Bleeding My Own Blood's weekly recap will take the form of a more-or-less Joyce-like spilling of my mind into your compy's screen. Enjoy.
There’s a lot that has happened over the week and I want to try to touch on all of it. At least all of it that has interested me. I’m going to start with the hockey playoffs, which have shaped up in dramatic fashion with some wild hijinks over the weekend. The Bruins, for instance, scored three shorthanded goals in a minute four. That has never happened. Of course I was walking to the bar when it took place and missed seeing it live by two minutes. God. Damn. It. No matter though, The Bs hung on to win the game and set up the Me-Girl match-up in the first round of the playoffs. I’ll preview that directly.
6 Boston vs. 3 Buffalo
Boston has had a lot of trouble scoring, thanks to bad luck, injuries, and cheap shots taken throughout the season (and letting Phil Kessel go), but Tuuka Rask has been playing great and they seem to be hungry heading into the postseason. The main problem is that Buffalo, last time I checked, is employing the greatest American Hockey Hero since Jim Craig. The hope is that he is worn down and goes back to his mediocre playoff ways, but the Boston offense is one that can make even bad goalies look great. I guess as long as we can put some guys in the penalty box and employ our blistering man-down attack we have a chance. Or not. I’d like to come out on Boston’s side on this one but against Miller I just don’t know where the goals are going to come from, and Boston, no matter how good their net minder is, has had a long brutal history of running into a goalie who stands on his head and carries a team deep into the playoffs, not having one. I think it’s Buffaslugs in 6.
8 Montreal Canadiens at 1 Washington Capitals
I’m not going to call this an upset special, but Montreal will make the Caps sweat. The Habs have a hot goalie in Jaroslav Halak (it really does always come down to the goalies) and I wonder how Ovi will hold up to the pressure now that Sid the Kid has made it clear who the big dick in the NHL is. Can Ovechkin rise to the challenge? I’m doubting it, honestly, but that won’t keep them out of the second round and another rematch with the Pens. The Habs have not had a whole lot of offense this season, and the scoring attack for Washington is Hydra-like. I do think this series will go seven, if only because the three games in Montreal will see home ice advantage like Washington can never have down here in what is still most decidedly the South (also known as the land where the crowd only cheers for fights). The Caps fans are enthusiastic, but they can be taken out of the game with a quick strike. I think the Habs steal one down here, but the Caps get it back in Montreal with one of those 7-2 offensive avalanches of theirs. So yeah, Washington in 7.
I had bounced around the idea of previewing every first-round match-up, but I haven’t seen enough hockey and would be forced to regurgitate what others already wrote. That’s not what this is about. This is one man’s impressions, attained over beer in front of big screens. So if you want a full hockey preview, pay for Insider. But I digress:
The Masters turned out as fun as we thought it would, but not for the expected reasons. El Tigre was pleasantly relegated to the sidelines as Lefty charged ahead and took his third green jacket. My Da asked me Saturday night what I thought was going to happen in the final round and I said that Lefty would make a push but falter in the end and Lee Westwood would take the win with consistency. You see, I have never much liked Lefty. He seemed like such the appropriate choice to carry the Best Golfer Never to Win a Major monkey on his back that I was disappointed when he finally shed it. Then he was anointed by the press as “Tiger’s Rival” because he strung a couple wins together in relatively close succession. Tiger being without peer, he was doomed to fail in this role, and I kind of took it out on him. But dammit, he makes it so hard to hate him. Due to the battles both his wife and his mother have had to fight with the disease, he has made the elimination of breast cancer his personal mission. He is left-handed (which is always a strangely endearing quality for me), likeable in interviews, played a great douche on Entourage, and while he is not Tiger’s rival he is a damn good player. But still, even as I watched him pick up 5 strokes in 3 holes on the back nine Saturday, I expected him to choke it away on Sunday. Now that he hasn’t, but instead charged ahead for the W, I gotta say I am ready to jump onboard the Lefty bandwagon. I guess I’m the only one left off it.
BC won the Frozen Four on Saturday, which I figure most people would expect me to be happy about. Well, I’m not. Boston College tortures my Seminole nature in football and basketball with excruciating regularity, and I don’t know anyone who went to BC. I applied to Northeastern when I was in high school, and my Da went to the University of New Hampshire. The latter school has become my college hockey team, and strangely enough they have a lot in common with Seminole Baseball, as it turns out. Both teams know the agony of owning the Phil Mickelson Memorial Trophy (this seems especially dumb now that the bastard actually won the Masters) for being the best teams in their games to never have won a championship. The painful moniker is for the Seminoles applied entirely to the Mike Martin Era. He is the reason for our ascent to greatness but more and more is becoming the scapegoat for our inability to reach the pinnacle. UNH has been at it for longer, and has been dispatched by the unlikely likes of schools like Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute enough to truly wonder if they are cursed. I saw one of those games in person in Anaheim in 2000, when the Wildcats went down to U Maine. This year the Cats made the tournament with an underage and inexperienced team but ran into a red hot Rochester Institute in the second round. Bastards. So no, I’m not happy about the friggin’ Eagles.
The Sox are hard to peg down after the first week of the season. I was watching them lose sheepishly to the Twins while writing the first part of this schpeel, and while their performance is disappointing thus far you can see that the pitching is going to come together (Lester looked strained but did have 5 Ks), the defense is very good (though they need to stop running into each other (but that will come)), and they have the ability to score runs consistently. I just have one message to Red Sox Nation: Get off Papi’s back. I know you are hopeful, I know you only want to will him to break out and be his old powerful, clutch self, I know you have no mean spirit about your yearning for his success, but for the love of God just relax. He can feel you pressing for him, and it makes him press. Let’s all just take a breath and not worry so much about him. I include myself in this by the way.
The only other thing I would say about the Sox is that I would run on them every time I had a man on first. No outs, two out, no matter who was up, just run. They are atrocious at defending the steal, and they get exposed every time someone tries. Today the Twins did just that and it led to two runs. This has me afraid. The new Minnesota stadium looks great though. We gave them the opener as a housewarming present. It would be nice to take the series as a door prize.
Well, that’s what struck me this week. Tomorrow will be the inaugural Fantasy Diary, in which you will be able to have a weekly update of my virgin fantasy baseball season. Hilarity should ensue.
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