worse.  Its just worked out that way.  One day recently we woke up to realize that we’d become part of the Arsenal family as unlikely and crazy as it may have one time seemed.

With that said, the Arsenal victory over the aforementioned Chelsea last weekend marked the start of a special season.  No one could have predicted this team with so few changes during the last transfer window would have been in the title mix.  Last weekend marked the end of the up and down season for the team and now is the time to come out and finally admit….

WE ARE FANS! GO GUNNERS GO!

and now onto victory against Wigan.

This Game has Gone Country

As a blogger, you depend on a lot of third hand info.  Since you can’t always be at the game or even watching it on the tube, you tend to rely on other sources for your info.  Recently, we had the opportunity to personally visit Nashville, TN. Home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and the NHL’s Nashville Predators. The Titans’ home field and stadium was impressive. A 69,000 seat monster on the shores on of the river across from the downtown and entertainment core. It was expected that we would see many Titans’ fans and paraphernalia… and we did. What was not expected was the equal amount of Predators stuff we saw. Rumours were that the town and folk supported the Preds even though the ownership and future of the franchise continue to be in flux and unstable. Yeah, whatever we thought… we’d heard that kind of stuff from the PR dept. of the NHL before. The Pred’s Sommet Center is in the shadow of LP Field but the inequality ended there. Really does size matter? Ok, don’t answer that… but Preds fans were everywhere downtown and the support in the core (which is where everyone visiting Nashville goes) could be seen in all the shops, bars and on the streets. It totally blew us away that hockey was so widely accepted and ppl knew the team and game well!

The sights left us with hope for the game in the US. That in some of the newer markets, it can succeed. Lets hope that this is one town the NHL will never leave and they can sort out their off-ice mess. With the kind of fan support we witnessed it would truly be a sad day for the league if they ever did leave. The fans deserve better than what they are getting and kudos to them for still supporting the team in these uncertain times. Perhaps this is once the PR machine got it right. Until we saw it with our own eyes, we thought it was all a myth.

PS: We found the only Timmy’s in Kentucky and it sucked. Avoid at all costs. Its not like our homebrew and the doughnuts were….well, how can we put this nicely… uh, horrid!

PPS: We will post some Nashville pics on our flickr site once we can spare a few minutes.