Thursday, May 31, 2018

The Forgotten Dynasty

The Stanley Cup Final began this week, and while there will be lots to say about it when it is done, I have a history of acknowledging SCF's by remembering Stanley Cup greatness from the past.

When I recount any historical hockey moments, I usually indulge myself by recounting my own team's accomplishments, like when I wrote about the Lightning's first Cup or the first Lightning squad to make the post-season. But this spring marks the 35th anniversary of the final Cup won by one of the greatest teams ever assembled, and because that team often gets overlooked and I am a stickler when it comes to remembering history, today I feel compelled to write about it.

I am talking, of course, about the New York Islanders dynasty that once ruled the world of puck.

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The very first time I watched a hockey game was February 22, 1980, a grand total of 39 days after my ninth birthday. I watched that game on television -- on ABC, to be exact -- and it proved to be an exhilarating affair that would become known as the Miracle on Ice.

I vividly remember watching Mike Eruzione beat Vladimir Myshkin on what proved to be the game-winning goal, and vividly remember watching players from Team USA toss their sticks in the air as time expired.

I also vividly remember Al Michaels speaking with excitement in his voice as those waning seconds ticked away, though if I'm being honest, I don't truly remember the specific words of his now famous call -- Do you believe in miracles! -- registering in my brain at the time.

What mattered was that I was instantly entranced by the sport. Shortly after those Lake Placid Olympics were over, I got my hands on a paperback about the game I had watched and read it over and over. It was from reading the book that I decided Dave Christian and Dave Silk were my favorite players. I also figured that Jim Craig must be the greatest netminder in history, and when I imagined myself playing hockey I pictured myself being a stud goalie like him.

Three months after Team USA struck gold, the first Stanley Cup of my hockey-cognizant life was won by a New York franchise that was not from New York City, but instead from the 'burbs on the middle of Long Island. It was the first championship that club ever experienced, and after seizing it they won the next three as well.

That feat -- winning four consecutive Stanley Cups -- has not been duplicated since. In fact, no team since then, not even the eternally lionized Oilers of Gretzky & Messier, has managed to win even three in a row. In other words, those Islanders were a team for the ages. Yet, strangely, they don't get the recognition they deserve.

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The early 1980's were a different era. Cable TV was new, the NHL did not have a national TV contract on this side of the 49th parallel, and the Internet did not exist. For a kid in Florida to follow hockey was difficult, and for that kid to find a live broadcast of a hockey game was nearly impossible.

Nonetheless, I knew who Mike Bossy was.

Way back in January of 1945, 96 days before Hitler offed himself in the bunker, Maurice "Rocket" Richard of the Montreal Canadiens blasted a puck into the net behind Boston goaltender Harvey Bennett. It was Richard's 50th goal of that season and it came in the season's 50th game, marking the first time in history any player had gotten to the 50-goal mark that early in a season. As impressive as that feat already was, the alliteration of the phrase "50 goals in 50 games" caused it to achieve stratospheric status almost immediately, and the phrase itself took on a legendary air as three and a half decades went by before anybody pulled it off again. The man who finally did it was Michael Jean Bossy, who was born in Montreal in 1957 and drafted by the New York Islanders in 1977.

Bossy achieved 50 in 50 during the 1980-81 season, eleven months and two days after I watched the Miracle on Ice. Like Richard 36 years before, he pulled it off not in the season's 48th or 49th game but in the actual 50th. The Quebec Nordiques guarded him extraordinarily close that night and held him without a shot until late in the third period, when he backhanded the puck past Ron Grahame with 4:10 remaining, breaking a 4-4 tie with his 49th goal of the season.

Two minutes and 41 seconds after that, Bryan Trottier fed him a perfect pass and he fired it past Grahame for number 50. Nassau Coliseum erupted in cheer, for everybody in attendance understood the significance of the puck that had just gone in. Bossy's 50 in 50 was a much bigger accomplishment than the Isles winning the game, and today it seems perfect that he accomplished it during a season that would end with them winning their second of four consecutive championships.

It also seems perfect that his 50th came on an assist from Trottier, the center iceman who played with Bossy on his right wing and Clark Gillies on his left to form one of the greatest (and best named) lines in hockey history: The Trio Grande.

That line was formed in training camp prior to the 1977-78 season and remained a unit all the way through the Islanders' 1980's title runs. It was an almost perfect conglomeration, with Bossy serving as the virtuoso shooter, Trottier bringing the most complete all-around game, and Gillies playing the role of intimidator with his reputation for bruising up the opposition. But they were much more than those pigeonhole descriptions, for Gillies, despite his enforcer-like reputation, was skilled enough that he finished two separate seasons with more than a point-per-game average; and Bossy, despite being known as a skills guy who deplored fighting, proved his physical toughness by gutting out his last few seasons playing through excruciating back injuries.

But as big a deal as The Trio Grande was (Bossy, Trottier, and Gillies are all in the Hall of Fame) it was only one part of the dynasty. Those Islanders also featured Denis Potvin, one of the best defensemen to ever lace up a pair of skates, and Billy Smith, a ferocious goaltender who earned the nickname "Hatchet Man" for hitting players who dared enter the crease (and also has the distinction of being the first goalie to be credited with a goal during an NHL game). They too are Hall of Famers, and it is worth noting that Potvin got into New York Rangers' fans heads so much that all these years later they still chant "Potvin sucks!" because of a clean hit he laid on Rangers centerman Ulf Nilsson that resulted in Nilsson breaking his ankle -- a hit that occurred way back in 1979!

And since I opened this post talking about the Miracle on Ice, I have to mention that a player from that gold medal squad was also a member of the Islanders dynasty: Mere days after the Olympics ended, Ken Morrow, a defenseman who grew up in Michigan and played NCAA hockey for Bowling Green, signed with the Isles and played a key role solidifying their blueline through the end of that regular season and throughout the post-season run to their first title. Thus Morrow became the first person to win an Olympic gold and a Stanley Cup in the same year, and he went on to be a major contributor to all four Islander championships. This spring, a reminiscing Denis Potvin called Morrow "the best friggin' defenseman I've ever played with, ever seen. Nobody's better than him inside center ice."

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Like many champions, the Islanders were haunted by misses and failures before they finally stuck gold.

The Canadiens won the Cup in 1976 and 1977, and while it has to count for something that the only playoff games they lost across those two seasons were all to the Islanders, there was still the thought that for all their talent, the Isles simply didn't have what it took to get past the "real" champs.

Then came 1978, when the favored Isles suffered a first round upset loss to Toronto in overtime of Game Seven. Then 1979, when they suffered yet another upset playoff loss, this time to the hated Rangers -- after a season in which Bossy led the league in goals and Trottier led it in total points.

Naysayers, who are always aplenty, were not shy about asking whether the Isles lacked character and mental strength.

But fortunately for the Isles, Karma can be a blessing as well as a bitch. They did have character and strength, and Karma would reward them for their toil -- reward them in spades.

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The 1979-80 NHL season was the first one in which helmets were required and the first one with more the 20 teams, as the absorption of four WHA franchises brought the NHL's total up from 17 to 21. The Philadelphia Flyers had the best regular season record with 116 points, compared to the Islanders having the fifth-best at 91 points. The Flyers' season included a steak of 35 consecutive games without a loss, which still ranks as the longest such streak in all of professional sports in North America, and they were heavily favored when the two clubs met in the Stanley Cup Final.

Game One went to OT and was won by New York when Potvin rifled a shot past Philly goalie Pete Peeters. After surprising the experts by building a series lead of three games to one, the Isles got a bit of a scare when the Flyers won Game Five handily to pull within 3-2, after which Game Six went to overtime deadlocked at four.

7:11 into the extra session, Bob Nystrom, a hard-working centerman from Sweden who had already earned the nickname "Mr. Islander," put the puck into the net over Peeters's blocker by redirecting a pass from John Tonelli. Finally, just like that, Lord Stanley's Cup took up residence on Long Island; and on a side note, Nystrom became #2 on the NHL's all-time list for most playoff overtime goals.

And here's something you probably don't know: That first Islanders Stanley Cup squad was also the one that created the now hallowed tradition of playoff beards. It was started mostly by Morrow, fresh off the gold he'd won in Lake Placid, and 19-year-old right winger Duane Sutter, whose beard barely grew. That pair decided not to shave during the playoffs until their team had either won it all or been eliminated, and other teammates liked the idea and opted to jump on board. Morrow's overgrown whiskers eventually became iconic, but prior to that particular team, there was no such thing as a playoff beard.

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I have already mentioned several players who were major factors in the Islanders' dynasty, but there is one I have not mentioned and definitely need to: Butch Goring.

A somewhat undersized (5'10", 165) but country strong stalwart from Saint Boniface, Manitoba, Goring is generally recognized as the final piece of the puzzle that transformed the Islanders from playoff underachievers to playoff legends. He was in his ninth season with the LA Kings when he was dealt to New York on March 10, 1980 -- just 29 days before the playoffs started -- in exchange for Billy Harris and Dave Lewis.

During his time in LA Goring established himself as one of the best two-way forwards in the league; had clutch performances in several playoffs; and won both the Bill Masterton and Lady Byng trophies. He was an even bigger institution in LA than Marcel Dionne, and the thought of getting dealt was the furthest thing from his mind. Speaking many years later about the trade, he said: "My initial reaction was one of anger and disappointment...Once I was able to get the emotions out of it, I realized it was a tremendous opportunity."

Goring made the most of that tremendous opportunity. He slid into the center ice position on the Isles' second line, giving them elite depth down the middle, and they went undefeated (8-0-4) in the 12 games between the trade and the end of the regular season, after having been good but inconsistent for much of the season leading up to that.

Then came the playoffs, when he asserted himself by tallying 19 points in 21 games and playing a major role in guiding the Isles to that first Cup, which had so eluded them for several seasons.

All these years later, the Goring trade is still considered the gold standard for trade deadline acquisitions and it's easy to see why. Not only did he play a major role in bringing home that first Cup shortly thereafter, he played a major role in bringing home three more as well.

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The following season, 1980-81, was the one in which Mike Bossy got his 50 in 50 -- and the one that ended with the Islanders having the NHL's best record with 110 points, 19 more than the year before.

When the playoffs faced off, Goring, 31 at the time, bore down even better than he had the previous spring. When those playoffs ended he had notched "20 in 20" (20 points in 20 playoff games, on 10 goals and 10 assists) and won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP. The Islanders won their second straight championship, seizing the Cup by chucking aside the Minnesota North Stars four games to one in the SCF. They scored 5+ goals in all but one game of that final and averaged 5.39 per game across the post-season as a whole.

Then came 1981-82, when the Isles again had the NHL's best record but ramped it up even more by finishing with 118 points and winning 54 games, while the next closest team (Edmonton) had "only" 111 points and 48 victories. Billy Smith won the Vezina, and Bossy took the Conn Smythe by lighting things up with 27 playoff points (17, 10) in 19 games. The Islanders' opponent in the SCF was the Vancouver Canucks, and they blitzed 'em with a four-game sweep while outscoring them 18-10.

Make that three Cups in three years.

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I just mentioned that Edmonton had the league's second-best record in 1981-82. Which is significant because those Oilers were a rollicking, gunslinging, take-no-prisoners bunch that was dead set on winning it all. As you might have heard, they were led by the likes of Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier and Paul Coffey.

After coming up short in that season's playoffs -- courtesy of being upset in the first round by LA -- the Oilers came out like gangbusters in the 1982-83 season and finished with 106 points, tops in the Clarence Campbell Conference. The older and more battle-wounded Islanders finished with 96 points, significantly less than the previous two seasons, and entered the playoffs as only the fourth seed in the Prince of Wales Conference.

Yes, Bossy had turned in another fabulous season with 118 points on 60 goals and 58 assists, but Gretzky turned in an otherworldly one with 196 on 71 goals and 125 (!) assists. And whereas Bossy was the only Islander to finish as one of the league's top ten scorers, there were four Oilers in the top ten: Gretzky, Messier, Jari Kurri, and Glenn Anderson. Plus, the Oilers had another player (Coffey) finish at #13 whereas you needed to go all the way down to the #19 spot to find an Islander not named Bossy.

Considering all that, it would seem that the aging Islanders had passed the baton to the Oilers and been surpassed by the younger gunslingers from Out West... but I said would, and seem... the clubs still had to meet on the field of battle, where the dynamic can always change when crafty badgers bare their teeth, and the Islanders were a team for the ages that was not done.

After all, one does not win all those Stanley Cups by happenstance and good luck.

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The Islanders and Oilers met in the 1983 Stanley Cup Final.

Game One took place on May 10th, and 5:36 into the opening frame, Duane Sutter -- three years removed from co-creating the playoff beard -- put New York ahead by whistling a shot past Andy Moog. Much later, with just 12 seconds remaining in the final frame, Ken Morrow secured the 2-0 victory by scoring into an empty net for the only other goal of the game. Edmonton outshot New York 35-24, but Billy Smith rose to the challenge and pitched a shutout to stun the fans in Northlands Coliseum.

Game Two didn't make the Edmonton faithful feel any better. Although the Oilers scored first, the Isles responded with three goals before the end of the first period -- the last of which was netted by Bossy just 43 seconds before the horn -- to carry a 3-1 lead into the first intermission. When all was said and done, New York had doubled up Edmonton on the scoreboard and won 6-3 despite being outshot 33-25.

Heading back to their home ice in Nassau Coliseum, the Islanders held a 2-0 series lead and were skating with swagger.

19 seconds before the first period came to a close in Game Three, Anders Kallur put New York ahead by potting a goal with Bossy and Morrow assisting, though Jari Kurri tied it up early in the second. The score was still 1-1 when the third period commenced, and then Morrow and Bob Bourne scored 80 seconds apart (in the opposite order) to propel the Islanders to a 3-1 advantage, with Sutter brothers Duane and Brent adding a pair of late goals to close the game out 5-1 and give the Isles a commanding 3-0 series lead.

The freight train was steaming downhill with purpose and momentum when Game Four commenced, and the Islanders fired the puck into the net three times in a span of 97 seconds to seize a 3-0 lead, with goals by Trottier and Bossy bookending one by Tonelli. The Oilers tried to come back, pulling within one on second period tallies by Kurri and Messier, however the Islanders were too good and were not going to lose on home ice when Lord Stanley's Cup was in the building. With 69 seconds remaining in the third, Morrow evoked memories of Game One by scoring this goal into an empty net, thus clinching yet another Cup for the great dynasty from Long Island.

Make that four Cups in four years.

Morrow had won an Olympic gold and four Stanley Cups in 51 months' time, a feat that had never been accomplished before and will almost certainly never be accomplished again.

Billy Smith won the Conn Smythe with a stellar-for-its-era save percentage of .912.

Mike Bossy's 17 goals that post-season were more than anyone else. Interestingly, it was the third consecutive post-season that saw him finish with 17, and notably, Gretzky did not find the back of the net for that entire SCF.

But hockey is a team game and this post is about a team, not individuals, and the New York Islanders had won four consecutive Stanley Cups -- a feat no other team has come close to matching since. Three different organizations have won two straight over the ensuing 35 years, and that is as close as anyone has come. One does not -- can not -- win four consecutive Stanley Cups by happenstance and good luck.

This team was greatness personified from the fall of 1979 through the spring of 1983.

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Unfortunately, Father Time is undefeated, aging curves are real, and all good things except marriages must come to an end.

Granted, none of that was immediately obvious as the Islanders strove for a fifth consecutive title in the 1983-84 season. They improved their record by eight wins and eight points to win the Patrick Division and finish as the Prince of Wales Conference's top seed. Bossy again finished with 118 points, good for fifth in the league, and Trottier joined him in the top ten by finishing with 111, which made him eighth in the league.

Out West, however, Edmonton won seven more games than the Isles and improved their record by ten games, finishing with 119 standings points (15 more than the Isles) to secure the top seed in the Clarence Campbell Conference. Edmonton had three players finish among the league's top seven scorers -- led by Gretzky with a supernatural 205 points, a full 79 more than second place Paul Coffey. Jari Kurri rang up 113 points on 52 goals and 61 assists.

The Islanders and Oilers met again in the 1984 Stanley Cup Final and faced off across the blue line with blood in their fangs. It could not have been any other way. In hindsight it feels almost mystical, as if divine declaration mandated they meet. Edmonton won Game One by a score of 1-0, the lone goal being scored early in the third by relatively unheralded Kevin McClelland.

Then the Islanders unleashed hellfire and opened a can of whoop ass for Game Two, blowing out the Oilers 6-1 with Gillies notching a hat trick and Trottier adding a pair of goals. Edmonton's only marker came from Randy Gregg, meaning that by the end of this contest The Great One himself, Wayne Gretzky, had played six SCF games against the Islanders without scoring a single goal.

Nonetheless, the Oilers -- perhaps having learned a thing or two by seeing the best up close -- found a way to keep their rendezvous with destiny. They turned a firehose on to win Game Three 7-2, and kept it on to also win Game Four 7-2. Gretzky discovered his shooting mojo with a pair of goals in Game Four after Messier scored a pair in Game Three.

The decisive Game Five took place in Northlands Coliseum on May 19th, with Gretzky scoring at 12:08 and 17:26 of the opening frame to give Edmonton a 2-0 lead, then assisting on Ken Linesman's goal just 38 seconds into the second period. Barely more than four minutes after that, Kurri made it 4-0 when he wired a puck home off assists by Coffey and Anderson.

The Oilers had crossed the Rubicon en route to becoming the NHL's next and perhaps final dynasty. Just days after that convincing Game Two victory, the older Islanders had suddenly become a reflection in their successors' rear view mirror.

Which is not to say they folded their tent and went down quietly, for champions never do. The Islanders tried to rally and Pat LaFotaine, a rookie who had appeared in only 15 regular season games, scored 13 seconds into the final stanza. 22 seconds later he scored again, halving Edmonton's lead from 4-0 to 4-2 before you could say gesundheit.

The Isles kept coming and actually outshot the Oilers for the night, but couldn't get another one to go in. When Edmonton's Dave Lumley scored into an empty net with 13 seconds left in regulation, the baton was officially passed from a proud organization in The Empire State to a proud organization in Wild Rose Country. Which is fine. What is not fine, however, is that with the passage of time, the Islanders' dynasty seems to have been shortchanged by public memory.

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35 years hence, everyone talks with misty-eyed reverence about the Oilers' dynasty that came after the Islanders (five Cups in seven years but never more than two in a row) and the 1976 to 1979 Montreal dynasty that came before, but you don't hear nearly as much about the Islanders, who did something that neither the Oilers nor Canadiens did by making it to five straight Cup Finals. You also hear more reverence expressed for the Canadiens of the 1950's, who played in an era when it was easier to win the Cup because the NHL only had six franchises.

But the 1980's Islanders will always rank as one of the greatest teams ever assembled -- not only in hockey, but in all of sports -- and they should get much more than the passing mention they usually receive.

Seven people from that dynasty (six players plus Coach Al Arbour) are in the Hockey Hall of Fame. It's a bit of a mystery why two others are not -- Goring and Morrow -- but maybe one of these years they will get the call, kind of like former LA Kings' goalie Rogie Vachon did 34 years after he retired.

Denis Potvin has been a hockey broadcaster on TV for the last quarter-century, mostly doing color commentary for the Florida Panthers but also spending a few years doing it for Ottawa. Surely he gets a chuckle over the fact that Ranger fans still chant that he "sucks" because of a single hit that occurred 39 years ago and was over in a fraction of a second.

I already mentioned that Mike Bossy had 17 goals in three consecutive post-seasons from 1981 through 1983. Only once did Wayne Gretzky have a 17-goal post-season... The number of greats who never had a 17-goal post-season despite having a Stanley Cup or Cups to their name (meaning they had playoff runs that were long enough to make it possible) is enormous: Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Jaromir Jagr, Mark Messier, Patrick Kane, Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Brett Hull, Peter Forsberg, Phil Esposito, and Guy Lafleur, just for starters... In fact, the last time a player reached 17 goals in a single playoff run was 22 years ago, when Joe Sakic bagged 18 while leading Colorado to its first title in 1996.

The architect of the Islanders' dynasty, General Manger Bill Torrey, passed away four weeks ago at the age of 83. Torrey was in fact the franchise's very first employee, hired when it was founded in 1972, and he steadfastly favored building a team through the draft and internal player development as opposed to pursuing a slew of big-name veterans by trade or free agency. His results speak for themselves and a banner with his name now hangs in the rafters above the team's home ice; in the spot where a player's retired jersey number would be, Torrey's banner instead displays a silhouette of his signature bow tie.

Today the NHL has 31 teams, not 21... The two-line pass is legal... Ties are impossible because of regular season shootouts... There is something called a loser point and something called a salary cap... Russian players are in the league because the Soviet Union is no more... One of the league's best  young defensemen was born and raised in Sunrise, Florida... Franchises from Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Southern California have won the Stanley Cup much more recently than one from Canada... And last year's Stanley Cup Final featured a wildly popular team from Tennessee while this year's features a wildly popular one from the scorching hot desert of southern Nevada... And the conferences and divisions are identified by geography (sort of) instead of being named after people, for we have the Eastern Conference divided into the Atlantic and Metropolitan Divisions and the Western Conference divided into the Central and Pacific Divisions, rather than the Prince of Wales Conference being divided into the Adams and Patrick Divisions and the Clarence Campbell Conference being divided into the Norris and Smythe Divisions.

But hockey is still hockey, speed is still speed, hustle is still hustle, and grit is still grit. At the end of the day those things still win out and always will. A team that was great in the past would still be great today, and the great teams from today would probably be less great if they weren't building on the foundation laid by the ones that came before.

The dynasty of the the New York Islanders was as great as it can get. Hopefully, one of these days everyone will remember it that way.


Monday, May 28, 2018

Memorial Day

Today, back porches across America will be filled with the scent of grilled burgers and sight of beer-filled coolers as we gather to celebrate Memorial Day.

In the process, we should remember that Memorial Day is much more than an excuse to get together and toss horseshoes while the kids swim in the pool. It is set aside for the solemn purpose of honoring our servicemen who died while defending America's citizens from armed enemies who sought to drive freedom from our shores.

From the first person who perished on Lexington’s village green in 1775, up to the most recent fatality in the Middle East, the list of the fallen is long. We should never forget that each person on that list made a sacrifice that was ultimate in its finality. We should resolve to do everything in our power to defend America's founding principles against all foes -- domestic in addition to foreign, orators in addition to terrorists -- to ensure that those people did not die in vain.

To observe past Memorial Days, I have published letters that were written by soldiers during wartime. Here they are again.

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This first one was from Sullivan Ballou, a major in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, to his wife. He was killed in the Battle of First Bull Run one week after writing it:

July 14, 1861

Camp ClarkWashington

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days – perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing – perfectly willing – to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield. The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And it is hard for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us.

I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me – perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly I would wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness.

But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be near you, in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights…always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

Sullivan Ballou

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This next letter was written by Arnold Rahe, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, with instructions that it be delivered to his parents if he did not survive. He was killed in action shortly thereafter:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Strange thing about this letter; if I am alive a month from now you will not receive it, for its coming to you will mean that after my twenty-sixth birthday God has decided I’ve been on earth long enough and He wants me to come up and take the examination for permanent service with Him. It’s hard to write a letter like this; there are a million and one things I want to say; there are so many I ought to say if this is the last letter I ever write to you. I’m telling you that I love you two so very much; not one better than the other but absolutely equally. Some things a man can never thank his parents enough for; they come to be taken for granted through the years; care when you are a child, and countless favors as he grows up. I am recalling now all your prayers, your watchfulness -- all the sacrifices that were made for me when sacrifice was a real thing and not just a word to be used in speeches.

For any and all grief I caused you in this 26 years, I’m most heartily sorry. I know that I can never make up for those little hurts and real wounds, but maybe if God permits me to be with Him above, I can help out there. It’s a funny thing about this mission, but I don’t think I’ll come back alive. Call it an Irishman’s hunch or a pre-sentiment or whatever you will. I believe it is Our Lord and His Blessed Mother giving me a tip to be prepared. In the event that I am killed you can have the consolation of knowing that it was in the “line of duty” to my country. I am saddened because I shall not be with you in your life’s later years, but until we meet I want you to know that I die as I tried to live, the way you taught me. Life has turned out different from the way we planned it, and at 26 I die with many things to live for, but the loss of the few remaining years unlived together is as nothing compared to the eternity to which we go.

As I prepare for this last mission, I am a bit homesick. I have been at other times when I thought of you, when I lost a friend, when I wondered when and how this war would end. But, the whole world is homesick! I have never written like this before, even though I have been through the “valley of the shadows” many times, but this night, Mother and Dad, you are so very close to me and I long so to talk to you. I think of you and of home. America has asked much of our generation, but I am glad to give her all I have because she has given me so much.

Goodnight, dear Mother and Dad. God love you.

Your loving son,
(Bud) Arnold Rahe

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God bless them all, and may they never be forgotten.

Friday, May 25, 2018

Finals Set

Some more thoughts about this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs, now that the first three rounds are in the books and the Stanley Cup Final is on deck...


My Lighning Indulgence, Part I
This post is about my thoughts as a fan of hockey, not my feelings as a fan of the Tampa Bay Lightning, so I am going to jump straight to other, more positive topics before I opine about Tampa Bay's loss in the Eastern Conference Final.

In other words, there is actually no indulgence in this segment, and here I go...


Whited Out
In my post after the second round I wrote: "I see no weaknesses on the Jets. None. Nada."

And now that the Jets have been eliminated, in five games, by an expansion team? I stand by exactly what I wrote before. But unfortunately for the players and fans in Winnipeg, sometimes having "no weaknesses" fails to guarantee victory, because there are variables and uncertainties and also those mystical creatures known as the hockey gods, which is why you play the games on the ice instead of just declaring on paper who wins and loses.

There is an abundance of speed, skill, and heart in the True North but there is also an abundance of speed, skill, and heart in the Mojave Desert, and the latter won out for several reasons. For one, the Vegas Golden Knights made fewer critical errors than the Winnipeg Jets, and when the Jets did make those errors the Knights always seemed to capitalize by scoring right away -- such as in Game Three, when Connor Hellebuyck came out of the net to play the puck and turned it over to Erik Haula, who promptly passed it to James Neal, who scored into the vacated net to restore the Knights' lead a mere 12 seconds after the Jets had tied them.

Vegas also got more balanced scoring across all four lines... Plus they were obviously less tired, seeing as how they got plenty of rest coming into the Western Conference Final whereas Winnipeg only had one day off after a grueling seven-game battle royale against top-seeded Nashville... Plus they played looser and more carefree, probably because they were playing with a version of house money, seeing as how they weren't weighed down by high external expectations.

But the most significant reason the Jets lost to the Knights is that they ran into the ultimate hockey equalizer: A goaltender playing out of his mind. This is the one sport in which one guy has an insanely disproportionate power to affect the outcome in a team game, and fortunately for Vegas, in their case that guy is the man they call Flower...


Flower
Before Vegas snatched Marc-Andre Fleury from Pittsburgh in last summer's expansion draft, he already had three Stanley Cups and four conference championships to his name. But with Vegas, at the age of 33 and in his fourteenth NHL season, he has turned in the most impressive campaign of his career. That is true when it comes to both the regular season and post-season, but since we are talking about the post-season and that is where reputations are made, let's look at that.

Through three rounds and 15 games, Fluery's save percentage is .947, and in all of NHL history only two other goalies have posted a better save percentage through a post-season -- yet both of them (Marty Turco and Dominik Hasek) got eliminated in the first round, so they did not have to sustain their excellence anywhere near as long as Fleury has this year.

In the post-salary cap era, only one other goalie has exceeded a single-season playoff save percentage of .945, and that was Jonathan Quick posting a .946 in 2012. As you may recall, that was the year LA won the Stanley Cup and Quick's contribution to the championship was so large that he instantly went from being thought of as simply above-average to being spoken of in "possible Hall of Famer" conversations. As you may also recall, that LA team was a defensive juggernaut that was superb at suppressing opponents' scoring chances -- so much so that the volume of high-danger chances Quick faced that spring was quite a bit less than Fleury has faced this spring.

In short, the performance we are witnessing this post-season from the man from Sorel-Tracy, Quebec is the stuff of which legends are made, and is likely the greatest run of playoff goaltending in the history of hockey. I hope people truly appreciate what they are seeing. As far as I'm concerned, unless he suddenly starts giving up 8 per game, Fleury should win the Conn Smythe regardless of whether Vegas wins or loses the Stanley Cup Final.


Vindication
In my May 15, 2015 post I wrote the following about Alexander Ovechkin: "Although he's been saddled for years with a reputation as a player who fails to deliver in the post-season, the numbers simply do not bear that out. Like I noted in my April 30th post, he began this season having accounted for 66 points in 65 career playoff games... Looking back at his career numbers, with this season included, Ovechkin averages .475 goals per playoff game. That puts him ahead of Phil Esposito and Mark Messier, who averaged .469 and .461 and played in eras when goals were more easy to come by. It puts him way ahead of such luminaries as Pat LaFontaine (.377), Luc Robitaille (.365), Jaromir Jagr (.360), and Steve Yzerman (.357). And among his superstar contemporaries, it puts him in front of Conn Smythe winners Patrick Kane and Henrik Zetterberg (.427 and .424)... And unlike most prolific scorers, Ovechkin does not shy away from the bone-crunching part of the game. He is a relentless forechecker who deals out more bumps and bruises than he receives, and I don't believe I've ever heard that said about Gretzky, Lemieux, Fedorov, or Lafleur... you can call him a dirty player whose stick handle 'accidentally' hits an awful lot of opponents in the face, or a non-champion who has neither a Cup ring nor an Olympic gold to his name -- but if you call him a choker, you have no idea what you're talking about."

Last season, many of the Ovechkin haters critics delighted in declaring that he was in decline because he scored "only" 33 goals. Maybe they failed to notice that 33 was the 8th highest total in a league that had more than 600 skaters with ice time that season. And, well, this season saw Ovechkin rack up 49 goals to lead the league by a comfortable margin (second place Patrik Laine had 44) while also dishing out 38 assists to finish with more than a point per game while not missing a single contest.

Alexander Ovechkin entered the league in 2005 and this is his 13th season. Until last night, his haters crititics relished bringing up the fact that his team had never gotten past the second round of the playoffs despite usually being an elite team and not-infrequently entering the playoffs with the league's best record. Well, that argument is no more, because this season his Washington Capitals have made it not only past the second round but also past the third and all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, slaying their nemesis (Pittsburgh) along the way. He is averaging more than a point per game these playoffs with a total of 22 (12 goals, 10 assists) in 19 games.

We are talking about a legendary generational talent who has performed at all levels and in all situations, but through the whims of circumstances and bounces has yet to win a Stanley Cup, World Championship, or Olympic gold with which to shine and cement his legacy. But now, with his 33rd birthday lurking less than four months away, Ovie has a palpable chance to win the most hallowed award of that triumvirate, and to do it while leading the charge instead of just occupying a roster spot. How can you not like that?


My Lightning Indulgence, Part II
The team with the best record in the NHL (Nashville) did not make it even to the conference finals, and the team with the second best record (Winnipeg) did not make it past the conference finals. That tells you all you need to know about how Lord Stanley's Cup is the hardest trophy to win in all of professional sports. It also tells you why I am not going to write a histrionic obituary of my Bolts, and am not going to lambaste them for not getting more than three rounds into this year's playoffs, like I did on Facebook in 2016.

Here's the thing: The Lightning did not even make the playoffs last year, but this year they made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Final and during the playoffs they eliminated their longtime nemesis and most-hated rival (Boston) when most people (including me) thought they could not. And they did not lie down and quit last night -- they played fast and hard and created chances -- but when it came down to it, they simply lost to a better team, and that better team is the one that deserved to win.

I would rather lose with this roster than win with another. This is our team and they went down swinging, not whimpering, but hockey is a sport that is capricious and comes at you with margins that are sliced indescribably thin, which, let's be honest, is why we love it.

If Yanni Gourde had gotten his stick on that perfect feed from Victor Hedman with the net wide open, Game Seven two nights ago would have been tied and Washington would not have gotten that pivotal two-goal lead that cast the dye. If that earlier shot by Hedman had been on a trajectory just a centimeter different, it would have gone in instead of hitting the post, and the game would have been tied and Washington would not have gotten that dye-casting two-goal lead. If Alex Killorn had buried that breakaway instead of  Braden Holtby getting his blocker on it, Washington's 2-0 lead would have been halved to 2-1 with more than a period left to play, and who knows?

But like Stephen King said, "If is the only word a thousand letters long." Damn it hurts. But when we think back on this season, we should also remember what John Cougar Mellencamp said: "Hurt so good."

This was a good season for the Bolts and a good post-season as well, and those of us who are Bolts fans must not lose sight of that. Some of my fellow fans need to step back from the cliff, because I have heard them on the radio saying that management needs to blow up the roster and that stalwart players like Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov don't have what it takes. Come the fuck on people, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Stamkos scored goals in four straight games (and five of six) overlapping the Boston and Washington series. Kucherov is only 24 and has already accounted for 59 points in 62 playoff games (that's .952 per playoff game, compared to Pavel Datsyuk's .720) and his playoff goals include some of the most clutch in franchise history.

There are 31 teams in the NHL, and seeing as how it is hard just to make the playoffs, basically half of them, including some very good ones, get eliminated from Stanley Cup contention before the post-season even starts... And then the post-season is a brutal war of attrition with, as I said above, margins that are sliced indescribably thin... By the time the post-season gets rolling, there are maybe only a half-dozen teams with a realistic chance of hoisting the grail, and basic math tells you that one divided by six is 0.166 -- so even if your team is one of those "realistic" contenders and you eliminate all the other contenders from the mix, the odds that your team will not win the Cup are still more than 83 percent. That is a rather astronomical number to overcome.

In other words, if you let your emotions run away with your brain, and let them tell you that the only way you can be satisfied is if your team wins it all, you have set yourself up for misery. Why would you do that when you don't even play for "your team" and you cannot influence the outcome of even one game? Actually, I shouldn't pose that as a question because I too used to set myself up like that. But I don't do it anymore, and for that I am thankful.

Yet I still hate, almost literally, that my Bolts came up short. Am I making sense?


Miscellany
Count me among the people who complain that the Golden Knights are not a "real" expansion team because the 2017 expansion draft rules were designed to make it easy for them to field a competitive and even winning team right out of the gate. And because those rules ensured that they would not have to experience the growing pains that other franchises had to experience, like my Bolts starting in 1992.

But do not count me among the people who think that the Golden Knights' story is less inspiring because of what I wrote above. They are still an expansion team that did not even have a roster less than a year ago, whose players had not played together until less than a year ago and were in many cases cast off or given up on by their old teams. Yet here they are. My better angels tell me "God bless them because they deserve this" -- but my demons tell me "to Hell with their fans because they had it easy and have no idea how hard it is to get this far."

There is some talk that the Stanley Cup Final will prove to be Alexander Ovechkin versus Marc-Andre Fleury. That makes sense and is not entirely illogical, but don't buy it. There is Evgeny Kuznetsov flapping his arms like a bird every time he scores. There is Jonathan Marchessault solidifying his shoulda-see-it-coming evolution from overachieving fourth-liner to bona fide first-line star. There is Braden Holtby redeeming himself by finally having a post-season to match all those stellar regular seasons he has had this decade. There is Vegas coach Gerard Gallant (who once played for the Lightning!) showing his previous employer (those damn Florida Panthers!) that they are fools for having let him go. And there is Washington coach Barry Trotz finally getting four rounds in after all those years not getting past the second round.

Then there is Vegas general manager George McPhee. He spent 17 years as general manager of the Caps from 1997 to 2014 before being let go largely because no Cup materialized during his tenure. It was in those years that he made his name, and he drafted many of the players who make up the Caps' current roster. Today, one year into his tenure with the Knights, he will watch his current club battle his old club for the trophy he has yet to win despite all his years doing very well at his craft. On a radio interview last week I heard him say, with an unmistakable longing in his voice, that "I'd like to experience it at least once."

And check this out: The man who now has McPhee's old job in Washington -- Brian MacLellan -- was his college roommate at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where they played NCAA hockey after both being born and raised north of the border in Guelph, Ontario.

Who should you root for? Take your pick. There are good reasons to root for either the Knights or the Caps, but I am cheering for the Caps even though they eliminated my Lightning. Their fans have been hurting for years and Ovechkin deserves a Cup. Vegas's fans have not bled like those in our nation's capital, and if we are keeping this on the Ovie-versus-Fleury track, Fleury already has three Cups.

Bring it!


Saturday, May 19, 2018

20 years ago today

I remember May 19, 1998 like it was yesterday. Despite being a whole degree or two further separated from that day's events than many other people were.

I was in the midst of a wholly unimpressive career as an insurance broker when I drove across the Howard Frankland Bridge for a business lunch with two insurance company reps. I remember that one of them was named Dean, but I couldn't begin to tell you the name of the company they worked for. What I can tell you is that just as I was pulling into a parking space at a now defunct Tex-Mex restaurant called Tuscon's, breaking news came on the AM radio station 970 WFLA, stating that two homicide detectives from the Tampa Police Department had been killed on duty. Upon hearing those words, I felt my heart stop, and my stomach fall away like it had been pushed into an abyss.

Part of my brain had already done the math before the other part of my brain had time to put its pants on. The TPD was not a small police department, but how many homicide detectives did it have? Eight? Nine? Maybe ten, but certainly no more than a dozen, and a dozen was pushing it. One of them was my Uncle Rick, and through him I had met others. Mathematically, the odds that one of my close family members had just died were uncomfortably high, and the odds that somebody I knew had just died were higher still.

I looked down at my cell phone and saw no indication that it had rung without me hearing it. No news is good news, right?

But what if the TPD had not yet been able to notify my aunt? What if the news had been broadcast because some smarmy media bastard heard chatter on the police scanner and went to air without thinking of the needless panic he might be causing some listeners? What if the TPD had notified my aunt of the tragic news and she was too devastated to have relayed the news to the rest of the family? What if she was trying to figure out how to tell their kids -- my cousins -- before she could tell the family at large? What if? What if?

Should I go into Tuscon's and sit through this suddenly meaningless lunch that was on my schedule? Should I pretend to care what the company reps were saying? Or should I call it off and drive around waiting for my phone to ring, or should I start calling family members myself? Should I? Should I?

May 19, 1998 was the day a white trash piece of shit named Hank Earl Carr ended the lives of some people and wrecked the lives of many others.

*     *     *     *     *

My uncle was not among the deceased, and to this day I call that the good news. But it feels strange using the phrase "good" to describe news that still meant innocent people had to receive the disastrous, anguishing news that their loved one had been murdered, that he had been cut down in his prime and would never again be in their presence, at least not here on Earth.

Hank Earl Carr's first victim that day was a four-year-old boy named Joey Bennett, the son of his girlfriend, Bernice Bowen. Carr shot Joey in the head with a rifle, though it remains unclear if he did so intentionally or accidentally.

Sometime around 10:00 in the morning he and Bernice drove Joey, still clinging to life, to a fire station and Carr claimed that Joey had been dragging the rifle around and it had somehow accidentally discharged a bullet into the boy's brain. Already a convicted felon, and wanted on a drug trafficking charge in Ohio, Carr concealed who he was by identifying himself as Joseph Bennett (Joey's father) and saying that Bernice was his wife. Bernice assisted in the lie, later testifying that "he told me to tell everybody his name was Joseph Bennett."

For obvious reason, police were called when Carr and Bowen showed up with the gunshot boy. While being questioned, Carr -- still using the Joseph Bennett alias -- learned that Joey had died and he changed his story, now admitting that he had been holding the rifle when it discharged but continuing to maintain that it was an accident. Then, as if showing up at a firehouse with a gunshot boy was not suspicious enough, he committed another insanely suspicious act by suddenly sprinting away from the scene and heading back to his and Bowen's apartment on foot, with officers in pursuit.

He grabbed a rifle, threatened officers with it, then tried again to flee but was caught and arrested. Homicide detectives Randy Bell and Ricky Childers (not my Uncle Rick) returned with him to the apartment, continued questioning him, then loaded him in the back of their car, handcuffed, to haul him into the police station.

En route, they exited Interstate 275 on the ramp to Floribraska Avenue. That is not the most direct route to the station, but it is two blocks from a Checkers fast food restaurant, and as Uncle Rick put it several days later: "Knowing Ricky, I guarantee you they were going to grab something to eat at the drive through on their way in."

But Hank Earl Carr carried on his person a small key that works on handcuffs, and tragically, it had not been detected. Sitting in the backseat, he managed to surreptitiously access the key and free himself.

They were at the stop sign at the bottom of the Floribraka exit ramp, waiting for it to turn green, when Carr -- acting with what I can only assume was feline quickness -- reached into the front of the car, snatched Childers's Glock pistol from his shoulder holster, and shot both detectives in the head. In an instant, the lives of two good men were snuffed out and the lives of their families and friends were torn asunder.

May 19, 1998 was the day a white trash waste of sperm named Hank Earl Carr used the blood of innocents to purchase a one-way, non-cancellable, non-refundable ticket to Hell.

*     *     *     *     *

My business lunch came and went with me sitting at the table and barely hearing a word. I nodded and replied but I can't tell you what I said or what was said to me. Meanwhile, my phone did not ring. No news is good news, right?

When I got back in my car I immediately called Erika, and she immediately asked if I had heard who it was. She had not, and of course neither had I.

Steeling myself, I dialed my mom's number and asked if she had received any word. She said that she had, and it was not my uncle. Then she hastily added: "It was Randy Bell and Ricky Childers."

The first thing I felt was a wave of relief. And in the very next instant I felt a sensation very much like getting hit in the stomach with a hard-thrown basketball, for Bell and Childers were men I had met, and I knew a lot about them. They were, like I said, good men... and they had just been killed by the very sort of human scum they spent their careers protecting the rest of us from.

And they were my uncle's good friends, which meant that right at that very moment he was experiencing the precise anguish his own loved ones had been spared.

As I drove back across the Howard Frankland Bridge and made my way toward home, I listened to the continuing drama unfold live on the radio. Carr's true identity was still unknown, so news people and authorities were calling him Joseph Bennett, and he had since claimed a fourth victim: 23-year-old Florida State Trooper James B. Crooks.

After murdering Bell and Childers, Carr had carjacked a pickup truck and fled north after a brief stop at his mother's. Trooper Crooks spotted the truck and pursued him on Interstate 75, and he turned onto the exit ramp to State Road 54. Partway down the ramp, Carr suddenly stopped the truck, jumped out, and walked swiftly toward Crooks's car while Crooks slammed on his brakes. Before Crooks had time to take any defensive actions, Carr shot him twice in the head, and his soul left Earth to join those of Joey, Bell, and Childers in the Great Beyond.

Back in the stolen truck, Carr resumed his northward flight with every lawman in the state on the lookout for him, and every media outlet in the Tampa Bay Area going wall-to-wall with coverage about the man they thought was Joseph Bennett. Chased by a bevy of cops on the road and at least one helicopter overhead, he got as far as State Road 50, approximately 45 north miles of Tampa. With the truck's tires having been blown out and the gas in its tank dwindling, Carr exited the interstate and barged, armed, into a small Shell station where he took the lone employee hostage while law enforcement converged on the site.

Before long there were more than 200 officers surrounding the building, making it not unlike Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid being holed up and surrounded by the Bolivian Army. Except that in this case, the crimes were current and therefore the criminal's true nature was not papered over by Hollywood; Carr was no Paul Newman or Robert Redford.

He called into 970 WFLA and they put him on the air. I remember listening as he discussed deliberately slaughtering the three officers, and how he said he knew he would "have to pay for the cops" but also claimed that he did not intend to kill four-year-old Joey.  And I remember him saying, right before he went off the air, almost as if it was an afterthought, that he knew he was being referred to as Joseph Bennett and wanted to set the record straight because "my name is Hank Earl Carr."

By the time the denouement occurred I was back home and watching on TV. In a rare act of mercy, Carr had allowed the hostage, a young pregnant woman named Stephanie, to leave, but he remained inside and overhead views on TV showed police officers in position all around the small building, guns at the ready.

Sometime between 7:15 and 7:30 in the evening, an explosive was detonated near the building to create disorientation with its concussion blast, and a SWAT team stormed inside. When they got to Carr he was dead, having turned his gun on himself and taken his own life. Or at least that's what they said.

I have never been convinced that the SWAT members didn't take it upon themselves to kill him. And frankly, as bad as this may sound, a big part of me hopes they did, because for Carr to die voluntarily and of his own choosing would be for him to get better than he deserved. But either way he deserved to die, and die he did.

May 19, 1998 was the day a white trash heap of dung got to feel perdition's pyre.

*     *     *     *     *

There are too may stories about the fallout from the murders of Joey Bennett and Randy Bell and Ricky Childers and James B. Crooks, including a lot of armchair quarterbacking, to go into them right now. So on this 20th anniversary of that horrible day, I conclude by offering a few vivid recollections, some of them firsthand.

The outpouring of support for Bell's and Childers's families and for their law enforcement co-workers was immense. Crowds flocked to downtown Tampa and left bouquets at the Fallen Officers Memorial outside the police station.

On her way to work the morning after the slayings, Erika took the Floribraska exit, just like she did every other morning. A police officer had parked his cruiser on the ramp and was sitting on its hood, sobbing.

Both the graveside funeral and the public memorial service at the Tampa Convention Center, and the motorized procession between the two, were unifying in ways whose importance must be mentioned. Bell and Childers were white. The young lady who sang "Amazing Grace" was black, as was TPD Chief Bennie Holder, who attended in full regalia and honored his fallen officers. As the long procession snaked its way to the cemetery where both men were laid to rest, people of every hue from every walk of life paid their respects from the sidewalks. There was no sign whatsoever of the social and racial divisions we often hear about when police are discussed.

His zest for homicide work drained following the loss of his good friends, my uncle left the homicide department after many years of distinguished service. Four years later he retired from police work altogether, only 50 years old at the time.

My cousin Ashley (Uncle Rick's daughter) was 17 when the slayings occurred, and word that two homicide detectives had been killed on duty leaked through Leto High School during the late morning hours. For a period of time that must have seemed an eternity, she had to exist in that school while wondering if her father was dead or alive.

Ashley knew Bell and Childers, and had for years. Some days after their deaths, perhaps even the very next day, she overheard a fellow student say that they probably deserved what happened to them, because, you know, they were cops.

Uncle Rick is, and Randy Bell and Ricky Childers were, my elders. But now I am older than all three of them were on that fateful day, and I struggle to wrap my mind around that even though it's a very simple concept made obviously inevitable by very simple math.

Today, a nondescript brown sign sits beside a road near the exit ramp where Hank Earl Carr took the final life that he would take, other than his own. The nondescript brown sign states that that particular stretch of State Road 54 is known as the James B. Crooks Memorial Highway, and every day thousands of people drive past the sign and many don't even see it, much less read what it says. And of those who do see it and read it, I wonder how many of them even know who James B. Crooks was. After all, he was basically a kid when he died, with only nine months on the job, and never had the opportunity to make the kind of deep impacts and impressions that were made by Bell and Childers.

The last time I saw Randy Bell was -- quelle surprise -- at a hockey game, in what is now known as Amalie Arena but was then known as the Ice Palace. It was the arena's first season. Bell used to work there when he was off duty, doing whatever security-related things need to be done in the tunnel that players take from the locker room to the ice and vice-versa. My cousin Rob and I were up in the stands watching the Lightning play the Rangers (if memory serves) and one of the players had to head to the locker room for some reason. I don't recall if the player was a Bolt or a Ranger, but I do remember that as he started down the hall, we saw Bell standing there far below, only a little ways down the tunnel, and Rob said "there's Randy." Obviously we did not speak to him, and little did we know that his life was mere months from being over.

Like I said above, there are too many stories about the fallout to go into them all right now. Chief among them are certainly the stories of widows and of children left fatherless. I am not writing those stories because, in addition to the fact that time is lacking right now, I feel unworthy of that task.

All I know is that May 19, 1998 was the day a useless husk of white trash got what he had coming to him... and was also the day that countless other people received news that no human being should ever have to hear.

Every other May 19th, including this one in the year 2018, is simply a day to remember.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Second One Won & Done

Some more thoughts about this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs, now that the second round is in the books...

Central Division Classic
I have written before about how many conference finals have proved to be more thrilling than the Stanley Cup Finals which followed. But this year's showdown between Winnpeg and Nashville was the first incidence I can immediately recall in which a conference semi-final proved to be so classically thrilling. I guess that's what happens when the NHL's relatively new numbskull insistence on divisional playoff bracketing within each conference forces the top two seeds to meet in the conference semis instead of the conference finals, but let's not focus on that right now.

Instead let's focus on how wonderfully see-saw this battle was between a team from the Deep South and a team from the True North. It was so see-saw that it ended with neither team winning two straight. It was so see-saw that Pekka Rinne shut the Jets out in Winnipeg in Game Six, marking the first time all season they were shut out at home, yet he also gave up so many goals that he got sent to the bench during Games One, Five, and Seven. It was so topsy-turvy that the home teams won only two of the seven contests. It was so wild that in Game Three, the Jets transformed a 3-0 deficit at the start of the second period into a 4-3 lead by the end of the second period. It had high-scoring battles (5-4, 7-4) but also blowouts (4-0, 6-2) and even one contest in which the Preds got a lead then ground things down to a slow, halting, 2-1 final score as if they had mistaken themselves for the 1995 New Jersey Devils.

This series had it all. Both clubs exhibited speed, skill, physicality, and depth. Both featured a Vezina finalist in their net and a black man as their #1 defenseman. "Tennessee's Team" had a top forward line with nothing but Swedes, while "Canada's Team" had six Americans play starring roles. And it went to Game Seven, because of course it had to go to Game Seven, kind of like Colorado and Detroit back in the day. And man oh man was it good.

But man oh man, the victors, those Winnipeg Jets, better not win the Stanley Cup. Because if they do, that would mean my Tampa Bay Lightning do not. Speaking of which...


My Lightning Indulgence
I have been a Bolts fan since Day One, more than 25 years ago, and short of their triumph in the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals, there might never have been a playoff series triumph sweeter than the one they just wrapped up over their proverbial white whale, the hated Boston Bruins.

It is too easy to say that the Bruins defeated the Lightning in three of their four regular season showdowns this season, and to cite the even more staggering statistic that prior to these playoffs the Lightning had won only 8 of the 54 games they had ever played against the Bruins in TD Garden. The big story was not the statistics -- it was the sheer arrogance with which the Bruins conducted themselves in seemingly every game against Tampa Bay prior to the last couple weeks, the way they always seemed to have their way with the Lightning even if the latter were ostensibly the better club.

But this time around, when it mattered more than it has since they met in the 2011 Eastern Conference Final, Tampa Bay came as close as it is possible to come to dominating a 112-point team. After the Bruins won Game One by a convincing score of 6-2, the Bolts flipped the tables and did the unthinkable by beating them four games in a row, including back-to-back in TD Garden, to chuck them out of the playoffs and deposit their ursine carcass on the side of the road.

It was not easy, of course. Game Four went to overtime and required a third period one-timer from Steven Stamkos to get there, after the Bolts had squandered a 2-0 lead and fallen behind 3-2. And the final scores in Games Three and Five were padded by last-minute empty-net goals. But it was as close to domination as possible, with multiple Tampa Bay players scoring at key times and with the team as a whole playing such strong D that it put a stranglehold on the Bruins and kept them from setting up in the offensive zone. Boston did not manage even a single even-strength goal in the final three games of the series.

'Tis time to forget about Brad Marchand licking Ryan Callahan's face, and to instead remember that Marchand was held to a single, pitiful, not-on-goal shot attempt in the decisive Game Five. 'Tis time to remember that Callahan played like a possessed shot-blocking matchine, and that he personally killed off at least 20 seconds of a Boston power play late in Game Five by pinning the puck against the wall deep in the Bruins' own end when they still had a chance to tie the game. 'Tis time to remember that Ondrej Palat prevented Patrice Bergeron from getting off a shot on a breakaway late in Game Five (which could have tied it up) by getting his stick under Bergeron's and lifting it up away from the ice and away from the puck. 'Tis time to remember that Tampa Bay was the more physical squad, that they hit hard and rattled the Bruins and beat them at their own bruising game.

Who knows if the Lightning will win the Cup, or even the Eastern Conference? Right now all we know is that they are one of an even smaller group of contenders than we originally thought existed -- and that they are better than the bullies from Beantown. Buh-bye, Boston.


Conn Smythe Talk
When you are halfway through the post-season, you have seen enough to start recklessly opining about which player from each team would win the trophy for the league's post-season MVP if these playoffs were to end right now, so here I go.

Tampa Bay Lightning - Brayden Point:  He has been a money player both offensively and defensively, spearheading the Bolts' designated shutdown line and successfully shutting down not only Boston's vaunted top line but also New Jersey's high-scoring superstar Taylor Hall. But Point is much more than just a shutdown guy, he's also a point-per-game offensive star with four goals and six assists in ten playoff games -- including two supremely clutch goals with his Game Four undressing of Zdeno Chara and Game Five hexing of Tuukka Rask. He sports a splendid shooting percentage of 17.4 this post-season.

Vegas Golden Knights - Marc-Andre Fleury:  In ten games, Fleury has pitched four shutouts, while flaunting a .951 save percentage and surrendering a paltry 1.53 goals per game, enabling his team to advance to the Western Conference Finals while barely breaking a sweat during either Round One or Round Two. And his infectiously relaxed and winning demeanor affects his teammates by giving them the confidence to do what they need to do, secure in the knowledge that if they take a calculated risk that goes bad, he will be there to make it right. Damn. Just damn.

Washington Capitals - Alexander Ovechkin:  This team captain and generational talent guaranteed that Washington would come back from a 2-0 series deficit in the first round against Columbus. Then he delivered, and then he kept delivering. Two rounds in, Ovie leads the Caps in goals (8) and points (15) and has proved to be just as adept at setting up others as he is at sniping his own shots into the twine: He assisted on two of the game-winners in the Pittsburgh series, including Evgeny Kuznetsov's series-winning overtime tally that put the Caps in the conference finals for the first time in 20 years.

Winnipeg Jets - Dustin Byfuglien:  Big Buff has had big impact since the puck dropped to raise the curtain on this post-season. He has done it with menacing hits and rock-solid defense that imposes his will on opponents and takes half the ice away from them. And he has done it with key contributions on offense as well, turning in several multi-point games, including that Game Three comeback against Nashville, which he punctuated with dance moves after scoring the go-ahead goal that turned their 3-0 deficit into a 4-3 lead.


Miscellany
Peter Laviolette's decision to pull Pekka Rinne, less than 11 minutes into the first period of last night's Game Seven, is getting much less criticism than it deserves. It strikes me as one of the most panicky quick-trigger-finger moves I've ever seen, considering that five-sixths of the game remained to be played and only two goals had been scored, and that Rinne is Mr. Predtaor Himself and likely to win the Vezina. I have to believe that Nashville's players noticed their coach's lack of confidence and that it affected them. Laviolette is a great coach with a Cup ring to his name, but that was a bad move last night... But still, looking at how Winnipeg played, the Preds almost certainly weren't going to win even if Laviolette hadn't panicked. He simply increased their odds of defeat from 95 percent to 100 percent. I see no weaknesses on the Jets. None. Nada.

Washington is for real. Braden Holtby is finally having a post-season that matches the kind of regular seasons he always put up when he was a perennial Vezina candidate, and Washington's skaters are playing with the kind of self-assuredness that was once lacking back when they were weighed down by the expectations brought on by league-leading regular seasons. And conventional wisdom is often wrong, and conventional wisdom says Tampa Bay has the Eastern Conference Finals in the bag. This combination makes me nervous... But if everything else remains as it has, the Bolts should prevail in the end (albeit after a long and difficult struggle) because they have a little more depth at forward and a lot more depth on defense.

Winnipeg, like I said, has no weaknesses I can see, so they should beat Vegas... But that series will also not be short, because Vegas has speed and confidence and is playing with nothing to lose. And because they have Marc-Andre Fleury, who (see above) is playing so well that he could prove to be the greatest equalizer or table-turner in many years.


And now...
...bring it, and let the games begin. In less than two hours!


Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Media Malfeasance!

Disclosure #1:  The headline of this post might be a little hyperbolic. Note that I said "might" and "a little."

Disclosure #2:  Some un-Christian-like profanity is sure to follow. So if that bothers you, consider this to be one of those new agey things called "trigger warnings."


Regardless of whether you're talking about sports media or political media or entertainment media or general news media, it is almost too easy to berate the so-called mainstream portion of that media for pretending to be objective. However, that is all the more reason to berate them: If they would drop the pretense then there would be no need to call them on it, but drop it they won't, so calling them on it is something we (by which I mean "I") feel driven to do.

The case in point that has my blood boiling right now is last night's coverage, by NBC Sports Network, of Game Two of the Stanley Cup Playoff series between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins. It is said that NBC stands for National Broadcasting Company, but I'm quite sure it actually stands for either National Bruins Company or National Boston Corporation.

You might have heard -- because NBC said so ad nauseam and some other outlets followed their lead -- that the officials screwed the Bruins 1) by not calling Anton Stralman for slashing Brad Marchand on a late scoring chance, and 2) by calling David Pastrnak for high-sticking Victor Hedman when Pastrnak's high-stick caused Hedman's own stick (rather than Pastrnak's) to open a faucet of blood just below Hedman's eye.

What you might not have heard -- because NBC didn't bother to make an issue of it -- is that during the same game, Tory Krug was not called when he blatantly slashed Brayden Point in the back, nor was he called when he blatanly slashed Yanni Gourde in the shin.

Brad Marchand is the dirtiest player in the league and a direct threat to everyone's health when he is on the ice. His entire career has been built largely (not entirely, but largely) on headhunting opponents and delivering cheap shot after cheap shot without receiving any punishment that is commensurate with his sins. Last night he delivered a vice-like pinch to the neck of Tyler Johnson, as if he was a Vulcan trying to KO a Klingon, and of course he was not called... At another time last night, while a scrum was being broken up, he opened his mouth and started to bite someone's arm, then stopped at the very last instant when he realized the arm belonged to an official and not a Lightning player... But of course you might not have heard about those ratty infractions by The Rat Himself, because NBC didn't bother to make an issue of them.

After the game, NBC studio analyst Jeremy Roenick waxed poetic in high dudgeon about the injustices he perceived as having been visited upon the Boston Bruins by the one non-call and one debatable call mentioned three paragraphs above -- but he said not a word about any injustices being visited upon the Tampa Bay Lightning by the three and a half non-calls mentioned one and two paragraphs above. (Roenick, by the way, was born in Boston and attended the prestigious Thayer Academy in nearby Braintree, Massachusetts.)

Mike Milbury was also apopleptic about the injustices he perceived as having been visited upon the Bruins by the same non-calls that bothered Roenick, and he too said not a word about any injustices being visited upon the Lightning by the same non-calls that Roenick failed to mention. (Milbury, by the way, was also born in Boston, and his entire 12-year NHL playing career was spent playing for the Bruins -- and the most famous thing about his playing career happened at a 1979 road game when he went into the stands to confront a fan, and ripped off the fan's shoe and attacked him with it by striking him in the head.)

In the postgame presser, at least one "even-handed" media member was sure to ask Boston Coach Bruce Cassidy about the non-call when Stralman slashed Marchand. But of course, nobody bothered to bring up the non-call when Marchand Vulcanized Johnson's neck, or Marchand's (hyperbole alert) ruefully aborted venture into cannibalism, or Krug's serial slashing.

And I have to mention Pierre McGuire's reaction when Charlie McAvoy scored late in the first period to tie the game after the Lightning had dominated most of the period. In McGuire's favor I have to say that he has no discernible tie to the Bruins organ-eye-zation or the city of Boston, but it was hard not to notice that he -- in the words of someone I have been friends with for 18 years -- "practically orgasmed" on-air when McAvoy scored.

If the mainstream sports media would stop pretending they are neutral, none of this would matter. But they do pretend they are neutral, and as a result their depictions of games carry greater weight than they deserve, and because of that greater weight, their depictions of games are what history will remember of the games. And that is a fucking travesty if not an outright fucking disgrace, so I say fuck them.

As far as the officiating in Game Two between Tampa Bay and Boston was concerned, it was like most NHL officiating, which means it was bad. But as is also the case with most NHL officiating, the bad calls went against both teams and cancelled themselves out, with neither team being either more screwed or more blessed than the other. The team that won was the team that deserved to win, and for the mainstream sports media to suggest otherwise is a fucking travesty if not an outright fucking disgrace, so I say fuck them.

And for anybody anywhere, media member or otherwise, to suggest that the Boston Bruins -- who have employed dirty rat fuck Brad Marchand since the Year of Our Lord 2009 -- have somehow been screwed by officiating, is the most grotesque fucking travesty of all time if not the most grotesque fucking disgrace of all time, so I say fuck them.

I will never forget Game Seven of the 2011 Eastern Conference Finals, played in Boston, when the Bruins unleashed Terminator-style thuggery and were not called for a single penalty the entire game, enabling them to eek out a 1-0 victory against, yes, the Tampa Bay Lightning. The fact that not one so-called neutral media member acknowledges how fucking of a travesty that was means that they should be fucking ignored. Fuck them.

The Bruins might win this current series. They may well be the better team. But the Lightning outplayed them in both of the first two games, despite those games being split, and for the fucking media to act like the Bruins got screwed is a fucking travesty if not a fucking disgrace.

So in closing, just in case you didn't get where I was going with any of this: Fuck The Media.


Disclosure #3:  I actually like Jeremy Roenick, but come on JR, that was ridiculous of you last night!