What's So Great About Hockey, Anyway?

- Well, that game last night certainly was a boring end to a thrilling series. I like the Caps a lot more than I like the Pens, of course, but I could have easily lived with a Pittsburgh victory if Game 7 had been a good one. Little did I know it wouldn't even be a GAME, much less a good game. I fear Big Shooter might have hanged himself with his Dale Hunter jersey.

If you haven't already read the Pensblog's recap, do so now. It's unspeakably brilliant.

Just to give you a preview:

(yeah, yeah, copyright the Pensblog and everything; easy, lawyer people)


Poor Capitals. Poor red-clad arena crowd of drunken and vulgar lobbyists and interns. Poor Bruce Boudreau; his Fat Bald Man bounce-and-jig has vanished. Poor Ovie, Semin, and Fedorov, none of whom will have either the satisfaction of a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals or a 2nd consecutive gold medal in the World Championship.

Meanwhile...



- Two Game 7s tonight: Boston vs. Carolina and Detroit vs. Anaheim. But you knew that, didn't you?



(Sort of) interesting goings-on at TIME.com. Apparently an editor over there asked whimsical columnist Joel Stein to stop writing about hockey. In my youth, I would follow Stein's columns on the back page of SPIN Magazine (when it was still good; before it started putting Fall Out Boy and the like on their cover), but I haven't read him since he sold his soul to TIME-Warner. I had literally no idea that he was a huge hockey fan and wrote about it every now and then.

Not that any of that should be interesting to you. What IS interesting is he was pretty much ordered to stop writing about it. His editor, apparently, told him that he could write one more column about hockey, specifically one that attempts to make a case for its excellence and why people should watch it, and then the readers of TIME.com could vote on whether or not he could ever even mention the sport again. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority are voting No on the proposition "Should Joel be barred from writing about hockey?"

It's not often that hockey fans are outright confronted with the philosophical question "What's so great about the Hockey?" Joel Stein simply e-mailed certain hockey fans to get their take on why he should be allowed to write about this magnificent sport:

Now, I'm not actually going to ask you to watch hockey. I'm just asking you, as an educated, curious person, to be aware of its excellence. To support my case, I sought out testimonials from the busiest and most important people in the game, some of whom took more than an hour to get back to me.

Wayne Gretzky e-mailed that "TIME readers are much like hockey fans: affluent, passionate people. Why would anyone described that way want to be deprived of Joel's wisdom and wit? Joel's not an expert on much — let's at least give him his hockey!!!" I did not know the Great One was such a trash talker, or that he uses exclamation points like a 15-year-old girl. See, in hockey you can even make fun of one of the greatest players ever! Try that on Mike Tyson.

That really ought to leave any unconverted soul stunned and speechless.

Also: Did Wayne just call me "affluent" and "passionate?" Why, YES, that does describe me, in great detail. Have I told all of you about how we've hired a wire reporter? He's a polyglot mole!

UPDATE: Blueland Outsider proprietor Aaron just alerted me to this Kevin Smith cri de coeur, a kind of parallel to the Joel Stein column, with more references to poop and stuff. I have no problem with giving meager platforms to passionate hockey fans like Stein and the man who gave us Clerks and Chasing Amy, but clicking through the boring white deathland of TIME.com I remembered just how much I hate TIME Magazine. It's the news equivalent to a stucco house in a particularly egregious sub-division on a really humid day.