1. We have Sidney Crosby and You Don't. Get Over It.
I've been to enough New York Rangers games and watched enough hockey on TV to know -- you guys hate Sidney Crosby. No matter where the Pens play, you're sure to hear several rousing chants of, "Crosby Sucks!" and a chorus of boos when the puck so much as passes in his vicinity. Even in Canada, the land of inborn politesse, the opposing fans are shouting, "Crosby Sucks!"
The ugly truth is I know Sidney Crosby doesn't suck, and you know Sidney Crosby doesn't suck, and if, at the end of this season, Sidney Crosby demanded to be traded, you all would be lining up on your knees to polish his knob if you thought that would get him to come play for your team. Now fall on your knees and worship your hockey god.
Why else do you think Mario Lemieux makes him wear a doggie shock collar from October through April and keeps him chained in his basement like the Gimp during the off-season?
Wanna know how he got so good? Read this.
2. We Also Have Mario Lemieux and You Don't. Get Over It.
When the Penguins were bankrupt, their superstar Lemieux deferred his salary for a couple of seasons so they could keep playing. He probably could have packed up his skates and gone to a market that would pay him in actual money instead of just fan goodwill. Instead, he went to management and said, Look, you owe me 30 million bucks that I am probably never gonna see, and I love Pittsburgh, so why don't we just convert all that into ownership shares and you can call me the President?
Then, when the City of Pittsburgh blinked again on whether they could afford to keep the Pens around, Mario deked and flew to Kansas City (can you imagine? The Kansas City Penguins? My eyes! My eyes!) Of course, Mario probably just had a drink at the airport and got back on a plane home, but it didn't matter. Then he flirted shamelessly with Jim Balsillie, the Research in Motion guy who desperately wants to put a franchise in Hamilton Ontario, but the NHL shut that one down (they don't seem to like this Balsillie guy, because last year they denied his bid to buy the Phoenix Coyotes, too. He must have fucked Bettman's daughter or something). These tactics worked and the Pens stayed around.
Friends, that's how love works. Hardball, scare tactics and ultimatums.
3. We have a Staal Brother and You Don't. Get Over It.
Four brothers in the biggest NHL dynasty since the Sutter boys, and we've got the best one. He was a 2nd round draft pick when he was something like 17, and on any other team he would be a first-line forward. (It says a lot about the depth of talent in Pittsburgh that this kid is a 3rd-liner, behind Crosby and Malkin) Great defensive forward, a finalist for the Selke Trophy this year, in fact, and the cutest of four Viking-giant (they are all something like 6'3" and taller.) sod farmers out of Sudbury.
He's the only towhead in a litter of redheads, but you can tell that Jordan Staal is a redhead, spiritually.
Hockey trivia to make you sound smart: His brothers are Marc (New York Rangers), Eric (Carolina Hurricanes), and Jared (Phoenix Coyotes). When there is a game with two of the brothers playing against each other, you can play a drinking game.
Shoot, they're all so effin cute I'll put up another picture.
4. Now that the Igloo is going away,
We will have the newest, shiniest hockey venue in the NHL, and it will probably have the best nickname EVER.
See, in this era of Corporate Naming Rights, companies pay lots and lots of money to franchises to have their names on the front of their buildings. The Igloo, or as it's now known, Mellon Arena, once had the lowly moniker The Civic Arena.
The new venue's naming rights have been bought and paid for by Consol, so it will be called the Consol Center or something like that. Now, Consol used to be called Consolidated Coal, but the branding people decided that people didn't want to get their power from a polluting, mountaintop-stripping environmental disaster of a company, so they changed the name to the bland and hygienic Consol. (For this reason I will soon be changing my name to The Virgin Mary. )
Pensburgh had a poll recently on what the new Consol Center should be called, and the near unanimous winner was The Goal Mine.
Geddit?
Hockey trivia to make you sound smart: the new area has 18,087 seats. I think they crammed those random 87 seats in there because Crosby wears number 87.
5. Three Stanley Cups. And Sidney Crosby. So shut the fuck up.
2 comments:
Damn, but you make this stuff interesting. I may actually watch a hockey game on the television machine, thing.
Make sure you watch with someone who knows and understands the game -- it's much more fun to know why it's great when Sidney Crosby is dekin' around in "Gretzky's Office."
Cold beers are mandatory.
The article I link to in the post calls Lemieux an "elegant giant" and I think the photo completely captures that quality. He looks so composed, doesn't he? The man retired with cancer, then unretired, then retired again with hip problems, then unretired. He finally hung up his skates in 2006. He is the only player-owner to lift the Cup in both capacities. He is more worshiped in Pittsburgh than the Rooney family.
My brother named his cat "Lemieux," which I thought was a super-clever play on words (Le-Mew, get it?)
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