Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: The Commies are Coming

Ladies and gentlemen of the blog universe, I’m pleased to announce that I’ll finally be resuming the project that I started about analyzing the original Miracle on Ice movie, which I began approximately a century ago. For those of you (like me) who might have forgotten that this undertaking even existed back in the distant past when dinosaurs were still roaming the planet, I’m delighted to not-so-subtly remind you that I left off right before the pre-Olympic game against the Soviets at Madison Square Garden.

This segment begins with the famous skyline of New York City, which is always kind of depressing for me to see because it reminds me of how that classic image was forever marred by homicidal terrorists (who are my generation’s version of Communists, basically). Then the camera zooms in on Madison Square Garden’s billboard, which proclaims in neon lights that there’s the USA v.s. USSR hockey preview at 7:30 PM.

Along the sidewalk, there is a group of angry folk who apparently have nothing better to do with their wretched existences than wave around signs blaring messages about how Russia should leave Afghanistan alone.

Obviously, these politically charged people harbor under the delusion that guys like Valeria Kharmalov were calling the shots for Soviet policy. That’s about as hysterical as in the modern age when hockey fans and people in general actually cared about Pavel Datsyuk’s and Alex Ovechkin’s opinions about gay propaganda policies in Sochi. They’re athletes, not politicians, people. I don’t want to listen to them talk about matters of state; I just want to watch them dangle goalies out of jockstraps and score a million goals. Politics are boring. That’s why I never want to listen to an interview where Crosby discusses his feelings about abortion or Stamkos outlines his views on the madhouse that is the Middle East.

In short, I just wish the sign-waving idiots outside Madison Square Garden would concuss themselves with their placards and leave the rest of us normal people who don’t give a hoot about politics alone. Then the world would be a better place.

A dude I believe is Kaminsky and another agent exit a taxi, observing, “Would you look at this? Sometimes it isn’t a sport or a business. It’s an international incident.”

It’s good to see that one of the characters in the movie shares my jaded perspective on politics and all those who march around waving signs with personal political views outside entertainment venues. This is why you’re better off going to the Prudential Center to watch the Devils than to Madison Square Garden to watch the Rangers. Not only is the arena better, but there are a lot less idiots waving political signs out front. Heck, I’ve never seen an idiot waving a political sign outside the front of the Prudential Center, so there you go.

Moving along with the show (such as it is), the other agent asks, “What would you give to be part of our team tonight? To be out on the ice when the Russians skate out?”

Since the Red Army and US Olympic team match-up was billed as a David-Goliath game, I think that’s kind of like asking a resident of Boston back in the 1770’s what he would have given to be in the line of fire during the Boston Massacure. I mean the answer is clearly:

The other guy, plainly lying through his teeth, answers “a lot, a lot.” As Kaminsky and his companion begin to make their way through the sign-waving nuts, a third agent (the one whom I noticed earlier resembles an Oompa Loompa) hops out of a taxi, hollering Kaminsky’s name to get his attention.

The Oompa Loompa man after dashing up to his fellow agents inquires how their boys are doing and is told that they are doing just fine. I guess “fine” is at the extreme low end of the emotional spectrum now.

Ramping his obnoxious powers up to maximum, the Oompa Loompa man comments, “Well, I guess this is what Brooks was gambling on.” When one of his agent companions correctly points out that this isn’t Lake Placid, the undeterred Oompa Loompa man continues with pure pompousness, “The teams are the same, George. What do you say we meet afterwards? Loser buys the drinks.”

This is an example of the sort of unfair spots gambling that I just can’t condone, since it’s simply unjust to have the person who is totally depressed after seeing his team lose buy the drinks. It should be the person whose team won who funds the drinking, so that everyone feels like a winner, and the poor soul who just had to watch their team stink can take a sip and proclaim:

The Oompa Loompa cackles to himself like the Wicked Witch of the West before the scene mercifully changes to the US Olympic team streaming onto the ice as the announcer declares, “The US Olympic team coming out onto the ice at Madison Square Garden for a very important game tonight against the USSR, the final match-up before next week’s Olympics begins at Lake Placid, and this is for the most part a team of college kids against a team that demolished NHL All-Stars a year ago this week at the Garden.” Well, at the time of the Lake Placid Olympics Slava Fetisov was only like twenty-two and the average age for the US Olympic team was twenty-two so that makes this match-up totally even, right? I mean:

The announcer explains that there will be an opening face-off at center ice between Neal Broten and Valeri Kharmalov. Since in real life it was actually Mark Johnson who took the opening face-off against Kharmalov, I can’t help but wonder why the director felt it was necessary to needlessly alter this detail to make this movie just a little less historically accurate. Whatever. It gives me an excuse to say hello to Neal.

Neal manages to win the face-off and the US carries the puck into the Soviet zone, and what follows is just a bunch of slow skating and excruciatingly bad passing by the actors that makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Watching these actors play hockey looks like what I imagine a herd of Bambis would resemble if forced to skate and pass a puck around for the first time. (For the record, doing this to deer is not recommended, since it probably constitutes animal cruelty.) This movie must have been on such a shoe-string budget that they couldn’t afford to hire actors who had ever even seen a person skate.

The US team turns the puck over to the Soviets, and then the audience has to endure the torture that is watching the actors in this film butcher the artistic and skilled hockey that the Red Army team was renowned for, which makes me feel sick to my stomach, so:

To try to convey why I’m so nauseous, I’ll just explain that Pavel Datsyuk, who is basically pure poetry in motion when he plays hockey, is probably the contemporary Russian who best depicts the traditional Soviet style of play. Lots of slick passing. Smooth skating. Lovely stick handling around entire NHL teams. An uncanny ability to predict what will happen next in a game. An understanding of how to navigate his own zone. So basically by turning Kharmalov into Bambi on skates, what the director did was even worse than having Pavel Datsyuk, the man who splits defenses like this:

played in a movie by this dude who can’t even play keep-away with Datsyuk:

because at least that guy played college hockey. So, yeah, next time Valeri Kharmalov appears in a film can we not insult his memory by having some Pee Wee play him? Thanks.

The actor playing Valeri Kharmalov manages to bumble his way through a series of passes that results in a goal where Guttenberg makes a pathetic save attempt that resembles an interpretive chicken dance. It’s like he was thinking:

Over at the bench, Herb paces and is probably internally screaming:

The camera then flashes to the scoreboard, which kind of looks like it was constructed with cardboard by a bunch of third graders for a book report project, so viewers have visual confirmation that the Soviets are indeed up 1-0.

After the US team finally regains control of the puck, they have a breakaway attempt, which Tretiak deflects with a kick save that looks like he’s either fall-down drunk or else has simply never blocked a hockey puck before. Clearly the director just drugged and dragged in some random guy of the street to play Tretiak, Hall of Fame goaltender. Having seen this sad sequence of Hollywood hockey ineptitude, I can only mutter:

There is more bungling with the puck, mainly by the actors playing the Soviets, and then Guttenberg makes a pathetic lunge to try to stop the puck before it finds the back of his net, giving the Soviets a two goal lead. Guttenberg in goal is like:

More insult to the game of hockey follows, interspersed with Herb barking at his players from the bench to “watch the gaps; watch the gaps,” and then Krutov manages to score basically from the blue line. Since his team is making zero effort on offense or defense, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jim Craig was mentally checking out of this game, remarking mentally:

Following the camera flashing to the cardboard scoreboard to beat into the audience’s collective brains that the Soviets are up 3-0, the commentator states some gibberish about the US needing to prevent this game from becoming a rout. What a fool. If a hockey game is 3-0 and the first period is nowhere close to over, it’s already a rout. That was true even during the ‘80s when scoring was ridiculously inflated compared to the modern era where players are supposed to at least look like they’re trying to be defensively responsible rather than just play fire wagon hockey.

Predictably, the Soviets score another goal, and, forgetting that as captain he should probably pretend to be at least a little bit supportive of his teammate, Rizzo, as the crowd breaks into boos, skates up to Jim and asks in the breathless tone of a sugar-high toddler, “Man, did you see that goal?” Watching this unfold, I wonder for the millionth time:

Given that Rizzo has been doing a disappearing act all night, Jim would probably be one-hundred percent justified punching him square in the jaw, or else trolling him next time he made a save by exclaiming:

Electing to be a bit more subtle, Jim replies witheringly, “Yeah, I was there. Remember?” You tell him, Jimmy. That’s the spirit. Teach your captain some manners.

Totally not picking up how rude he is being, Rizzo punches Jimmy in the shoulder, responding, “I’m sorry, Jimmy, but class is class.” Basically, Rizzo is saying:

Only he is completely wrong, since he just showed all the social grace of a bull raging around a china shop.

Over at the bench, Herb calls out a line change, and the Coneheads climb onto the ice. Then Herb demands if Rizzo has gotten all the Russian autographs that he wanted. Rizzo, continuing to be an idiot, wants to know if Herb is talking to him. Herb confirms that he is indeed talking to Mike, the team captain. Perhaps concussion tests should be run on Rizzo. He seems a bit mentally impaired right now.

The pathetic excuse of a hockey game carries on, and when the guy who plays Neal makes a terrible drop pass, there is a comically slow breakaway by the Soviets, who unsurprisingly score high on Craig’s glove side. This game for the US team is the equivalent of this:

There is more booing by the crowd and flashing to the cardboard cutout scoreboard, and then Rizzo, the stupid captain, manages to score, so the tally is slightly less lopsided. Maybe if he had bothered to show up earlier in the game it wouldn’t have been such a rout, but he was probably too busy practicing insults he could hurl at his goalie to show up to the game on time.

Any momentum the US might have gained by Rizzo’s goal is squashed when the Soviets tally again. Then the game goes from bad to worse when Jack O’Callahan, after hitting a Soviet player against the boards, is rammed from behind by another Soviet player, and crumbles to the ice. There is a dramatic swell of music as he is carried from the ice, and readers will just have to wait until next time to hear what damage has been wrought on poor OC.

Damon Severson: Our Savior

If there was anyone who was born to be a New Jersey Devil, it was Damon Severson. Just look at his name for proof. You can’t get any more devilish than the name Damon. Still, it was probably more his evolving defensive game and natural offensive flare along with his inherent composure and confidence that drew the Devils to select him during the second round—sixtieth overall—in the 2012 draft. He was a sweetie pie on his draft day as you can see:

I swear that cute smile and the country Canadian “o” and “u” alone were worth drafting him for, but that defense he mentioned rounding out and that offensive potential he prided himself on could definitely help the Devils, especially since the following two years part of the team’s struggles have emerged from defensemen being too slow to skate the puck out of their end or too offensively challenged (or visually impaired, given that some were aging like Salvador) to effectively pass the puck out of their zone to our veteran forwards. In a league built on speed and puck movement that is a Problem with a very deliberate capital P.

As a new member of the Devils organization, Damon attended the team’s 2012 rookie camp, where he discussed in an interview how he tried to soak in all the wisdom from the coaches and players at the camp and again explained how he tried to model his game after Shea Weber, an emulation that might be part of the reason why Damon has a very fierce and accurate shot from the point:

Since the Devils love to let prospects age like wine, Damon, predictably, was sent back down for another season in the WHL with the Kelowna Rockets, where he tallied fifty-two points (ten goals and forty-two assists) in seventy-one games during the regular season as well as ten points (one goal and nine assists) in eleven games during the playoffs. Basically that offensive game was coming along nicely.

With another year of experience under his belt, Damon arrived at rookie camp 2013, where he felt more familiar with the process than he had last year and where he mentioned that he perceived himself as more of a power play point producer (though he was committed to bringing an offensive dimension to five-on-five situations) and how pleased he was with how his high plus-minus rating reflected his burgeoning ability to keep the puck out his net:

An obviously driven and self-assured individual, Damon was motivated to make as powerful an impression as possible on the coaching staff and to complicate their decision to cut him from the team as much as he could. During rookie camp, he was strong enough to be invited to the team’s 2013 training camp, where he discussed how he believed that his ability to control the play and tempo of the game as a defenseman had grown in leaps and bounds the past year:

For those who might be wondering if the term “meteoric” to describe Damon’s development as a player was an exaggeration, it was hyperbole, but only slightly, because Damon was selected in the ninth round (one-hundred-ninety-second overall) by the Rockets in the 2009 bantam draft, and he played in the WHL just the year after. In other words, Damon’s growth as a player has a pattern of being exponential, so his shooting upward in points during the 2012-2013 season fits that trajectory.

Damon fulfilled his objective of impressing at the 2013 training camp, and he certainly made the decision to cut him from the Devils as hard as possible. He earned the opportunity to compete in two preseason games alongside Andy Greene (whom we all know would be ten times the captain that Salvador is), and Pete DeBoer was singing Damon’s praises.

When asked what Damon’s strengths were, Pete countered, “I think the better question is what are his weaknesses. There aren’t many. He really does a bit of everything well. He’s a big body, he has a physical edge to him, and he handles the puck well. He moves it well and can shoot it. For me he does a bit of everything. It’s a nice package. He’s real mature. Great kid. An exciting prospect.” This quote is a beautiful thing, because it gives me a chance to enhance the world peace movement by being able to agree with the words that come out of Pete DeBoer’s mouth. That so rarely happens that it’s quite a treat when it does.

Since the cruel hockey gods didn’t want the Devils to make the playoffs last year or to not have a team of geriatrics on ice, Damon was again sent back to the WHL, where he had a monster of a season in which he produced sixty-one points (fifteen goals and forty-six assists) in sixty-four games during the regular season in addition to eighteen points (four goals and fourteen assists) in fourteen playoff games.

Armed with the knowledge that his Canadian junior career was in the past, Damon showed up to the 2014 Devils training camp resolved to crack the roster and confident that he was prepared to play in the NHL whenever the chance arrived:

Damon’s preseason performance was impressive enough that he earned a slot in the opening night lineup against the Flyers over Adam Larsson (who should himself probably be in the lineup over Salvador the Slow if the Devils were a completely merit-based organization committed to winning).

Against the Flyers, Damon had a solid game, appearing to calm down more as the game progressed, and his compete level and focus seemed to climb a couple of notches after the score was tied 3-3. That suggests a poise and the potential to rise rather than crumble in important, big-game situations that is not common among young defensemen and is a trait that some defensemen never develop at all.

Damon’s work in the Flyers game was good enough to receive the coveted Pete DeBoer stamp of approval, who commented post-game, “I thought he was fantastic, composed, not overwhelmed, made plays. When the game turned, and it became 3-3, I thought that he got better, which means something for a young guy.” Perhaps because of Damon’s composure and apparent ability to perform under pressure, DeBoer felt comfortable using him on a penalty kill with nine minutes left in the game when the Devils were clinging to a 5-4 lead. As DeBoer stated, “He deserved to be out there. He was playing well enough that he should have been out there.”

While Damon’s NHL debut was great, he had to wait until the next game against the Panthers to materialize on the scoresheet, but when he did, he announced himself with a bang by assisting on a Mike Cammalleri goal and then rocketing a blast of his own past Roberto Luongo for his first NHL goal and multi-point night.

Damon’s goal prompted a precious moment back at the bench when DeBoer (doing his best impersonation of a competent NHL coach) actually remembered that he was legally permitted to interact with players outside of the locker room and gave Damon some congratulatory shoulder pats.

Then Damon was all adorable and couldn’t stifle a smile although he was trying to be all cool and mature, which even perpetually sad-faced DeBoer might have found cute, since he remarked post-game, “He was trying not to smile coming back to the bench. It was pretty funny actually. He was trying as hard as possible not to crack one, but I think we caught him, and good for him. It was great.” Basically, the Apocalypse is coming because DeBoer and I are both agreed that Damon is a perfect munchkin of a defenseman, so please don’t destroy his confidence, Coach, by benching him for the ninety million things Salvador gets away with on a consistent basis.

By comparison with his performance against the Panthers, Damon had a quiet game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, but he proved once again that he does not require sheltering when eleven of his twelve face-offs were taken in the defensive zone. Damon also caught my eye in a positive way when he was able to prevent a Lightning breakaway, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed his excellent work, since Devils’ beat writer Tom Guilitti reported that Scotty Bowman was gushing about Severson in the press box. If you stand out to Scotty Bowman in a good way, that probably is a sign that you’re doing something right, and I think with Damon what really makes him special is that the mistakes he makes are common for young defensemen but the things he does well especially at such a young age are quite rare. He’s special and fun to watch.

That’s why he found a way to be the highlight (and only positive) of the Devils’ loss to Washington. Although he goofed in his coverage on Ovechkin on the fourth goal, he was the one who tied the game twice with his two goals, which were the only ones that the Devils scored that game, and his ability to arise to the occasion and generate offense when his team needed was again a wonderful thing to see.

It’s really exciting to have a defenseman whose shots on net routinely make it through the traffic in front of the crease, but what’s even better is that I don’t think Damon’s performance is a fluke or just a surge of points.

I believe he is the real deal, and his true value as a defenseman isn’t solely in his point production but rather in his overall knack at accessing plays quickly and correctly. His three goals are wonderful—and if he can continue to rack up the points while seeing significant ice time he might become a dark horse contender for the Calder Trophy, since we know Calder voters are swayed by gaudy stats—but I’m climbing aboard the hype train because of the way he plays his position. His stick work, positioning, and overall comprehension of the game is extremely refined for such a young defenseman. Watch him read and react when forwards come bearing down. Watch his coverage on the off-side when play is in the opposite corner. Watch him detect from his partner when there is a defensive breakdown. Watch how silkily he can evade trouble with the puck. Those things typically take years for a defenseman to refine, and Damon has many of them fairly well mastered now when he is fresh out of junior. That stuff is not just a one time hot stretch. It’s a fundamental grasp of his position at an elevated level that should stay with him throughout his career in the NHL. This is all about following the play—which Damon does—and not the puck, since there is so much more to the game than tracking the black disc skidding across the ice. That’s why Scotty Bowman was impressed by Damon, even though Damon put up no points in Tampa.

Add in Damon’s offense, add in the fact that he just turned twenty in September, and add in the fact that he’s doing all the things I outlined in the above paragraph only four games into his NHL career without protected minutes—and on the road, he’s getting the less favorable match-ups that opposing coaches dictate—and you have a development curve that should continue to shoot upward. Damon should make a hell of a Devil, and, as fans, I hope we have the pleasure of watching him for many more years.

 

 

 

 

 

A Hell of a Road Trip: Takeaways from the Devils’ First Four Games

My Expectations Going into the Road Trip: I know that some people believe in a Stanley Cup or bust attitude to open every season, but I’m more inclined to try to set standards that are high but realistically attainable, so my goal for the season was just to see the Devils make the playoffs, and, if they did so, then we could start planning the parade. As a Devils fan who endured the agony of watching the team fail to qualify for the playoffs for two consecutive years after our Cinderella Stanley Cup Final run, where instead of marrying a prince, we got to lose to the Kings in six games if you can bear to remember the pain and haven’t blocked it from your mind owing to trauma, my high hopes for the season were just to see the team make the playoffs. Even if they got bounced in the first round, I’d be a content fan, since that would constitute progress.

Therefore, I was a very happy and proud Devils fan when the Devils briefly were on top of the league standings before they lost to the Capitals and fell to second place in the Metropolitan Division. I didn’t expect them to remain there forever because any pragmatic Devils fan would know that there are plenty of better rosters in the league, but just reading their name up there was a tribute to the tenacity that was supposed to be a calling card of Devils hockey. It was like we were trolling the whole NHL for a short time there, and we were all like:

Obviously, as yesterday evening’s spanking by the Capitals illustrates, this team still has some holes that the coaching staff and players need to figure out how to fill, but I have a lot more optimisim at the start of this season than I did at the beginning of last year, which opened with a glamorous losing streak.

What Engines are Firing with Our Offense: After the Devils scored six goals in Philadelphia and thrashed the Panthers 5-1, the team somehow attracted the moniker of being high-scoring. Given that the team then proceeded to only score a pair of goals in each of the next two games, it’s fair to say that adjective might have been a slight exaggeration, but it’s still true that the Devils have done a better job finishing on their scoring chances than they did last year. Michael Cammalleri has been a particular gem in that department of capitalizing the opportunities that Jagr gives him and he has been able to find the empty net when the other team has pulled the goaltender, which is something the Devils team failed to do last year. The blue line has contributed to the offensive production by doing a much better job of moving the puck up to the forwards than our defensemen did last season, and our power play is much more effective with Damon’s sharp shot from the point actually making it through traffic to land in the back of the opposition’s net.

What’s Stalled with Our Offense: Our leading scorer from last season, Jaromir Jagr, has yet to notch a goal, so that’s a bit discouraging, especially because when Jagr isn’t going, the leech that is Travis Zajac can’t produce much for himself either. Hopefully Jagr realizes soon that the season has started and pots a few.

Where Our Defense has been a Rock: Merrill is strong in his own end, bringing a physical edge and a shutdown side that is very useful in the top four and has been helpful on the penalty kill. Gelinas still has a nice offensive skill set, and he perceives the ice well. This season there also have been some promising signs like Gelinas taking a hit against the boards to make a play that he is focused on improving his responsibility in his own end, which can only be a positive for the Devils.

The biggest stud and standout for me, though, has been Damon Severson. Severson has put up four points (three goals and one assist) in four games without needing to be sheltered, and he’s dependable in his own zone, reading the game well. With only four NHL games under his belt, it’s remarkable how poised he is, and he manages to be a bright spot even in embarrassing loses by scoring the Devils’ only two goals. Just seeing what he can do on the backend for our team has made me a lot more optimistic about not only this season but also the entire future of the Devils organization. He’s only played four games in a Devils’ sweater, but I love him already, and I have a lot of confidence in what he can do with and without the puck in the offensive and defensive zone, but I’m going to write a whole post in tribute to him, so you can read that to get your fill of Severson gushing.

Where Our Defense has been Chipping: Andy Greene, while still being mostly reliable, has seemed rather pedestrian by his typical standards, and he will need to improve if the Devils want to remain in a playoff position has the season continues. Gelinas also still has a tendency to take some boneheaded penalties that can cost the team, and Merrill can become a bit unsettled and panicky when things start to go awry. Severson, as a rookie, is also prone to the errors (though so far he’s made few of them and the things he does well are uncommon in a young defenseman, so he’s still a very promising prospect) that are to be expected of inexperienced defensemen, and by that I mean that he’s had some turnovers and been caught in the wrong spot a handful of times. These things are growing pains, and they will ultimately make our blue line stronger and wiser. I think that these young defensemen can become the Devils’ core and backbone for years of we make a commitment to them and they make a commitment to us, so I like seeing the team get a little less old and gray.

When our Goalie has been a Wall: Schneider withstood some onslaughts during the Flyers game, and, although he gave up four goals, he was hardly a sieve the whole game. He was brilliant in the Tampa game, and, in fact, was a major reason why we were able to steal those two points. If Schneider can be a presence for us in the net and help us win games that we shouldn’t, he’ll be worth every penny of his shiny new contract, and fans will love him.

When Our Goalie has Caved: During the Flyer’s game, Schneider gave up a goal right after the Devils had scored, and he did the same thing in the Captials game after Severson tied it at two. Those tallies are momentum changers, and if he had been able to make those saves, the team’s energy level would have been more positive. Schneider’s performance in the Captials game was pitiful, but at least he acknowledged in his post-game interview that one of the goals was entirely on him. I approve of him taking responsibility for his own errors, and I’m not going to flip out at him for having one poor game at the end of a long road trip especially when goaltenders like Lundqvist, Quick, and Price have all had rather shaky starts to their seasons.

My Overall Verdict: The team still needs to tighten up defensively, learn how to stop surrendering leads, and figure out how to generate some consistent offense, but we have a lot of promising young defenseman who are being able to shine in the spotlight this year, and we’re a hard-working team that has been able to finish more scoring chances than last season and generate more puck movement from the blue line. Devils fans should be optimistic about our season and the franchise’s future, but we can temper those expectations with realism.

If the Season Ended Today, Would We Make the Playoffs? Yep. We’re second in the Metropolitan Division, so we’d currently make the playoffs and face off against the Capitals, who are presently ranked third in our division.

Should Pete DeBoer be Canned? I’ve never been a fan of this guy, but as long as the wins keep rolling in, he can stick around. At the end of the season, if Babcock hasn’t re-signed with Detroit, I wouldn’t mind Lou writing him a blank check if that’s what it takes to woo Babcock here, because Babcock is about twenty times the coach that DeBoer is, and that’s being generous to DeBoer since he hasn’t sucked as much this year as he did last one.

The Bottom Line: The New Jersey Devils went 3-1 on their opening road trip. If I’d been told at the beginning of the season that we’d earn six points out of a possible eight on our opening road trip, I’d be quite pleased, especially, since, by way of comparison, Tampa—regarded by many analysts as being a legitimate Cup contender this season—came away with the same amount of points points from an opening home stand. Now that the Devils are returning to home ice, let’s hope that they can keep winning at a respectable clip and remain in a playoff spot. That’s all I want my team to be right now: a solid playoff team. Please don’t disappoint me again, Devils, and if you could continue to remain ahead of the Rangers in the standings as an added bonus, that’d be great.

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: Nobody is Prepared for This

The next segment of the movie begins in a fascinating fashion with Herb staring at a bulletin board with his players’ names and faces written on index cards. I guess he’s making the final decisions about who is going to Lake Placid and who is going home, but it is also possible that he is just being an evil genius like the Grinch:

Literally a second later (because this movie was written by someone with severe attention issues, obviously) the scene shifts to a good luck and farewell party for our Olympic hockey players, as we see a banner wishing them the best in Lake Placid getting strung up on a wall. There is some miscellaneous chatter and laughter before OC knocks on the door to make his grand entrance.

OC hobbles in on crutches, and it’s kind of weird since we didn’t get to see the Madison Square Garden game where he got injured, but I suppose that spares us the agony of seeing these actors attempt to play hockey, so I won’t even complain about that. Instead, I’ll just comment on how it deviates from the timeline in a non-judgmental way, since this blog is a safe space for everyone, even incompetent directors.

Cox, who opened the door to admit OC, demands in the timelessly sympathetic manner of hockey players everywhere, “What happened?” In case, you’re wondering people in the hockey world aren’t traditionally very understanding about injuries, probably because hockey is the only pro sport where the team is literally down a man and can’t bring in a replacement if someone leaves mid-game owing to an injury. Basically, in hockey, it’s your fault you got hurt, and you’re probably exaggerating your injury like the total diver and wimp you are, so buck up and play, partner, unless you’re in a coma or something. If you doubt me on this and think I’m just making this stuff up to meet a word count, you can read about it in Ken Dryden’s consensus best hockey book ever entitled the Game, which is highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand how crazy goaltenders are and what it was like to be part of the Montreal Canadiens’ dynasty in the ‘70s.

OC says something sarcastic about how he fell down in the bathtub, and Dave Christian comes over not so much to help OC into a chair but to pepper him with questions about when he will return in the customary method of shaming the walking wounded back into playing on one leg if necessary. Once the besieged OC explains that he doesn’t know whether he’ll be able to play and Doc apparently doesn’t know about his injury, he settles into a chair with no thanks to the socially-impaired Dave.

Eventually, some members of the team overcome their years of hockey training in callous indifference to injuries, as they finally, in their words, realize, “Jack is hurt!” Someone also shouts out the bright idea of getting something for Jack’s foot. Ken Morrow grabs a seat to prop up OC’s leg, but Dictator Dave waves him off, ruling that “a pillow is good.” Of course it is; anything more than a pillow might make OC soft like a European or something.

OC says that a pillow is fine, but shows the slippery slope of an injury leading to softness by making the unreasonable request for another one.

Dave hands the crutches over to Ken Morrow and then asks if OC would like a drink. Patting his stomach, OC responds that he’d like a drink.

While everyone is finally attending to OC, Herb is back in his office, agonizing over what we can only presume are the final cuts. If that’s the case, I give everybody reading this blog fair warning that:

As I’m gathering up my pillows and Puffs, Herb removes some more index cards from his board and takes a sip of coffee. At least I assume its coffee. It could be something stronger, since Herb might be feeling:

Since our ADD director can’t focus on any scene for more than two seconds, we’re back at the party, where Jim and Silky are arriving in all their splendor. This is turning into quite the powwow.

Proving he may be the only guy on the team with a normal range of emotions, Jim comes over to ask OC how he is doing. Meanwhile, Ken Morrow is over at the drinks table, taking a sip of the cocktail that he spits back out like a total backwoods buffoon.

“Hey, Cox, what is this stuff, huh?” Ken demands. “Super or unleaded?”

“Cranberry juice and beer,” answers Cox as if this were a completely normal mix. Not a single hockey player has ever received any socialization whatsoever in this movie. Then Cox puts on this frankly psychopathic smile and adds, “Great color, huh?”

At this rate, next thing we know one of these guys will be drinking bourbon from a stranger’s shoe on a dare. Please be prepared to cover your eyes at a moment’s notice if you’re sensitive to reading about such inebriated exploits.

Putting down the punch with an eye roll, Ken remarks facetiously, “Terrific.”

Back in his den of doom, Herb is tinkering with the roster, and I hope I still have time to get ready for the final cuts, because:

The phone rings, and Herb barks into the receiver, “Yeah?” Gosh, Herb, you are so impolite. Didn’t anyone teach you how to answer a phone properly? Obviously not, because that’s not how you do it.

Moving along with another of the movie’s one-sided phone conversations that serve as info dumps and plot devices, Herb says, “Oh, hello, Keminsky…Yeah, yeah, I’m down to the final twenty…In the end, it wasn’t much choice who to cut…You’re right. The Russians are the last game we play before Lake Placid, so I might as well go along with my final choices…Yeah, bye.”

Okay, this phone conversation confirms that Herb is indeed making his final roster cuts. More importantly, though, it tells us that this party with a hurt OC takes place before the Madison Square Garden game against the Red Army team. That means this movie has OC getting injured at some other time. Weird. Maybe he got into a bar fight or something. This film drives me a bit crazy. Every time I give the director and script writer some credit for logic, the whole movie nose-dives gleefully back into lunacy. Ick. Perhaps everybody was intoxicated from cranberry juice and beer cocktails when working on this project. That’s about the only sane explanation for all these nonsensical plot decisions.

Herb hangs up on Keminsky and glances at the bulletin board one final time before the scene shifts back to the raging party with the beer and cranberry juice punch, where Rizzo has just entered to exuberant greetings from his celebrating teammates.

As Rizzo shuts the door, OC calls for him to come over to the chair. Holding his arm out like Adam reaching for God on the Sistine Chapel, OC implores, “Come here! Come here! Quick, Rizzie! Give me your hand!”

When Rizzo hurries over because the poor dude sounds like he is a dying man in need of a priest, OC snatches his hand and places it on his forehead. Rising after a second, he proclaims with exaggerated excitement, “It’s working. Oh, I can walk. I can walk.” Everyone realizes that they’re a victim of a classic OC prank or else Rizzo is Jesus Cat in disguise:

In all seriousness, we obviously learn here that OC wasn’t injured and just pretending to be to scare the daylights out of his teammates. While it’s nice to see OC’s playfully malicious personality on display in this film (especially since OC’s personality is one of the few things this movie gets right, so the director and script writers should play it to the hilt), I find this decision to have OC pretend to be hurt kind of ill-advised. It’s clumsy foreshadowing that actually removes some of the drama from the impending and real injury that OC is going to suffer at Madison Square Garden and makes it almost seem like poetic justice that OC got really hurt just to learn that injuries aren’t joking matters.

To explore what I mean and have an excuse to mention (because any blog post is ten times better with them) Steve Yzerman (who has only gotten more handsome with age, especially when he gives one of his rare grins that show off his crow’s feet) and Steven Stamkos (who is probably the happiest person ever to play pro hockey), let’s use a modern comparison from Team Canada 2014. Putting on our imagination hats instead of our thinking caps, let’s pretend that someone was going to do a movie on Team Canada’s path to gold in Sochi, and that brain trust decided to have Stamkos hobble, clutching his leg, into Yzerman’s office in Tampa sometime in late October, so we can have the following dramatic exchange:

Stamkos: Ouch, my leg! I’ve never been in pain like this before, not even when I took that slapshot to the face during that playoff series against Boston.

Yzerman: What did you do to yourself?

Stamkos: I didn’t do it! The goalpost I crashed into did. No need to sound so accusing.

Yzerman: You crashed into a goalpost? How stupid are you? They don’t move, you know.

Stamkos: Not true. The goalpost moved, but just not as much as my leg did. My leg got all twisted like Gumby’s. It was kind of gross to watch.

Yzerman: Well, back when I played, the goalposts didn’t move around so much, so we knew better than to collide with them like bumper cars.

Stamkos: Back when you played, some guys didn’t wear helmets.

Yzerman: Only at the dawn of my storied NHL career. Anyway, how long will it take your leg to heal?

Stamkos: I don’t know. Probably a couple of months or a full season. I haven’t spoken to the doctors yet.

Yzerman: Why the heck not? Why didn’t you go to the trained medical professionals first instead of to me?

Stamkos: Because they would have seen instantly that I was pulling their legs, and that wouldn’t be a very funny prank.

Yzerman: I can’t believe that you’re getting an average annual salary of 7.5 million dollars, and you think this is an appropriate use of your time. Why don’t you get lost and do something useful like practicing your face-offs? Your face-off percentage stats are just ghastly, but you still insist on calling yourself a center.

Then, in early November, this happens in Boston Garden:

As an audience, of course, we’d feel sorry that Steven Stamkos, one of the few Canadians in the NHL who shows an actual personality beyond clichés in interviews on a regular basis, went down with a freak accident to his tibia during an Olympic year, but we’d also wonder why the directors took away some of the drama with such dumb foreshadowing and why they made Stamkos seem like such a jerk with a cavalier attitude to injuries. Fortunately, in the real world, this didn’t happen, so we could all feel weepy when Stamkos couldn’t go to the Olympics and babble on about how nobody had ever wished anything bad on Stamkos since he’s a guy everyone in the hockey world loves. Literally, I’m not exaggerating when I say everyone loves the dude, because Chara, the Big Bad Wolf defenseman, actually sent him a text wishing him well after his tibia surgery, and Claude Julien came by to visit him in the hospital (probably to assure him that if he signed with the Bruins as an unrestricted free agent, the offending goalpost could be removed from the Garden).

Anyhow, now that I’ve used a contemporary comparison to demonstrate how awful the scriptwriting and directing in this film is when it comes to robbing emotions from what should be key dramatic points of the movie, I apologize for dragging the two Stevens from Tampa into this mess, but I’m confident with sufficient therapy, they should make a full recovery and go back to being their well-adjusted selves, so moving along with the film, OC dances around, proclaiming how healed he is. Then the phone rings, and it’s about as menacing as that scene from Killer in the House:

Rizzo picks up the phone and answers somewhat correctly by saying, “Hello.” The partiers continue to make a ton of noise around him, so he covers the mouthpiece and asks, “Would you guys keep it down?”

When nobody responds to this request and everyone keeps talking at the top of their voices, Rizzo hollers, “Will everybody shut up please? It’s Herb.” Maybe somebody should teach Rizzo that adding “please” doesn’t make “shut up” polite any more than prefacing a statement that someone looks like a killer whale with “no offense” makes it sensitive.

Since the mention of Herb is enough to silence everybody, Rizzo talks into the mouthpiece again, saying, “Yeah, Herb. Uh, yeah, yeah, they are. Just a minute.” Someone should explain to these scriptwriters that not every piece of dialogue has to include one or two “yeah.” It’s getting grating to hear, honestly.

Rizzo calls over his shoulder, “Cox! It’s for you.”

Cox wends his way over to the phone, which he takes from Rizzo, saying in a shaky voice, “Hi…I think I know what it’s about, Herb. There’s no need to come to your office…I understand…Yeah…Thanks for everything…Yep…Good luck to you, too…I mean it; you’re gonna win the gold, Herb…Sure, hang on.”

That was probably one of the most awkward phone conversations in Olympic hockey history right up there with that time Steve Yzerman had to call Marty St. Louis to warn him that he didn’t make the 2014 Team Canada roster, and Marty began a tantrum that lasted months by demanding a trade. Seriously, Marty St. Louis is the whiniest Olympian in hockey history, because he is a brat who continues to cry incessantly even when he gets whatever he wants, and I spent the whole Olympics hoping Babcock would punch him in the face and exclaim, “Sorry. Didn’t see you there, because you’re just so small.”

Oh, look, I’m digressing again. What’s really important here is that Ralph Cox, an amateur athlete who will never have the accolades that Marty St. Louis does, handled the cut with maturity and was even able to wish Herb well even though he had to be in a ton of emotional pain. Way to go, Cox! You’re a winner who deserves a round of tearful applause, so here you go, pal:

Cox passes the phone to Hughes, who takes it and says, “Yeah, Herb…Yeah, I’ll be right over.” Then Hughes hangs up the phone, and my heart is all torn up, so:

All the boys look like kicked puppies, so I’m going to end this post here, so I can heal my bruised heart before moving onto the next section.

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: Looking for Lake Placid

After bidding a sad adieu to Les Auge (whose humorous presence will be missed in this film), the action moves to the team bus traveling down a mostly deserted, dark highway at night. The camera pans in on Coach Patrick and Herb snoozing in the front row, and it’s good to see Herb doing something as normal and non-confrontational as sleeping. Perhaps it will lower his blood pressure.

As the bus moves along, Pav’s guitar strums the tune to Simon and Garfunkel’s classic tune about the New Jersey turnpike and its endless bumper-to-bumper traffic jams, and he sings us “America” in a melancholic voice:

Once Pav finishes his singing, Jim notes to Rizzo, who is sitting next to him, “I’m just looking for one small town in America, Lake Placid.” That must have been harder to do before the days of Google Maps, so that’s quite a quest.

Rizzo responds playfully, “Lake Placid? I’ve never heard of it. Don’t worry, Jimmy. If it’s got less than ten thousand people, Brooks has got it on the schedule.”

The guy behind Jim whose face I can’t read well in the dark bus (so I don’t know who he is, basically), comments, “I personally don’t think the place exists. Probably just Brooks’ way of getting a hockey team together.” I think he should adjust his tin foil hat because the conspiracy theory reception isn’t too good, but he’d probably just assure me:

The person behind Rizzo puts in, “You know what I think? We all died and went to hockey players’ hell.” Nah, hockey players’ hell wasn’t invented until John Tortorella (who really should have an award for the biggest coaching meltdown given in his honor, or, really, disgrace each year) began his NHL coaching career. For proof of what I mean, check out this charming video of Tortorella roasting his players alive:

Remember that’s what Tortorella does in front of rolling cameras. He’s probably even more of a Grade A jerk in private, but moving along from Tortorella’s Broadway productions because he’s now been fired by two different NHL franchises in two consecutive seasons which makes him not particularly relevant to the hockey world anymore (thank you, hockey gods), let’s get back to our 1980 adventure.

Some teammate from the front of the bus, shouts over his shoulder, “Hey, will you guys shut up? Some civilized people up front want to get some sleep.” Come on, man. A team bus is meant to be loud, so that tells the audience:

At this point, Jim decides to open up and start relating his whole life story to Pav, saying, “You know, when I was a kid, I never slept. Not a lot. Used to get up at four o’clock in the morning to play hockey. My mother would be in the kitchen fixing breakfast. She was healthy then. Anyway, I used to play with the older guys on the pond. My kid brother plays there now. The older guys had cars, so I’d slip downstairs and stay near the heater to keep warm and close to the door so I could hear the horn of the car. It really felt good being the youngest allowed to play.” This is cute, because I know that Jim liked to slip his mother notes in the morning and stuff.

Pav points out, “Except they made you play in net.” Ha. That’s funny because my brother is a goalie, but I’ve always said that the only reason he became one was for the masks. Goalies get to customize their masks, which I suspect is one of those bones the hockey community threw them because otherwise no one would be willing to take that awful job. (If you’re the goalie, you can make thirty saves and still get booed for the one you miss, and also you wear so much protective equipment that if you want to hug a teammate you risk suffocating him; goalie fights are like two men attempting to dance with beach balls glued all over their bodies). Basically, the thing is, if you weren’t a very odd person before you became a goalie, you would be after a few seasons of it, and it shows. Some of those goalie masks look like creations serial killers would make out of their victims (looking at you, Carey Price). Some look like the ultimate foray into geekdom (Kari Lehtonen! Peter Budaj!). I love that every goalie’s psyche is right out there on display. (And, in the case of the one that looks like brains: way to take that literally.) Gives you something to analyze during breaks in the action.

“Nah,” Jim answers. “That was just when I was in high school. They supplied the goalie’s equipment. Besides, my mother figured that goal was the safest place.” That’s odd. I thought Jimmy was pretty much always a goaltender even when he played pond hockey as a kid, because I remember him saying somewhere that he wanted to play but didn’t understand all the rules, so being a goalie was simple since all he had to do was keep the puck out of the net. I’m going to trust my memory more than this film. In short, movie:

Speaking of playing with older guys, Bah remarks, “When I was a freshman I played for Duluth against the ’76 squad. Man, I thought those guys were ten feet tall.”

“Hey, Bah,” Buzz teases, “tell them how you scored the winning goal against us in overtime.” That sounds like a cool moment. Was it as awesome as TJ Oshie’s shootout goal against Russia?

“Yeah, hare-brain,” retorts Bah, “for the four-hundred and seventy-fifth time.” Everyone laughs uproariously, as Bah continues, “Migraine headache number two.”

“What’s number one?” shouts somebody from the front of the bus (and the poor lighting in this scene is driving me nuts, because it makes it even harder to identify characters who all look the same).

Being all sociable for once, Jimmy jokes, “ ‘Where’s Brooks? O’Callahan’s looking for him.’” That’s actually pretty funny, because it gives me a mental image of OC going after Herb like Roy going after Perry in this hilarious gif:

Now I just wish the movie would show Herb and O’Callahan at each other’s throats. That would be better than ten million renditions of Herb giving Rizzo and Jimmy a hard time. Oh, well, we can’t have everything we want in life, so moving along with the film, Rizzo decides to end the fun by warning, “Hey, you guys better take it easy. He’ll hear you. Let’s get some sleep.” Then Rizzo curls up in his chair like a total baby, and the bus rolls along.

Not actually going to sleep, Rizzo tells Jimmy in a quiet voice, “Hey, Jimmy. All that stuff is behind you now. Got to think to the future.” Okay, Rizzo, I realize you were just trying to be sympathetic there, but you sound like a total moron, since that’s not how the stages of grief work. The stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and freaking denial and anger again. Okay, I invented the last bit to make a point, but hear me out. Grief is a process. You don’t get over losing your mother the same way you move beyond losing a sock (never a whole pair, of course) in the washing machine unless you are a sociopath.

“Future?” Jim asks. “Actually, I was thinking about my ma. I guess there’s a connection somewhere.” Of course there is. The connection is in Lake Placid, the place where we’re all looking for…

 

30 Favorites from 30 Different Teams: Jonathan Toews (Chicago Blackhawks)

NHL Franchise: Chicago Blackhawks

The not exactly politically correct and totally insulting to Native Americans logo for the Chicago Blackhawks that is even more proof than Subban spending most of the Olympics in the press box that hockey might be a little racist…

Favorite Player: Jonathan Toews (aka Captain Serious)

Jonathan Toews being all intense, since you don’t get the moniker Captain Serious by taking face-offs nonchalantly.

This season Jonathan Toews was nominated for the Selke Trophy for the best defensive forward in the NHL and for the Mark Messier Award for the best leader in the NHL. By anyone else’s standards, that’s an incredible season, but he’s probably disappointed in himself, because he didn’t win the Stanley Cup and a gold medal in the same year as a repeat of his feat in 2010, since Jonathan holds himself to inhuman standards of perfection.

Jonathan expresses his optimistic life philosophy.

It’s far beyond the scope of this post to touch on all the Jonathan Toews highlights of the 2013-2014 season, so I’ll just include some of my favorite moments for everyone to stare in awe at. During the Western Final series against the Kings, he buried a beautiful one-timer past Quick:

He was also a monster in the opening playoff series against the St. Louis Blues, going backhand on a breakaway to score the overtime winner against Ryan Miller in Game 5:

Apart from being a beast in the playoffs, Jonathan was a force to be reckoned with during the regular season even in the midst of a blizzard, as is apparent in this deke around the pylon Orpik that ends in a five-hole goal against Fleury:

Even on the penalty kill, Jonathan is a threat, as can be seen in this shorthanded goal he tallied against the Red Wings’ Jimmy Howard:

NHL success, of course, was only part of Jonathan’s hockey glory this year. He was named an alternate captain for Canada’s gold medal winning team in Sochi, and Sidney Crosby reportedly sought Jonathan’s approval before accepting the captaincy, which is such a hilariously Canadian thing to do that I also imagine him sending an apology crate of maple syrup as well. Apparently there were some Canadians (probably the two who missed the Stanley Cup Finals in 2010 and 2013) who questioned whether Jonathan deserved to be an alternate captain, since Coach Babcock felt the need to explain why Jonathan had been appointed to this position and basically spent a paragraph praising Jonathan for everything except the invention of the airplane. Jonathan responded to all this by scoring a golden goal (just like Sidney’s in 2010) against Sweden.

Jonathan being all clutch and scoring a gold medal winning goal in the Olympics, forcing anyone who doubted his ability to be an alternate captain to eat crow.

In his spare time, Jonathan found time to make a wish come true for a kid with cancer:

Off the ice, he engaged in an annual dance-off with Patrick Kane at the Blackhawks Convention (warning: there is a lot of screaming from girls in this video, so brace your eardrums for an assault):

Captain Serious knows how to dance, score, and lead, so how can he not be my favorite player?

Since he asked nicely and smiled beatifically, I guess we’ll have to honor his request for the remainder of the post, even though it won’t be fun…

30 Favorites from 30 Different Teams: Justin Faulk (Carolina Hurricanes)

NHL Franchise: Carolina Hurricanes

The Carolina Hurricanes logo, which does not use the traditional colors associated with hurricanes, and, as such, looks more like a random spiral than a hurricane. To think a group of people was probably paid thousands of dollars to devise this symbol…

Favorite Player: Justin Faulk

Justin warming up to be his awesome self during a pre-skate.

Justin Faulk is such an amazing defenseman that at the age of twenty-one he was the youngest Olympian for the men’s hockey team in Sochi, although he only played for a total of 9:12 in the final two games, because Bylsma insisted on giving Orpik every possible opportunity to make a fool of himself in Russia, and Orpik delivered in spades. Luckily, the Carolina Hurricanes actually let Justin play (indeed with an average ice time of 23:23, he was ranked second on his team in average time on ice for the 2013-2014 season), so we get to see how good he is when he is allowed on the ice. Justin took advantage of his time on ice to pot five goals, including this nifty one against the Dallas Stars:

In addition to the goals he scored, he assisted on twenty-seven more (this is easy to remember because it matches his jersey number), including this Hail Mary pass to set up Staal:

Justin also does not flinch from fights, as is clear in this tussle he engaged in with Joffrey Lupul:

Anyway, Justin had a great season with the Carolina Hurricanes, and it was a pity that he couldn’t show his talents more in Sochi, but it will be exciting to see where his career takes him next year, since he is an exciting young defenseman to watch.

The Fancier Than a Pizza Fresh Tomato Tart

Everyone has been there. It’s another lazy summer day, and you don’t feel like making dinner, but you don’t feel like calling the pizzeria for the fifth time this month, so you’ll have to cook up something. This tomato tart tastes like a margherita pizza, is easy to make, simple to clean up, and makes a perfect complement to salads for a light summer meal that people of all ages will enjoy.

The refreshing tomato tart that will delight your tastebuds and spare you the shame of calling the pizzeria for the millionth time…

Ingredients:

1 unbaked pie shell (I use Pillsbury All-Ready Pie Crust, which can be found in the refrigerator section at most grocery stories)

8 ounces of mozzarella cheese (or 4 ounces for a reduced-fat option)

2 tablespoons of fresh chopped basil

4 or 5 ripe tomatoes, sliced 1/2 inch thick

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

chopped fresh basil for garnish

Instructions:

1) Preheat over to 400 degrees.

2) Prepare dough and place in a tart or pie pan.

3) Sprinkle the dough with cheese and then with the 2 tablespoons of basil.

4) Cover the cheese and basil with tomato slices, distributing the tomatoes as evenly as possible.

5) Drizzle the tomatoes with the olive oil, and then sprinkle with salt and pepper.

6) Bake the tart for 30-40 minutes.

7) Remove the tart from the oven and garnish with the remainder of the basil.

8) Let the tart settle for 5-10 minutes.

9) Cut the tart into wedges.

10) Serve warm or at room temperature.

Yield: One 9-inch tart.

This is you after you’ve sampled some tomato tart.

 

 

 

Breaking down a Miracle Movie: Captain and Cut

As those saints among you who have been loyally following my blog now, we last left off with Herb essentially declaring that he would go down with the sinking Olympic team ship. Since that’s been decided, we, of course, need to appoint a captain to steer this sinking ship into an iceberg and to not abandon ship when it does, so stay tuned to see who is the recipient of this honor.

To begin this exciting part of the movie, the boys are in their locker room, and Dave Christian is distributing pieces of paper to everyone so that the team can elect their Olympic captain. Not at all concerned with voter anonymity, the camera zooms in on Bill Baker’s paper, so we can read Rizzo’s name on it.

When questioned about his vote by a peeping teammate (whose face I can’t recognize), Bill explains that a reliable source told him that Herb hates Rizzo the most. The audience can only infer that Bill is apparently so juvenile he believes that the player whom the coach despises the most should automatically be the captain just because it will infuriate the coach the most, which is about as good an argument for Communism as any, since regular people are obviously mentally unequipped to make prudent decisions when determining their own leaders. Also, the audience is free to suspect that Herb (who actually wanted Rizzo to be captain) planted that source just to manipulate Bill’s brain. Careful, Bill, because:

Being all skeptical, Rob asks, “More than O’Callahan?” Now in real life, this line would make sense, because Herb liked to rip into Jack O’Callahan just to make a point to the entire team, rendering it conceivable that the team as a whole might conclude that Herb wasn’t particularly fond of OC, and, by all accounts, Jack and Robbie enjoyed taunting one another, but in the movie world this line is just incongruous with what’s actually been shown thus far.

As of yet, Herb has only directed specific tirades to Rizzo and Jim Craig, as the script writers went to great pains to establish in the previous two sections, so if teammates were to conclude that Herb had any extreme rancor toward certain players, based on what the movie has shown, they would have to believe that Herb hated Rizzo or Jimmy the most. If the movie wants us to believe that Herb seems to hate OC, show him ripping into OC the way he does Rizzo or Jimmy. Don’t just have this awkwardly thrown in line of dialogue about it when the comment is at total odds with everything the dialogue and action has demonstrated in the last couple of scenes. I want to like this line since it is spoken by Robbie about OC, but because of how the rest of the script leading up to it is written, I instead have to ask the script writers for the umpteenth time:

The camera pans across the room to focus on Pav just in time for the audience to hear him ask Buzz, who is sitting next to him on the bench, whether Buzz wants his vote. Buzz chuckles and answers, “Hey, look, I can’t tell you how to vote, but I’m voting for Rizzie.” This is also a sort of weird reply, since I doubt players would have been allowed to vote for themselves, as that would result in a fiasco where everybody voted for himself and there would still be no captain. However, it does establish that people are voting for Rizzo as more than just a joke, which I guess is respectful of his leadership abilities at least. I’m glad that it was only some of the team that apparently voted for Rizzo for the lolz of seeing him clash with Herb. That makes this whole captaincy thing feel much more official.

Moving across the locker room again, Jim is telling the guy sitting next to him to give him a look at his ballot. This dialogue sounds like we’re in a third grade classroom voting for class president, honestly. In keeping with this childish vein, the dude next to Jim retorts, “Hey, I don’t see you flashing your ballot around.”

Smiling slightly, Jim persists, “Come on.” Surrendering, the guy opens the ballot, and Jim reads Rizzo’s name in an incredulous tone. Then when the guy next to him demands to see his ballot, Jim reveals with a grin that he voted for Rizzo as well. What a clever and unpredictable joke brought to us courtesy of the scriptwriters. Jeez, no wonder USA Hockey appoints captains and associate captains for Olympic teams now rather than letting players vote. It spares us scenes like this imagined satirical one from the 2014 squad:

Dan Bylsma: Welcome to Sochi, gentlemen. USA Hockey asks me to remind you all not to flush the toilet paper down the toilets, as it might make the pipes explode, and to reiterate that the yellow stuff coming out of the sinks isn’t Gatorade, so drink the Dasani we’ve provided instead of anything spewing out of the faucet. We don’t want any illnesses because then I might have to remove Faulk from the storage closet I’ve locked him in for the duration of the tournament. Now, we’ve got to elect ourselves a captain who, of course, will be better than whiny old Sidney Crosby, so please write somebody’s name who isn’t your own on the paper I’ve just passed out.

Zach Parise (in an undertone to Ryan Suter): I’m voting for you, buddy, because we’re bros from our days with the National Development Team.

Ryan Suter: Me too. Well, I’m not voting for me. I’m voting for you, but, other than that, we’re twins.

Ryan McDonagh to Derek Stepan: Hey, Step, who’s got your vote?

Derek Stepan: Probably Marty St. Louis. You can’t go too wrong with a veteran player like him, right?

Ryan McDonagh: Isn’t he on the Canadian team?

Derek Stepan: Duh. Do you even read the news, Mac Truck? It was this huge scandal when Yzerman left him off the Canadian roster for the second time in eight years, and he wasn’t appeased by being the injury replacement for Stamkos, so he’s been demanding a trade to the Rangers, which is why he’s a candidate for the Rangers’ captaincy once Callahan’s been traded for trying to earn more money than he’s worth.

Ryan Callahan: What’s this about earning more money than I’m worth? Do we get paid for this Olympic gig?

Zach Parise: Only if we get sponsors like Chobani. Speaking of Chobani, can you believe it isn’t served in the Olympic dining halls? How am I going to get my calcium if not from a morning dose of my favorite brand of Greek yogurt? Oh, and I’m a totally uninspired hockey player unless I get my daily value of calcium, so this is a serious concern.

Ryan McDonagh to Derek Stepan: I wasn’t talking about the Rangers. I was talking about the US Olympic team we’re on right now.

Derek Stepan: Oh, yeah. My bad. I guess I’ll vote for you since we played college together at the University of Wisconsin and everything.

Ryan McDonagh: I’ll return the favor by voting for you. Badgers forever!

Cam Fowler: Coach, am I allowed to vote for Captain Crunch? Sugary cereals are my favorite.

Dan Bylsma: Um, out of curiosity, Cam, how old are you, anyway?

Cam Fowler: Twenty-two, which means I’m the perfect age for a second childhood that I should enjoy because the next thing I have to look forward to is a midlife crisis that probably won’t happen until I’m forty and retired from pro hockey.

Dan Bylsma (massaging his temples): No, you can’t vote for Captain Crunch because he’s not on this team.

Cam Fowler (pouting): You didn’t say we had to vote for someone on the team. You just said that we couldn’t vote for ourselves. It’s not fair to change the rules midway through an election even if we are in Russia.

Dan Bylsma: Fine. You can vote for Captain Crunch, but nobody else will, so it doesn’t even matter.

Patrick Kane: You know who else no one will vote for because he doesn’t matter? Jonathan Toews. He’s the worst captain ever, and nobody likes him. I hope the media reports that I said that, because that will really steam him, and an angry Toews is an entertaining, for-once-not-boring Toews.

Dustin Brown: Can I knock out Toews’ kneecaps? That would be really entertaining.

Ryan McDonagh: Oh, shut up. Everyone respects Toews, and nobody respects you. I’d call you a cheapshot artist but that’s more of a compliment than you deserve, so I’ll just say you’re a dirty hockey player, and I’m having a mounting urge to crosscheck you.

Dan Bylsma: Knock it off, you two. We’re all on the same team here. Save it for the Stanley Cup Finals.

Ryan McDonagh: Does that mean that Pittsburg is planning another embarrassing playoff exit to a lower seed?

Dan Bylsma: We don’t even need to plan them. Embarrassing playoff exits just happen to Penguins naturally.

Justin Faulk (entering from the storage closet): Can I vote for team captain?

Dan Bylsma: God, Justin, don’t startle me like that! My ticker can’t handle it. Anyway, what are you doing out of that closet?

Justin Faulk: I was kicked out by the janitors. They want to convert it to a bathroom by installing five toilets and no partitions.

Dan Bylsma: That’s disgusting. Everyone, make a mental note not to use that room. Well, Justin, you can’t vote, since you aren’t really on the team in my opinion, but you can collect the ballots. (Once the ballots have been assembled.) Um, T.J., not to sound accusatory, but what demon possessed you to write your name ten times?

T.J. Oshie: Sorry, Coach. Just practicing my autograph.

Dan Bylsma: Very smart, since that’s the only form of writing hockey players need to know to make it big in the NHL. Don’t worry. We’ll just use your ballot as the line-up for when we get into a shootout with Russia or something.

T.J. Oshie: Good joke, but I’m not dumb enough to fall for it, because you can’t use the same person over and over in a shootout.

Dan Bylsma: Not in the NHL, but in international hockey you can, and the Olympics is international hockey. I can use you ten times in a row in a shootout if I want to…

T.J. Oshie: Okay, now you’re taking this joke a little too far.

Dan Bylsma: You say that now, but wait until you see how much farther I can carry it on the largest stage.

So, anyway, thank God we were spared the sight of that on the NHL network, but we’ll have to go back to the Miracle on Ice film now that bit of comedy has passed, so we’re returning to the locker room, where Jim is asking Rizzo who he voted for captain. In response, Rizzo lifts his paper to show Buzz Schneider’s name. Perhaps Rizzo and Buzz are developing a bromance. I hope that Les Auge doesn’t get too jealous, since that would just be uncomfortable and sad.

Upon reading Buzz’s name, Jim wrinkles his nose and rolls his eyes. I guess he expected Rizzo to be a big enough egotist to vote for himself or something.

The scene shifts to Rizzo sitting on a sofa, talking into a phone, saying in his half of the conversation, “Kevin! Yeah, it’s me—Mike. I’m all right. How are you doing? Good. Look, is my dad there? Oh, no, no, that’s okay. Uh, listen. When he comes in, just tell him I was elected captain. Yeah. No, that doesn’t mean Brooks still can’t cut me. Look, all right, Kevin, do me another favor. Call Ma and tell her and the rest of the family, will you? And tell her to let Donna know, too. She wasn’t home, either. Yeah, that’s very funny. Okay. Good to talk to you. All right.” After that, he hangs up the phone without saying good-bye, because he is a male, after all, and everyone knows that all men are socially incompetent on the telephone. It’s like a law of nature, and I’m not sexist; I’m right.

This movie has an obsession with revealing important tidbits through one-sided phone conversations, so to outline the salient points viewers are supposed to glean from this conversation, we learn the following from this telephone exchange: Rizzo has been elected captain of the Olympic team, Herb can still cut him so that tension remains, and Donna is still an essentially useless character for Rizzo to have a romance with that the film insists on inserting in unnecessary ways, since if she wasn’t home, it’s not critical to reference her.

Getting past my annoyance with the waste of film time that Donna represents, it’s time for the US Olympic team to play an exhibition game against the Adirondack Red Wings, which, as the name implies, is the minor league affiliate of the Detroit Red Wings. As a franchise, the Red Wings are, of course, renowned for their excellent drafting, but none of that vaunted prowess is on display in this movie, since all the Adirondack Red Wings play hockey as if they have never picked up a stick or tied skates before. On the plus side, the Detroit Red Wings are famous for being patient with their prospects, which is fortunate since these minor leaguers seem likely to make an NHL impact around Armageddon.

The announcer talks about how the game is still scoreless between the Adirondack Red Wings and the US Olympic team, and how Les Auge is drifting back in his own zone to collect the puck, moving at a speed slower than paint dries, because everyone in this movie skates like they are cutting through molasses rather than ice. Needless to say, I’m doing this as I watch:

Auditioning for the role of Captain Obvious, the announcer remarks on how the Olympians aren’t looking sharp in the game as they dump the puck into the Adirondack end of the rink, where the Adirondack defense manages to collect the puck in the clumsiest possible way and pass it to their center, but Les Auge intercepts the puck and gives it to Neal Broten.

On the bench, Herb yells at his team, “Watch the other side!” That seems a rather ambitious request to make of the Olympians. Based on the way the actors play them, it would be too much to ask for them to skate and locate the puck at the same time, nonetheless keep track of the opposition while performing the aforesaid tasks.

The announcer explains for the slower members of the audience that Herb isn’t at all happy with his squad’s performance as the Adirondack forwards advance with the puck again, and Les Auge, in his bid for MVP, manages to look like a flat-footed moose hit by a tranquilizer gun when he smashes into the boards and fails to hamper the opposing team’s advance.

Given front row access to the US Olympic team’s net, the Adirondack forward pots a goal, and Les Auge should be proud, since he just achieved the feat of making the terrible skating of the Adirondack forward seem magnificent, but then again, everyone on the ice is so bad at skating that they make Corey Perry (he who spends half of every NHL game toppling into the other team’s goalie and falling to his knees in odd poses) look like Scott Niedermayer (who flew across the ice like Jesus walked on water). For those of you who benefit from visual aids, that means this goal:

Looks like this one:

That’s saying something about how awful the caliber of competition in this game is, since I’ve always insisted that:

Regretfully putting aside the topic of how smooth Niedermayer’s skating was and how criminally underrated he sometimes is by people who cannot appreciate gifts from the hockey gods, we’ll resume our analysis of the game between the US Olympic team and the Adirondack Red Wings. Anyway, the Adirondack forward celebrates as if he just netted the Stanley Cup winner, and Steve Guttenberg, who was once again caught at the totally wrong goalpost, is probably thinking:

Back on the bench, Herb barks at Pav to get his line out there, instructing them to skate, play their game, and get back the point by scoring.

Seriously, based on the skill level of these actors, that’s akin to ordering a blind man to paint a landscape or a deaf man to compose a concerto mimicking the sounds of chirping birds.

Les Auge, who is still on the ice in a shift that must have lasted three minutes when the average shift should be about thirty to ninety seconds, is whistled for tripping and sent to the penalty box for two minutes.

At the bench, Herb probably wants to do this:

Since he’s a professional, though, he settles for snapping, “What did I say to Les Auge? Skate! Forget surgery with your stick! Please.” Just because Herb is showing wonderful signs of growth in the manners department by remembering to say please, his team should give him positive reinforcement by offering the thumbs-up and chanting as one:

The announcer comments about how the Red Wings are on the attack, which isn’t exactly surprising, as they are on the power play, and that’s what they should be doing, but they don’t actually manage to score with the man advantage, because the final buzzer sounds with the tally 1-0 in favor of the Adirondack Red Wings. Still, I imagine the Adirondack coaches will be drawing diagrams on their blackboards to illustrate:

In the locker room after the game, Les Auge is cupping his chin in despair, and I think he’s not the only one doing so. I bet the coaching staff of both teams are considering the benefits of arson in blowing up their teams or at least hosting a gigantic fire sale. In fact, after this game, the conversation among the Red Wing executives as overheard by a fly on the wall probably sounded something like this:

First Red Wing Big Wig: So, do you want the good news or the bad news first?

Second Red Wing Big Shot: Give me the good news first. I’m still finishing my caviar and champagne, so I don’t want to throw up.

First Red Wing Big Wig: The good news is that our minor leaguers won against the US Olympians.

Second Red Wing Big Shot: I’m done, and what could possibly be bad when we won?

First Red Wing Big Wig: Our prospect team is in shambles. Gordie Howe would weep if he saw it, and you know how tough he is.

Second Red Wing Big Shot: We can’t go peeing on Gordie’s Hall of Fame legacy. What are we going to do to bring some respectability back to our franchise after tonight’s shameful victory?

First Red Wing Big Wig: I was thinking we should tank for draft picks so we can acquire some actual prospects, because that Stevie Yzerman kid looks vaguely promising. Maybe he can lead us through the desert of playoff failure to the oasis of drinking from the Stanley Cup.

Second Red Wing Big Shot: Sure, and while we’re dreaming, why don’t we also bring in Scotty Bowman and about five Red Army players to help us win the greatest trophy in all sports?

While the Red Wings were hatching their top-secret plan for bringing the Stanley Cup back to Detroit around 1997 (since Detroit always takes the long view), Herb was probably in the hallway calling Murray Williamson, who coached many of the National teams Herb played on and also coached the 1972 Olympic squad that Herb wasn’t on which brought back the silver medal. Bugging their connection, we’d probably hear something like this:

Herb: Murray? Is that you?

Murray: If I say it isn’t, will you hang up and stop bothering me?

Herb: That’s like the king of all stupid questions. When have I ever stopped bothering anyone?

Murray: When you’ve gotten something that you wanted. As soon as you get whatever you’re demanding, you stop bothering your victim.

Herb: Clever of you to notice. You’ll be overjoyed to hear that it’s you I want something from this time around.

Murray: Of course you do. Former players never contact old coaches unless they want something. What do you want from me? A glowing letter of recommendation for a job application?

Herb: Don’t be dumb. I’ve already got a job coaching the ’80 Olympic team. That’s what I’m calling about. I want you to send me a list of all the players from the ’72 squad that have retained their amateur status, because after tonight’s slaughter by the Adirondack Red Wings, my team needs a massive infusion of new blood if you catch my drift.

Murray: Wake up and smell the coffee, Herb. Everyone on that team is either retired from hockey or playing professionally. You’re going to have to forge your own Olympic destiny with your own college boy brats.

Herb: Didn’t you have a sixteen-year-old on your team? Isn’t he still eligible?

Murray: The sixteen-year-old was Mark Howe, and he’s playing in the NHL as a defenseman, telling me that he’s going to be a Hall of Famer and that I played him in the wrong position as a forward. The cheek of some people. If I had a penny for every time I heard something like that from a player, I’d have a mansion on Maui.

Herb: The measurement of how much I don’t care is in the purely theoretical number range, Murray. If you can’t help me, I’m going to hang up now, because I’ve got players to bully in the locker room.

Entering the Olympic team’s locker room, Herb harangues his team: “You guys are playing worse and worse every day. In fact, right now you’re playing as though it’s the middle of next month.”

It’s a slightly modified Brooksism. Excellent. Moving on with his lecture, Herb marches up to Jim and jabs a finger at his goalie’s chest, declaring, “Craig, don’t think your place is guaranteed on this Olympic squad.”

Increasing his volume as he yells at the only other player that he talks to on a routine basis, Herb growls, “Rizzie, skate harder! Oh, and another thing, Mike, control your linemates’ play, because if you can’t, let me know right now before we make the final cuts.” While it’s neat to see a winger rather than a center expected to lead a line for once, everything else about this piece of dialogue makes me cringe, because how does nobody else on the team notice that Herb only talks to Jim and Rizzo, which probably means he’s making a scapegoat of them at least half the time.

Pacing around the locker room, Herb continues, “All right, Patrick will give you travel details, and, Lester, see me after you get dressed.” Eek. Herb is actually addressing someone besides Jim or Rizzo. I have a bad feeling about this…

Seriously, this means that Les Auge is about to get the ax, and I’m devastated because his bromance with Rizzo was sweet (better than the actual romance between Donna and Rizzo, to be honest) and he was one of my favorite characters. What a pity. I’m going to need a moment to dry my eyes with a Kleenex, so:

Staring after Herb as he leaves, Les looks so much like a kicked puppy that my heart breaks into a million pieces. Then, he acts like a martyr, commenting to Mike that it’s going to be all right because it’s all for the best. I half expect him to expound upon how life is a box of chocolates:

Mercifully, we are spared seeing the actual cut (in a case where the script writers are content to do a bit of implication for once rather than a ton of hitting over the head with the obvious), and the scene shifts to Les returning to an emptied locker room in his suit. Realizing Rizzo is waiting for him on a bench, Les crosses the locker room and remarks, “Thanks for waiting.”

Standing up, Rizzo comments in a rather choked voice, “Hey, I, uh, I packed your stuff up for you.”

Gesturing at the bag, Les replies woodenly, “Yeah, thanks.”

“I’m real sorry, Les,” Rizzo adds.

Being all stoic, Les responds, “It was going to happen sooner or later. I meant what I said that night. You got to get it where you can find it, and if there’s nothing for me here, I’d rather find out now.”

Getting angry, Rizzo says, “Come on now, Les. Would you get off it? You’ve got a great future in this game. You’re a player.”

This is breaking my heart, because it turned out that Les Auge was basically a career minor leaguer who only played six NHL games, but at least that makes him more successful than Hugh Jessiman. Still, it’s hard for me to be comforted by even Hugh Jessiman bust jokes, since Les is great, and I want him to succeed in hockey. Les:

That denial is what is causing me so much angst, but Les is more of a realist than I am, because he observes, “But not in the ’80 Olympics. Win.”

With that last command, Les leaves the locker room and walks out onto the ice, where he fires a puck into the net and raises his stick in a lackluster gesture of jubilation. Les is very wise here, since in life you always have to look on the bright side.

On that bittersweet note, Les exits the rink and the film, so we’ll bid adieu to one another until it’s time for me to analyze the next installment.

30 Favorites from 30 Different Teams: Jiri Hudler (Calgary Flames)

NHL Franchise: Calgary Flames

The Calgary Flames logo, or the pyromaniac’s version of the third letter of the alphabet, whichever you prefer.

Favorite Player: Jiri Hudler

Jiri, in keeping with the Flames’ logo, fires a shot on goal.

Since some of my favorite current Devils are members of our Czech contingent, Jaromir Jagr and Patrik Elias, it’s no surprise that I have a soft spot for Jiri Hudler, another Czech on the Calgary Flames. I just love the determination and drive that the Czechs bring to the game in addition to whatever innate skill that they have. Of course, I realize that I’m generalizing here, but, as is so often the case when I generalize, I don’t care, so, moving along to what besides his Czech ancestry makes Jiri so awesome, let’s reflect on the fact that he was the Calgary Flames’ leading scorer both in terms of overall points at fifty-four and in goals with seventeen.

Some of those seventeen goals were awesome and are what highlight reels are made of, including this December 7^th overtime short side one against the Edmonton Oilers:

The one he scored against Josh Harding on a give-and-go with Lance Bouma was also pretty breathtaking:

Off the ice, Jiri is a great guy, too. Like Jaromir Jagr, Jiri has an incredible sense of humor, which was on display in February when he crashed a Lakers’ practice to demonstrate his basketball prowess and proved that he should stick to hockey:

Honestly, my heart hurt for Hudler when he wasn’t named to the Czech Olympic team, because the snub obviously wounded him (though when he did get over his pain and shock enough to address the snub with the media, he had the sense to admit that he was disappointed, not bitter or angry, which is endearing) and that is probably what most people will remember about his 2013-2014 season, even though he had a great year with a career high average of 19:01 time on ice while leading the Flames in goals and points. Seriously, just talking about Jiri being left off the Czech Olympic team makes me do this all over again:

That is, when I’m not screaming this:

Any way you slice it (and whether you feel anger or sorrow or a confusing combination of the two), Jiri didn’t deserve to be overlooked on an Olympic roster for the likes of Petr Nedved, who was a brilliant player in the 1990’s but not in 2014, but he has earned the right for his strong year in Calgary to be recognized, so that’s what I’m trying to do in this post.

Jiri being happy and awesome. What more could a hockey fan want?