When Random Jibberish is riding in a time machine way far into the future...

So proud of the Sharks. Left for dead after Round 1 Game 4, fought back to extend our season for another full month I still remembered getting ready to lower down that Sharks flag a month ago (or maybe I did? LOL)

Anyhow, just lowered the Sharks flag and hung up my Quakes flag (yeah I threw that free one away but a coworker gave me her free one after our 3rd win hahhaha!).

At least the Quakes are now giving me a reason to tune in--I wouldn't know what to do with all this time I got until September LOL

 

Man, the Sharks got so beaten up between Vegas and St. Louis I was amazed they made it this far. PDB is either unwilling or incapable of making adjustments - as evidenced by the fact that we won all three games one and lost all three games two. Sort of reminds me of a Quakes coach or two...

I wonder if Pavs will ever be 100% again.

 

Don't you know? She's currently persona non grata for some explicitly racist songs she recorded back in the day....

 

BTW - one more comment on the Sharks and then I'm out. The Sharks had one questionable play in this series (hand-pass anyone?), and after that, the NHL totally turned its collective back on the head-hunting the Blues engaged in. It's no coincidence that Pavelski, Hertl and E. Karlsson were not available for the last game, as the Blues had been targeting those three from the get-go. However, apparently head shots are AOK in the playoffs according to the NHL. I, for one, look forward to hearing the outraged cries from St. Louis when Chara knocks Pietrangelo's head off....

 

. . . But if Smith can be condemned on the basis of two songs, what are we to make of Paul Robeson, truly a black superhero before his time? He was a star college football player, gifted student, powerful singer, commanding actor (“Show Boat,” “Othello”) and, to the end of his days, a radical and fiery civil rights activist. He, too, recorded “That’s Why Darkies Were Born.” Possibly, his take was ironic . . .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...29b90efa879_story.html?utm_term=.4216f8dcaba1

Love how the Washington Post thinks the song might "possibly" be ironic when it stinks of irony. It's not a racist song, but obviously an anti-racist song.

 

Do I detect a hint of criticism of referees from you?

 

The state of refereeing in the NHL is atrocious. There is almost no consistency in the way calls are handled game to game, and things get progressively worse through the playoffs since there is a lot of incentive not to call things, or to call them for lesser infractions than is probably the case.

I said it before and I'll say it again, playoff hockey is typically the worst hockey of the season. The league pays a lot of lip service about protecting players, and occasionally you'll see some suspensions, but most of it goes underpunished or unpunished completely. And it's hard to fix because like in other sports, players grew up playing the game a certain way and they don't want to change, even if it's in the best interest of their overall health.

It'll be hard to give up watching hockey altogether as half of my family is very invested, but it's beginning to interest me less and less the way the NFL has.

 

And always has been.



The Sharks benefitted from some highly questionable calls this past postseason, so they have no reason to complain about the officials.

Further, NHL teams cannot rely on the officials to prevent mayhem, which is why smart teams employer enforcers (goons). The Sharks need to do the same. If some thug on Vegas or St. Louis is going to headhunt, retaliate in kind. It's called vigilantism, or self-help. It's part of the culture of the game.

 

The Sharks might not have reason to complain, but as a spectator of the sport, I do. Whether bad calls helped the Sharks or not, they have been unjustifiably bad.

I'm fully aware of the culture surrounding this, and it is not a good thing. The risk to players is not worth whatever enjoyment people get out of the hits. It's similar to retaliation in baseball, which is one of the worst aspects of how the game is actually played.

 

I entirely agree with you. But it is what it is and long has been. Indeed it was once far worse. International hockey is gentlemanly and beautiful, but the NHL is run by troglodytes.

My point is that if the Sharks aspire to the Stanley Cup, they will need to adapt to their environment.

 

No - the referees refereed this series the same as all the other playoff series - which is to say that an entirely different standard was applied than was followed for the rest of the season. I believe that is on the league, not the referees.

 

Glad to see you're consistent in your ideology of officialdom infallibility.

 

Hail storm in L.A. in late May.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hail-may-storm-20190522-story.html

 

"Long suffering Blues fans." Backstory: the St. Louis Blues have not been to the Stanley Cup final in nearly 50 years, after qualifying in each of its first three seasons.

http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/26798761/for-long-suffering-blues-fans-players-different

I have a somewhat different perspective. St. Louisans are great sports fans, and there probably is a hard core of Blues fans who have suffered over that period -- but there are likely fewer of them than the size of the crowd at Avaya last Saturday to see Wondo break the record.

I went to college in St. Louis in the early 1980s, and I attended lots of Blues games, being a rabid hockey fan from Buffalo. The NHL hockey culture in St. Louis was even more tepid than the MLS soccer culture in San Jose today, albeit better than the Bay Area hockey culture in the late 1980s before the Sharks arrived.

One anecdote in particular encapsulates the wasteland that was the NHL in St. Louis in the early '80s: The Blues were playing the Sabres in Buffalo, and not having a TV in my apartment (or a car), I walked to a nearby popular bar on Delmar in University City and asked that the game be shown on the one TV. (This was in the days before sports bars and ubiquitous flat-screens). The owner refused, pointing out that there were other people in the bar who were watching whatever sitcom happened to be on at the time. None of the dozen or so in the bar appeared to be looking at the TV and when I loudly polled the entire assortment, none had any objections to putting the hockey game on, but likewise none were affirmatively interested in seeing the game. Notwithstanding the absence of objection, the owner stood his ground and I left.

Such a thing would have been unheard of in Buffalo, not to mention Canada. If the local hockey team was playing on TV, the whole city watched, and every bar owner would at least give the pretense of caring deeply.

 

St Louis is a baseball town, first, last and always. Crazy mad for baseball, and rather tepid regarding other sports.

 

The Cardinals have historically been a very good team, usually competing for a division title, at the very least. When your other option was the Rams, it's easy to see why they wouldn't care much. Although the Blues have had success in terms of attendance and the like, especially lately. Though they, too, have had serious ups and downs.

Although I do not understand some things about that team, like playing Take Me Home, Country Roads despite the team being named for another song entirely, and also not being West Virginia, and the stupid truck horn sound telling them all when to chant the incredibly creative "Let's Go Blues". And of course, the seemingly complete lack of anything related to actual Blues music at all.

Sports teams are really stupid is what I'm saying.

 

They were known as "Big Red" to distinguish them from the Redbirds baseball Cardinals.

I knew the pro football team's photographer, the late Herb Weitman, through my work-study job with my college alumni office. I have a framed graduation day impromptu photo taken by him when I ran across him on a campus path while still in my gown post-ceremony.

Weitman's 2016 obituary:

https://source.wustl.edu/2016/01/herbert-weitman-obit/