Go B's!!

[Jack M]

Oh yeah... Bruins sweep the Canadiens.

[Surf Quebec]

Well for sure the Canadien management was hoping a better end of the season in this 100 year anniversary of the hockey club.

It will be reconstruction time in Montreal for a while.

Beaten by an ex-Canadien coach, that's ironic.

[Ernie00]

hasn't it been reconstruction since after 93?

As sad as this may sound.. I might never see the stanley cup again in montreal.

[skategoat]

hasn't it been reconstruction since after 93?

As sad as this may sound.. I might never see the stanley cup again in montreal.

This guy from Toronto can't feel too sorry for you.

[Sinecure]

This thread needs this:

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And this:

<object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhjCGZ9NmuA&hl=en&fs=1&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhjCGZ9NmuA&hl=en&fs=1&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object>

[carvedog]

This thread needs this:

That first clip about dating in the division was hilarious.

Good history on the other one.

[skategoat]

Hey, guys, I hate to bring this up, but the Greater Territory of Possum's Pouch has its own Cup contender. And they're still in the playoffs (or whatever) at the moment.

Moreover, you'll recall our southern-fried Hurricanes brought Lord Stanley's trophy all the way home to Car'lina a few years back.

That thing sure would hold a bunch of 'Que!

Stay tuned...

BB

I'm glad to see Paul Maurice in the playoffs after he was unceremoniously tossed out off Toronto. As if the Leafs' failures were his fault.

[Ernie00]

Skategoat.. that's ok because it will take even longer for toronto to get a cup than the habs.. probably 2-3 lifetimes ;)

Loved the bruins video !

[skategoat]

Skategoat.. that's ok because it will take even longer for toronto to get a cup than the habs.. probably 2-3 lifetimes ;)

Loved the bruins video !

It's sad but the greatest Leaf moment for me was the 1978 quarter-finals when the Leafs beat the heavily favoured Islanders with an overtime Lanny McDonald goal. I remember going crazy and nearly hitting the ceiling in my parent's family room.

Sad isn't it? The greatest Leaf moment for me was a *quarter-final* win.

[eajracing]

Loved the bruins vid, and as a TO guy with too many habs fans for friends I almost loved the sweep. I'm heavy on the bruins in my pool and could have gone for a few 9-8 or 15-14 losses to strtch the series out. With each B goal scored with any three of Ryder, Lucic, Savard, Recchi, Kessel, Chara and/or wideman.

and dont despair Toronto fans... Old man Watters tells me everyday we're rebuilding and progress is right around the corner!!!! Unfortunately, I havent been drinking heavily enough of late to believe him. Back to Blue Goose I suppose.

Heck.... I almost put together a pool under the wifes name including wellwood, sundin, colaicovo, steen, Boyes, S. Thornton et al but couldnt figure out how to pick Maurice.:D

[Aisling]

what is happening to the B's!?? we have to hope they can win 3 in a row now against a carolina diving team ... did i see greg louganis on the ice? passion is missing! we need a good fight to get the boys back in it

[boarderboy]

The RBC Center, home ice for the 'Hurricanes, is about a mile from my house as the crow flies.

For multiple reasons, that I'll explain tomorrow, I'd love to see Boston come back and take this series.

(Hint - it has something to do with the fact that it was almost 90 F here today, and the humidity was 110%...)

"Ice" hockey in 'Carolina??!! You gotta be kidding me... What's next - lawn tennis at McMurdo Station??!! (oops - let's not "go there")

'til the morrow

BB

[Aisling]

i won't complain about you rooting for the men in black, but what is your reason... aside from it being silly to have ice hockey in a hot climate?

fingers crossed... guys looked good out there, got back to basics, hitting, crashing the net, etc... if they keep up that way they are on a good path :)

btw, if anyone watched that game... that WAS a sucker punch on Aaron Ward right? Apparently the NHL doesn't think so and he is not being suspended... morons.

[boarderboy]

really I'm not!

I've never ever been a true Hurricanes fan because,

(1) I know nothing about ice hockey, so how could I?, and

(2) I have real, multiple reservations about the very questionable deal through which my alma mater, N.C. State (almost born and raised there) got into bed with a not-so-nice software magnate (?) in an effort to conceive a new hoops/hockey Palace. It should be noted that the Pack/Canes' RBC Center has a very few more seats than does arch-rival UNC's older Dean Dome. It had to, of course...

I should should probably confess here that I had most of this confession written two nights ago, but I'd had one over my limit of one-beer-per-night and lost the posting when I consulted Google on the proper spelling of 'jai alai'.

I'd always associated jai alai, you see, with Mexico City and maybe Hialeha. And you're quite right, I think it's more than a little silly that so much fuss was made and so many resources were expended to bring ice hockey to the now all-grown-up-and-very-hot sleepy little southern capital where I was born some 60+ years ago.

I know, I know, even Tampa has a hockey team. But Jeezus, isn't anything sacred anymore. No, of course not. Almost nothing is. I re-learned that (again) when I lost the original of this posting while looking up 'jai alai'. One of the first search engine references to the sport was about its having been played in some posh gambling retreat in Connecticut for Chrissakes! Connecticut!!

And Hartford, of course, is where Peter Karmanos' Whalers were founded, prospered, and became a heart-of-the-city icon. But they didn't prosper enough, apparently, so Karmanos went looking for a new home. And he found that home in Possum's Pouch, the new 'Land of Milk and Honey.' (Did you know that Hartford still has a die-hard Whalers fan club? And did you knowthey're still trying mightily to get another professional franchise there? That's Spirit! That's Devotion!! And I hope to hell they succeed!!)

The Hurricanes could move to Miami tomorrow, and Raleigh would be very little different. There's already a 'Miami Hurricanes', you say? So what!!?? Buy 'em out!! Change the name!! Nothing Is Sacred!!

Does Miami already have an 'ice' hockey team? I don't know...

But I digress. Back in Possumville, the NCSU/Karmanos liaison came about when State (once College, now University) couldn't raise enough money to build a basketball arena that would suitably 'shame' the one at UNC-CH. (Chapel Hill is sort of the 'Harvard of the South'.) Au contraire, that's Duke, you say. Hell, No! It's Car'lina!!

In all fairness, I must pause here to say that the Hurricanes seem to have done almost everything "right." And I really mean that.

Above and beyond the usual Front Office P.R. blather, many of the team seem to have really taken root here. They've done good deeds throughout the town. They've apparently conducted themselves (mostly) as gentleman athletes. (Here in the 'Bible Belt', that's a genuinely appreciated trait.)

Many of the 'Canes when 'traded', or otherwise discarded, have left their families here, choosing to make Raleigh their permanent home. And that's fine. Crowded as "the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the U.S." is getting, we can always use a few more good citizens... up to a point. (Hell, even State's apparently-very-good new football coach came here from Boston. Boston, already!!)

But most importantly, of course, The Carolina Hurricanes Did It! They Won It All!! A young, newly-reconstituted team, in a "Where's that?" town, brought the Stanley Cup 'home' to Tarheelia. Not quite up there with the Mets winning the World Series, but still, not bad!!

So why the indifference and discontent, you ask? I'll tell you why.

Esse Quam Videri. "To Be, Rather Than to Seem." That's the state motto of North Caroliina.

And the RBC Center, the Carolina Hurricanes' association with NCSU, the obsession to out-do the 'Heels, all that is "of a piece" in the insane, ever-growing, horribly expensive travesty that is college athletics today. I despise it. I'm ashamed of it. I don't, and never will, support it.

Spectacle! Sensationalism!! One-Upsmanship!! Overweening pride!!! 'Network' revenue!!! That's what the RBC Center is all about. Money!! It's a dismal, mediocre (if functional) architectural yawn of a building. And it's sited in what should still be a cow pasture, far away from the State campus and everyday student life. So is the School's football stadium. What could better symbolize the "separateness" of the 'Revenue Sport' endeavor?!

Alumni don't return to their campus to attend the games. They flock to the dowdy State Fairgrounds. It's dowdy, that is, except for a couple of things.

In the late 1940's, an expatriate 'Pol' was named the first head of the architecture department at N.C. State's new School of Design. Matthew Nowicki was a dynamite modernist architect, and before his untimely death in a 1952 plane crash, he designed a stunning showplace for North Carolina's State Fairgrounds. Affectionately dubbed the 'Cow Palace', Dorton Arena represented the Holy Grail of early '50's architects and civil engineers. Its roof was a sweeping, "bi-winged", hyperbolic paraboloid. It formed a pillarless free-span over the entire building interior.

Dorton's exterior was a gleaming masterpiece of blue glass punctuated by a little white masonry and like-colored buttresses that swept from the roofline into the earth below. The 'Cow Palace' earned instant celebrity. It was hailed locally and internationally. It made more magazine covers and feature pages than anyone could count. And it's still there, "decently" tended and preserved, now listed in the National Registry of Historic Places (?), and the site of lots of events each year.

It was there that I saw my one-and-only ice hockey competition in person. That was some time ago, but I do remember that I couldn't really follow the game until I finally guessed that wherever collisions were occurring, or a fight was breaking out, the puck must surely be present. That's really all I know about hockey - that and what I could glean from multiple screenings of an early '50's Disney animation that featured the character 'Goofy' as a very intense and combative spectator. Have things really changed that much... ?

son kicking me off the computer

Sorry. Must continue this rant tomorrow. (The worst is still to come)

And, yes. I'm stone cold sober...

But I Have to work early in the AM.

BB

[Aisling]

the worst HAS come... i nearly stuck my head in the oven last night... ugh. horrible. :(

[boarderboy]

"...head in oven..." not recommended for Celtic dancers.

Will finish my original jeremiad today, hopefully, complete with epilogue and post mortem.

I'd hoped you and your students could lead the Bruins' Stanley Cup victory parade on whatever grand avenue there is in Boston. Surely there's an appropriate Celtic dance??

But, hey, Bean Town still has two teams (?) in some kind of playoffs...

By the way, sincere congratulations on your Nursing degree. Since you're a 'good' BOL lurker, you may remember that I credit my very presence on the planet to two, "surfer girl" ICU nurses in Charleston. As far as I'm concerned, they literally saved my sorry tush after a 'renowned' surgeon had perforated my heart, releasing 2 1/2 quarts of blood into my pericardial sac(k)?

yech!!

Good on ya, Madam!!

[Chubz]

GO PENS