Day 53 - Barnstorming Tour

If the loveable Donald Fehr and Gary Bettman are unable to come to an agreement soon and the second full season of hockey in seven years is lost, there have been talks of a Barnstorming Tour of the All-Stars. Based on my recollection of many night scouring Wikipedia for random articles and trivia, my understanding was that this was used by sports leagues in their early days in order to start building a brand, pretty smart given that the only social media at the time included newspaper ads, singing telegrams, and people shouting on telephone poles. (And I would love to see those guys with a 140 character limit or people taking out newspaper ads to announce they had a baby).

The default barnstorming tour article makes this all the more epic. Proper barnstorming is the use of biplanes to put on an air show. I would love nothing more than to see Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby in a dog fight in southern California, with those old style aviation goggles taking up all the space on their head. And it would finally make the name the Philadelphia Flyers make so much sense. I don't really know the history of their name, but man, if the barnstorming tour does take place in this capacity (rather than the logical visiting of  major league rinks), what a marketing campaign. Oh and the puns, so many puns. Imagine Aaron Asham getting called for high sticking. I must develop this further and get it over the headquarters of the players immediately.

Day 52 - Election Day

One of the bigger downsides to hockey is that with no games to be played, I am paying a lot more attention to politics than I should be. The bigger travesty is that neither candidate is running on the false promise of returning hockey to the arenas of major cities in America and Canada. I grew up in the belief of the American political system, that every candidate should promise way more than can possibly hope to achieve in at most eight years in the Oval Office and deliver a small warped percentage of the things they said they would. In this instance, Romney and Obama could have stated that the NHL will be back with an 82 game schedule, the Winter Classic will be a five team round robin featuring the Caps, Pens, Canes, Flyers, and Devils, and all waffle cones will be free on one's birthday. The clear follow-through from this could have been: a 66 game schedule, a Winter Classic, and waffle cones will still be available. 

I am disappointed in this year's candidates who did not feel the need to appeal to the lost and broken hockey fan. You should have been skating on the ice, kissing little baby goalies, and swaying us with astrology-esque rhetoric that stated that hockey will return under my tutelage. I guarantee it. It just occurred to me that you could have marketed this as another "Cold War", joining forces with the History Channel to sell more documentaries. Shame on you, politicians. I will now be getting my false hope from James Bond and World of Warcraft. Thank you.

Day 51 - P for Pancetta

The players are poised to perpetuate their perplexing position, purposefully putting their proprietors in a painful post pursuant to their pecuniary predilection over plaintive palimpsests. Perhaps if these parsimonious padrones could ponder their point and place, the present pace of this padlocked pastime could proceed to a primary pinnacle placating practitioners of polar pleasure posthaste. Plus, people could palaver over palative pitch and publication promoting palmary principal probity. Purge the palisades and patronize the palingenesis of your once popular pallid pugnations. Procure a panacea of epic proportions.

Day 50 - The Washington Wizards are in Full Swing

There was a time when people feared the Washington Wizards. That 23 year period from 1974-1997 when they were called the bullets. At least that's what they told as kids when they wanted to change the name to the Wizards. The only real excitement from a Wizards game was knowing that waiting beneath the court, there was a hockey rink wanting so desperately to be played on. I like to think that basketball courts are there to massage the ice for hockey rinks, since I've personified everything since "Toy Story" came out.
As is to be expected from the Wizards, they have opened the season to two underwhelming losses. One came against a Lebronless Cavaliers squad and the other came against an aged Celtics team, guys who probably remember playing with actual baskets attached to walls. There was a time when I thought the Wizards would be worth my five second attention span (long enough for me to call that foul). During the time of Gilbert Arenas, I can actually admit to watching pro basketball. The only other time was when John Wall was going to lead us into the next generation of Wizards winning streaks, only to break down when he realized he was playing in DC.
I've turned my efforts into trying to turn the Wizards into a hockey affiliate called the Washington Blizzards. They would comarket with any and all local Dairy Queens.Gary Bettman is all on board with me turning a basketball market into a hockey one.
Keep up the good work, Wizards. You are at least providing us with something no other team can. Consistency.

Day 49 - High School Hockey is in Full Swing

I subscribe to my first high school's weekly e-mail, just because I like to be somewhat associated with success and they didn't disappoint. Their hockey team, in a school with no rink and really no ice, save for the occasional "Storm of the Century", beat a rival, 6-4. It occurred to me that at that level, there really is no pettiness or squabbling, save for the normal pettiness and squabbling that is to be expected out of high schoolers, but nothing at the caliber as seen by their professional counterparts. It occurred to me that one of the fundamental high school sports can exist is because of the undying power, the control that is bestowed upon the unspoken leaders of the sports world...the sports mom.
At first glance, the sports mom is in charge of just snacks. This is a common mistake (and punishable by murder) The sports mom is in charge of everything. She ensures that everyone is safe at all times and that wounds are treated with a good blend of medicine, ointment, and spit. She ensures that everyone plays a fair and regulated game by unrelentingly getting into the faces of refs. She ensures that bad calls are known by shrieking her shrill voice across the land until her wraith call is rewarded with the correct ruling on the field. She is willing to go the extra distance to see her little boy happy.
What we need is all the Canadian moms grilling up Canadian bacon and getting ready to say "aboot" a lot. We need the Swedish moms to be prepared with their finest meatballs and fingers ready to snap the neck of a ref like a peace of Ikea furniture. We need the Russian moms to prepare their magical water that is totally not vodka and prepare themselves to kick some baboushka. They will diplomatically show the owners' moms the errors of their ways and when that doesn't work, rip the players' contracts out of their hands and beat the owners' moms with them, as all true sports justice should unfold.
Moms of the sporting world, we salute you. And we thank you in advance for salvaging our hockey season. We also really want orange slices and Capri Sun.

Day 48 - The Winter Classic...Fried

Reverberating across the magical land of hockey world (Narnia, without the annoying chattering beavers), was the death knell of the beloved game as the piercing words that shot from Gary Bettman's lips announced the cancellation of the Winter Classic. With those verbal bullets, he not only canceled the NHL's most exciting event outside of the Stanley Cup, he basically took away from us the beleaguered 2012-2013 season. With his apathetic attitude toward the players and fans, he gave up his one last piece of leverage and negotiation tactic. The Winter Classic would have been a perfect starting point, a clean slate between the owners and players, taking place on New Year's, the renewed CBA and year representing the symbolic refreshment of the novel calendar and hockey's new direction. This season is now nothing more than a sports metaphor the sinking of the Titanic (where clearly Filip Forsberg in DiCaprio and Scott Gomez is that little foreign dude).
The WC was to take place at the Big House, which houses somewhere between 100,000 and 10 million people, making it one of the biggest arenas where an NHL game took place. The Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings would have assuredly sold every seat available. Hell, they could have sold every seat in Ann Arbor to those fanbases just to see the Toldeo Walleye take on the Reading Royals. I would pay money just to see the players from the Reading Royals sing a karaoke version of Reading Rainbow. This event would have made a ton of money. It would have made the 1997 World Series look like the 2012 World Series.
In its stead, we are treated to the false hope that there may be superstar hockey in America next year. Gone as well is this year's treatment of 24/7, which has given us a behind-the-scenes look into what these weaponized men do in their spare time. In 2010, during the Caps-Pens iteration, we saw that most Caps players are like Caps fans. They drink and cuss and complain about how terrible the Caps are doing. And we are being denied the Canadian version of that.
Gary Bettman, you are a disappointment as a league commissioner. And I play fantasy football with a cheating scoundrel.

Day 47 - A Murder of Escrows

Next Wednesday, the locked out players will receive their escrow checks. An escrow is a fairly basic contract between two parties and in the context of the NHL meant the owners withheld a portion of a player's check (in this case 7.98% of last year's salary). The holdings were to be dispersed in the highly likely event of a lockout. In layman's terms, the league's bottom-feeders made around the American median salary in one paycheck (approximately $50,000) and the superstars raked in barely under $1 million dollars. With most players off in foreign lands or minor American cities anyway, this is rather trite. I'm not cynical. This is money they were due, but I would much rather see these guys fighting on the ice, rather than across a negotiation table.

In other news, Disney acquired LucasArts in a move that can only make our hockey movies better. The Mighty Ducks trilogy will finally have a prequel and a sequel trilogy, closing off any open plot holes (and finally featuring Emilio Estevez donning the black suit and mask as an asthmatic goalie). We'll get to follow the team as they go through college and learn to cope with having Ewoks on the team. They will also be remaking "Miracle", keeping it closer to historical accuracy as Obi-Wan Kenobi scores the game-winning goal with a Force push. In non-hockey related Disney sports movies, Lando Calrissian will lead a team of Titans to a national championship against an all-white Galactic Empire. The possibilities are rather endless. Congratulations, Rob Iger!