A Wingnut’s Meditation on the Playoffs

A while back, Kirk wrote to me:

I'm actually interested in seeing what playoff hockey is all about. Who knows, it may even hook me on to the sport a little.

I felt the need to write a lengthy, self-serving posting that would encourage Kirk to not only care about hockey, but to embrace his destiny as a Wingnut. After all, friends don’t let friends become Bruins fans. It’s not quite as bad as being a fan of say, the Buffalo Bills. But it still hurts. You can’t want that for a friend.

Kirk, the playoffs are the most wonderful time of the year. It’s hard to explain how deeply hockey fans feel about the playoffs. As a sort of benchmark, Dinur phones me every year and wishes me Happy Playoffs, as if it were Christmas or Hanukkah. No joke. For the past couple of springs, I’ve had really good theory sections and the Wings have fought all the way to the Stanley Cup series. The spring has been pretty magical and it comes not a moment too soon. Winter quarter always sucks moderately, because football is over by mid-January. The hockey regular season is still going, but I’ve not been able to adjust my lame attention span to following much regular season hockey (although I find programming everything into Outlook really helps me track a lot better—I’ve had fun following the Yanks so far this baseball season).

I followed hockey closely in February and March of this year, though. The Wings, for the first time in about twenty years, looked like they might not make the playoffs. Being a Wingnut, you just get so fuckin’ spoiled. It was hard to think we wouldn’t be a playoff contender.

Reflections on this Year

But sure enough, the Wings pulled through. It’s just so awesome to have your team have so much damned character. And it’s so damned hard to accept that the last of my generation of Red Wings (the guys who are our age I mean) are pretty much gone. Ozzie’s a back-up now. Malts may be gone next year. These guys are core players who, while not the greatest players in Red Wings history, are some of the best teammates in any sport’s history and who have a great relationship with the fans. These guys are hard-core professionals who know that they’re insanely lucky to get to be NHL hockey players and approach the game with gratitude. They’ve developed their careers around core athletic and sportsmanship values that are so pure that they make me want to cry.

Any will anyone ever forget Nick Lidstrom, patron saint of hockey defensemen everywhere? And this veritable hockey god was actually in the shadow, if you can imagine such a thing, of Steve Yzerman for a time. Try imagining Lidstrom in anyone’s shadow. That’s how amazing the team has been. This has been a legendary and rich time in Red Wings history.

Yeah, I was a little sore after being eliminated by the Sharks this year. But in all frankness, as long as we weren’t swept, I was okay with it. Thank God for that drubbing we gave them in Game 4. Yeah, we lost the series. But let’s face it: dynastic conditions are very difficult in the present NHL. We’ve been insanely good for several years. There is much speculation by persons like Dinur and Todd Tavares at school (a Bruins fan, God help him—Ai! The pain!) that this Golden Age is coming to a close. Yet we keep managing to find highly viable combinations of veteran experience and youthful talent. Management has been superlative—we keep winning while rebuilding. It’s really something to behold. Show me another team that has been managed so well.

I only wish my dissertation were half as impressive.

Right and Proper Playoff Philosophy

Moreover, it’s important to note that we’ve also been one of the few philosophically pure hockey teams in the league, really until this year. I have to admit that while we’ve been genuinely good, several other teams in the NHL have suffered from bad coaching philosophies that have made them vulnerable in the playoffs. In Kirk’s last letter, he said to me:

Football, basketball, baseball and soccer don't really change, they are just more intense, but apparently the "experts" agree with you that teams that are built to win in the regular season aren't necessarily the best teams in the postseason. I think the only other possible comparison to this is in baseball, where a great offense can get get you a great record in the regular season but in the postseason all you need is 3 great starting pitchers and you have a chance to shut down all your opponents. So, teams with mediocre offenses but great starting pitchers may manage to have a winning record and perhaps even win 90 games or so, but then go on to knock off more flashy 100-win teams in the playoffs if their pitchers manage to dominate.

Hockey is like your account of baseball, except exactly the opposite. In the hockey playoffs, the true edge belongs to offensive powerhouses. This is why the Wings have been dominant in the offseason for several years. Several teams in the league were wrongly fixated on immoral and improper strategy for victory that is primarily “defense first.” This strategy is an abomination and the gods do not favor it. While many teams favored this strategy, I prefer to foist most of the blame on Ron Wilson. He probably didn’t invent it. But after Nagano, he deserves the blame for anything that’s wrong in North American hockey. The Ron Wilsons of the world have simply tried to rely on their regular-season, defense-first strategies going into the playoffs. These teams would develop very tight defenses. Then, they’d get a goal or two lead and then actually sit on it for the remainder of the game.

That sort of strategy can work in the regular season. Actually, it often works well. The hockey regular season is long, somewhat like the baseball season. Moreover, there are thirty teams in the league and you meet most of the teams from the opposite conference only once per season. The regular season is not a very scouting intensive experience. You aren’t going to play tonight’s team all that often, so it’s not like any one team has a great set of incentives to really learn the other team’s weaknesses. Games are not usually played as series, in baseball’s style. You just develop a method that’s well-suited to your team and keep plugging away at it. Under those constraints, a strong defense is a very good insurance policy in the regular season of making the playoffs.

Of course, any fan of the San Jose Sharks can tell you that making the playoffs is different from winning in the playoffs. The psychological dynamic is quite different in the playoffs, where you face a best of seven series. Suddenly, your ability to really learn your opponent’s weaknesses is critical to victory. In this setting, it is my opinion that the key to victory is a highly intelligent and high-powered offense that has the psychological aplomb and patience to learn how to dismantle the opponent’s defense. Naturally, defenses also learn in this process. However, hockey defenses are extremely vulnerable, owing to the critical importance of a single man—the goalie. Once a goalie is cracked, i.e. faces a definitive and crushing failure, it very rare for a team to come back in the playoffs. That said, it is never impossible. One need only recall last year’s Stanley Cup series for evidence of this fact.

Digression on Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Championship

That said, such a performance is exceptional. I think the textbook case of defense not winning the playoffs is Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Championship, between the Detroit Red Wings and the Colorado Avalanche. This game was the definitive turning point in a series that ended the intense and bitter rivalry that emerged between the two teams over the course of the ‘90s, banishing the Avalanche to obscurity over the following years. While the former Quebec Nordiques did win their Stanley Cup the year before, I feel this series put the cap on any Avalanche attempt to define themselves as one of the storied franchises of the National Hockey League. I feel this is true for some time to come.

Some context: Both teams had been quite impressive during the regular season, with the Wings entering the playoffs as the first seed, having won the President’s Trophy. The playoff bracket is reproduced below, courtesy of my friends and yours at Wikipedia:

Note that the first seed in the Eastern Conference was the Boston Bruins, who were eliminated in six games by the eighth seed Habs. This is typical Bruins fare. Look, Kirk, it’s your choice. I’m just sayin’.

But to return to the original digression, the Avs were the second seed in the conference, tied with the San Jose Sharks for second highest points in the league. This conference championship, then, was a showdown. If the Avs were to ever show that they were better than us, this was their moment.

In all fairness, they didn’t suck. It was a seven game series that was played neck and neck. The Red Wings won the first game at the Joe, 5-3. Colorado came back for Game 2 and won in overtime, 4-3. In Denver, the Wings pulled ahead again 2-1, also in overtime. Once more, the Avs tied the series, winning Game 4 in Denver, 3-2. Then, in Game 5, the Avs pulled ahead in the series, winning against the Red Wings 2-1 in overtime.

The turning point was the “Statue of Liberty Goal” scored by Brendan Shanahan in the first period. As you can see below, Roy thought he had the puck securely in his glove. But the ref hadn’t whistled it dead and it had fallen out as he was hoisting it. Shanny scooped it in. The shame shattered Roy’s psyche. In Game 7, he basically left the light on and the key under the mat for the Wings. The Avs were shut out, 7-0. I like to think of this as the definitive moment of Patrick Roy’s career. I imagine there are many who disagree with me and I really could care less. This is how I will remember him for all time to come.

During the playoffs, when the goalie is finally broken, you have them. True, series are won without this spectacle. But there is nothing quite as satisfying as watching your team destroy your opponent’s goalie. The core point is, the playoffs are about your offense’s strategic ability to learn how to crack the opponent’s defense and your defense’s psychological ability to recover from failure. At the end of a series, you know who the better team was. This is the glory of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Return to Discussion of Proper Playoff Philosophy

In the past few years, one of the elements that, in my opinion, contributed to the Wings’ hegemony was the overwhelming number of teams that employed this Ron Wilsonesque defensive philosophy—get a lead and then sit on it. Let your strong defense and super-cultivated goalie do the rest.

One can see the temptation. There are some very refined goalies in this sport. Among the most refined was a man named Dominik Hasek, otherwise known as “Mr. Slinky for a Spine.”

But even the refined goaltending of Dominik Hasek doesn’t win Stanley Cups. Briggs Moon probably remembers a team that used to hail from Minnesota, the North Stars, actually defeating the Great Slinky for a Spine in Game 6 of the 1999 Cup finals. It was in third overtime and I had already gone to bed, to be sure (I had to work in the morning), but the Stars eventually won the Cup that night. This sad story (well, not for Briggs) has three core morals.

First, Slinky for a Spine would only win the Cup when he got to (you know it) Detroit, where we don’t play “sit on the lead” hockey. So forget that “defense first” crap. It doesn’t win the Stanley Cup.

Second, there are some things that money can’t buy, but Dominik Hasek isn’t one of them. And the identity of the team that could afford to buy him (and Brett Hull, too)? The Detroit Red Wings. Remember this, when picking your allegiances.

This last moral needs a preamble. I was living in DC during the ’99 playoffs and actually ran into this guy from Buffalo on the metro. He saw my shirt, and said, “Now that the Wings are out, you’re rooting for Buffalo, right? You have to root for Buffalo.” You could see the pleading desperation in his eyes. “They have to win. They have to.” You could see what losing the Lombardi Trophy three times had done to the poor man. For pure pity’s sake, I told him I would root for the Sabres. So fucking sad. So yeah, there are worse teams than the Bruins, Kirk. But still, friends don’t let friends become Bruins fans. It’s just too bitter. When I called Briggs the next day to congratulate him, all I could think of was the poor bastard from Buffalo on the metro. So fucking sad.

So third, don’t let that happen to you.

Well, to get back to the subject. Over the past few years, people have realized the defensive approach doesn’t work—thank God! It was disgusting while it lasted. In general, the league is abandoning the defensive trend and learning to play proper playoffs hockey again. Take, for example, the team that beat us this year, the Sharks, have done everything possible to become us. They fired Ron Wilson and hired Red Wings Assistant Coach Todd McLellan. And they do look a lot like us now. It’s kind of scary when guys in teal (teal!) try stealing your identity. I have to admit that they did well at managing the transition from regular season hockey to playoff hockey this year. Pretending to be the Wings seems to work for them.

Prophecy: If the Sharks don’t win the Cup this year, they will forever be a choke team. I mean, they bought one of our coaches and tried to become us, doing a not-half-bad job. What else could they need? An octopus on the ice? Motown hits over the loudpeakers? A trumpet rendition of Hava Nagila during third period? There can be no excuses. If they don’t win this year, they’ll be one of those teams. One of those teams like the post-’71 Bruins. Plus, those fuckers will still be wearing teal.

So, hopefully, for Dinur's sake and the sake of all my in-laws, Thornton will remember this little bit he did last year:

Bottom line for the Wings after this playoff season: As the NHL abandons its dalliance with a defensive approach to the playoffs, the Wings need to come up with some new innovation for these guys to later copy after we beat them. The good news? We probably will.

Start of Summer

I’ve haven’t blogged in forever. Here’s what’s been going on.

The Wings Didn’t Win the Stanley Cup

Life will be meaningless for the next fourteen weeks until football starts. Of course, Brett Favre will probably be a Viking by then. I want to see the motherfucker ripped apart by our new-fangled defense. Of course, if Sidney Crosby died in a freak motorcycle accident over the summer, I wouldn’t lose any sleep.

The trend has always been that when my teams suck, my life improves. When my teams dominate, my life falls apart. The great news is that I’m going to have an awesome year. As if on cue…

I’ve Just Had A Serious Boost in My Health

There are several anecdotal accounts that suggest MS patients may, for reasons passing understanding, suffer from a serious vitamin B-12 deficiency. I’ve tried supplementing with B-12 before, but I wound up getting the sort of flu-like achiness I associate with the activation of my immune system. As MS is basically caused by a seriously overactive immune system that eviscerates the nervous system for kicks, a more active immune system is something I want no part of it. Besides, Avonex already gives me flu-like symptoms once a week. I don’t want more.

About a month ago, Craig started taking 5-Hour Energy Shots in the morning. While it does contain some caffeine, a good part of the jolt comes from 500 mcg of vitamin B-12. I tried them out for a few days, and enjoyed the extra kick they provided, but eventually the flu-like systems started to kick in. But of course, like most commercial vitamin B-12, the drink contains 40 mg of vitamin B-6. I remembered that I had once read that vitamin B-6 supported the immune system. So I wondered what would happen if I found some B-12 that was just B-12.

I went to Sam’s Club and bought the lozenges pictured above. 2500 mcg of B-12, worth a whopping 41,667 percent of your recommended daily allowance. What happened was after two weeks, I experienced an upsurge in energy. Indeed, I decided last Wednesday to go to the gym. Then I went on Thursday, Friday and today. I did a very light free weights workout that covered every muscle set at pathetic weights. I have learned the hard way that if I don’t take it hyper easy on the first day back, I’ll be miserably sore for days. All the other days, I burned 400 calories on an ellipsis machine. No way I could have worked out that many days in a row before. I feel fuckin’ amazing. Craig and I went to Sam’s Club today. I chopped all the week’s vegetables (eight snack packs—each contains 10 oz celery, 10 oz carrots and an apple) and the peppers, cucumbers and onions for the week’s salads and prepped the ribs and the salmon (lots of slicing, spicing, wrapping in foil and freezing) for the week ('tis the season to start grilling). I couldn't have done all that work in one session two weeks ago. The shopping and the salad prep would have finished me off. I was a little tired afterward today, but not very tired. Hell, I’m blogging tonight.

I’m so pumped that I’ve been able to workout. I’m beginning to feel like a queer ought to feel. Who knows? Give me a while longer if this keeps working and I may work that all-important 3:33-4:10 pm slot back into my homosexual agenda. Gotta admit I’m aiming for more playtime for Craig and me first, though…

Craig and I Are Going to Tel Aviv

Mom and Dad offered, and I accepted. I am very deeply grateful. We’ll be there for the whole month of September. I will spend most of this time in the Arab Press Archive at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, photographing newspapers from Jordan and Lebanon.

DING-DING!

Mitch Albom is right:

But if you look at the totality of the series — the fact that once again, on Sunday night, the Wings gave up the puck far more than Pittsburgh (21 giveaways to 12), the fact that Pittsburgh outshot the Wings in Joe Louis Arena (32 to 26), the fact that Pittsburgh won more face-offs than Detroit (27 to 24) and face-offs are Detroit’s signature pride and joy — well, you have to figure this eventually will find its way onto the scoreboard.

We've been luckier than we've been good. Bottom line--they've hit the post twice. And the Penguins are angry. Tuesday and Thursday are going to be intense.

Let's hope the Wings get some rest tonight and have an easy trip to Pittsburgh. This is not going to be easy.

What A Fuckin' Relief

I hate playing the Mighty Ducks. There's no glory in winning. They're literally a Mickey Mouse team. They're an unnatural abberation. They can only suck. If you lose to them, it's the ultimate humiliation. Michelle had to actually remind me last year that the Ducks beat us one year to go on the win the Stanley Cup. Apparently, I'd blotted out the memory. Well, it took seven games, but we beat these fuckers by a point. Not a single goal from Pavel Datsyuk. I hope my boys pull it together against the Blackhawks. We still have their captain, by the way. I'm hoping that the Wings play a little more normally now that we're not playing the bad karma team from hell.

Grading this weekend. Yippee! I want to write. Kirk gets to play more Civ than me and I'm jealous. I guess I'm just grouchy all around. But we beat the Ducks. I refuse to accept that as an accomplishment. But I have a sinking feeling in my stomach that it is, and that makes me edgy and unhappy. Their defense looked awfully good. It wasn't all Jonas Hiller.

But we advanced. And Chris Osgood's goals against average for the playoffs are 2.06 and his save percentage is 0.921. Everyone who whined about my boy Ozzie can go fuck themselves.

Bring on the Hawks.

PLAYOFFS!

Only a period away from having a 3-0 lead against the Blue Jacket. I fucking hate Ohio teams. I've been enjoying this and would like nothing better than to send the Blue Jackets into the post-season. I've also been enjoying calling all my Sharks fan friends to say, "Quack, Quack!" Nothing sucks more in the playoffs than losing to the Mickey Mouse team...

I Goofed Off Last Night

First things first. The Wings won game 1 against the Avs. I missed the Wings’ dominant first period. Colorado apparently scored first. Ozzie let one in with 11:07 left in the period, annoyingly after only two previous shots on goal. The scorer’s name is Statsny (can you tell I never see regular season hockey? I have no idea who the fucker is—who virtually any of the Avs are). But Hank Zetterberg replied definitively with a goal at 10:14 left in the period. Dan Cleary scored with 6:12 left in the period. I arrived just in time for Johan Franzen to score the Wings’ third goal with 2:37 left in the period. By this time, Colorado had roughly 6 shots on goal as opposed to the Wings’ 12, which is pretty normal for a Wings’ game. By the end of the period, the ratio was 16:7 in favor of the Wings. The offense was looking fine. Still, it’s disturbing that Ozzie let that first goal in. I didn’t see it, so I have no idea how soft it was.

Second period was almost an antistrophe. Johan Franzen scored again with 18:47 seconds left in the period. An Av named Liles scored in response with 14:43 left in the period. The Avs scored again (Hejduk) with 3:31 left in the period. The Wings still outshot the Avs 21:14 in that period, but the Avs picked up production. Moreover, they hadn’t shot many of those shots when Liles scored. So, naturally, I’m worried about Chris.

The third period was scoreless. Shots on goal had more parity, 10:6 in favor of the Wings. Ozzie made some beautiful saves. Prognosis: The Avs were sloppy in the first. Chris lost focus in the second. The Avs didn’t slack off in the third and Chris was back in form. So far, it looks as if we can win the series if we don’t slip up. As with most teams in this league, they just don’t have our firepower. They’re going to come back at us hungrier next game. Quote of the game:

Osgood is hoping the old memories stay in the past.

“If you were to ask the guys that played in those series, they wouldn't be commenting on this one now,” he said. “So, I don't really feel that this is the time for me to comment on or compare the series because there's new players on both sides.”

Well, I don’t expect anyone is expecting the ghost of Patrick Roy to come flying out the tunnel to beat anyone up. What an asshole!

Civ 4

I played Civ 4 for the first time in weeks last night. Craig wanted to watch some blood and gore movie and I was too tired to grade, so I indulged. I had played Tokugawa in the Warlords version (aggressive and protective) for several iterations, wondering if I could develop a conquest machine. No luck. I had a combat-hardened, well-trained military, but you can’t really produce enough units to overwhelm one’s opponents later in the game. I even deliberately kept away from huge cultural developments. I instead focused on trying to create an efficient economy to support the military machine. But no luck. I’d fall behind in technology by the late medieval period. When my military was out-classed by new technology, it was still professional enough to fend off any attack. But I’d fall far behind in score. A hyper-seasoned military doesn’t seem to be an asset.

So in this latest iteration, I’ve been FDR instead (Industrious and organized). I was definitely the wealthiest Civ in the world. But again, toward the late medieval period, I’d fall behind in score (if not really in technology). I was on a very peaceful Confucian continent with Elizabeth and Mansa Musa. Elizabeth and I would up losing a city each to one another due to limited cultural development (I really invested in my city, but the cultural gravity of her nearby capital proved to be too much). The global hegemon, Montezuma came to curb Elizabeth’s power. I was in the bottom half of the game in terms of score from the late medieval period onward, though I was second to Monty in terms of finance and culture. I needed to be creative with my money, but I was way too tired last night to think of anything. It’ll be weeks before I play again.

I’m coming to the conclusion that Civ 4 is just too complex to be much fun. When I do well against the machine, it’s because I’m planning. Who has time to plan for a game? I have enough trouble planning for life.

DING! DING!

Well, the Sharks pulled through and Miika Kiprusoff’s season is over. And you all know what that means—an Avs-Wings semifinal round. There is no pleasure greater on this earth than watching the Wings knock the Avs out of the playoffs. I plan to relish this.

PLAYOFFS!

‘Tis the season! The Wings are matched against the Nashville Predators. The bad luck of the President’s Trophy has set in already. Our dish is getting repaired between 4-8 pm tomorrow, just in time to keep me at home for the Game 1 of the series.

I have another Sharks fan for a student this term, too. They’re coming out of the woodworks. I’ll have to offer her condolences in class tomorrow, just in time to start discussing how they’ll write their Hobbes papers.

And yeah, those who have checked the other blog will note that I’m behind on timelining. I gotta get crackin’. Publish or perish, playoffs or no! Plus, I need to get back to the gym. I'm a failure as a queer.