More Canes doubters…  I love it.  I think the Canes could ride this whole “The Canes can only win if the other team plays bad” mentality all the way to the Cup.

At least we know Puck Daddy and his prognosticators aren’t bandwagon Caniacs.

1. My absolute favorite part, besides the win, is how everyone continues to discredit the ‘Canes.  To hear Julien and pretty much all writers other then ‘Canes beat reporters, you’d think the ‘Canes had the talent of a Pewee team and that the only reason Boston lost was because they played bad.  Yeah, right.  Most of this Canes team has been in this situation before.  Ward is a former Conn Smythe winner who is playing like it once again.  And when the Canes are on, they are as good as anyone.  In the first three games they won, they took it to Boston and last night, they played well enough to win.   How about a little credit for the ‘Canes?  On second thought, keep doubting.  I think it fuels their fire.
2. I can’t wait to hear all the Bruins writers complain that Walker should have been suspended for fighting with Ward.  Wah, wah, wah.
3. How far should one take sports fan superstition?  I was unable to watch the first three games the Canes won.  I did watch the games they lost.  Therefore, I refused to watch Game 7 last night (but I think I wore out the “refresh” button on my web browser updating the score).  Should this carry over to the next round?  Note, I did watch the games the Canes won in the NJ series.  I think I will make a game time decision on Monday.

Nice post over on “Canes Country” about Marty Brodeur’s theatrics after game 3 the other night.  Now, I’ve been a big fan of Brodeur for a long time, but the stick throwing at the end of the game was a bit much.  Sorry to say, Marty, but being in front of you in the crease (outside the paint) isn’t interference, it’s just good hockey.  And when you go out of your crease and initiate contact and the puck isn’t there, well, that, my friend, is interference on your part.

I certainly hope, for the Canes sake, that the refs don’t invoke the “star rule” and start calling issues that aren’t there.

Um, where’s the Wii version?  I love Madden ’09 on the Wii, but NHL Hockey has always been my favorite, going back to the glory days of the Sega.  Geez, one could easily use the remote and nunchuk to do all kinds of stick handling moves.  Seems like a no brainer to me.

Bad ‘Canes. Bad.

Just gotta say it has been a pleasure to watch, over the last few years especially since I moved to Raleigh, someone who plays the game right!  Good luck in the future!

One of the things I really took away from both Total Immersion and Daniels’ Running Formula (see the right hand menu for a link) was how important mindful training is to achieving your athletic and fitness goals. All through my early years and even into college, I was always a decent athlete and prided myself on being coachable, but I never really took my training to heart and thought about what benefits I was getting from the various drills and exercises. Thus, when I came across Daniels’ and Laughlin, the light bulb went off. To me, Yoga is a great extension of this approach to training. Not only is it making me more flexible, but it is also making me stronger (yes, stronger, I never would have thought Yoga could do that) and it makes me focus on mindful movement, which then translates into my running, cycling and even my family and work. Yoga forces you to deliberately think about how to get your body into a position and then how to hold it as well as focus on your breathing, which can have a huge impact for endurance athletes. You can’t help but translate this purposeful thinking into the rest of your life, because it becomes so ingrained in who you are. And I don’t mean it makes you sit an analyze every situation until you are paralyzed, I mean it brings clarity to your thoughts and allows you to figure out what you want much easier.

Here’s an interesting thought:  maybe we should be applauding the Tour de France and cycling.  Everyone is harping on them about doping, etc. but you know what, they are actually doing something about it.  All the other sports, Baseball included are just thankful it is not them and I am sure the people running those leagues are just waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop.

So, my kudos go out to the Tour and cycling, but not the idiots like Vini and Rasmussen who are dumb enough to still do it.  They are testing and they are kicking people out.  The PGA, NFL, MLB, MLS, NHL, European Soccer are not being nearly so bold as cycling.  And I will never for a single minute believe that the reason is because cycling is the only sport out there doing it.  I guarantee if any of these other sports actually had the backbone to really test and come out with test results, there would be just as much stink.  The thing is, with MLB and the NFL they have such strong player’s unions that they fight tooth and nail to prevent testing and disclosure.

Wow, what a trip down memory lane.  I can’t believe it has been 30 years since Slapshot came out. Like any hockey player who grew up after it was filmed, it was an integral part of my life.  Seriously, is there any hockey player older than say 12 or 13 who hasn’t seen it?  Let me just share a few of my favorite memories of the movie in my life:

1. Before pretty much every single home game of my high school career a bunch of us would all go over to one teammates house and watch the movie.  We knew every damn line.  Sometimes, during games, we would recite them.  Of course, being a hormone enraged teenager, you can guess our favorite scenes, and they weren’t always hockey.  “What was that guys name?  Damned if he wouldn’t get in the penalty box and uh-uh-uh…”  Joe Mcgrath, the owner of the Chiefs, was phenomenal.  His lines are classic and seem to come out of nowhere and the next thing you know you are rolling on the floor.  And that’s after watching it 30 times.
2. In college, it was a regular event to watch Slapshot as well.  I won’t say we watched it before games, but we probably watched 3-4 times a semester.
3. I still watch it every few years and now I am going to have to buy the DVD, I suppose
4. In 1992, on my way to college, we stopped and stayed in a Howard Johnson’s in Utica, NY on the way out to Amherst College.  As we walk into the lobby, I couldn’t help but feel like I have been here before.  But when?  Nope, I had never been there.  It was the same lobby where the Chiefs stayed on one road trip where one of the Hansons is shoving the hotel clerk into a planter and hitting him with a tree (or something like that.  Dang, now I need to go watch it again so I can remember it exactly)
5. Played a few games in the Syracuse War Memorial, which was used in a few scenes as well.
6. At Amherst, I can remember a class with a particularly pompous pre Law professor (I won’t name names, but if you were there you  know who I am talking about.  And by the way he HATED sports, so the irony is great, in my mind anyway) and he was asking, in his usual way, a question about a person where there wasn’t really a right answer.  After shooting down several people who didn’t quite get the nature of his question and responded with real names, I threw out from the back of the room the classic Slapshot line from Ned Braden: “Is the answer Jesus?”  And you know what, I was right.  Little did the Prof. know I was being a smart ass and throwing some Slapshot at him.  If he had known that, he probably would have failed me on the spot.
7. I can still recall a interview Letterman or one of those guys did with Roger Ebert.  And he asked him if there was any movie that he changed his mind on, thinking it was bad and then seeing it again, changed his mind.  The first answer that came to mind: Slapshot
8. I would bet I have watched it 100+ times

Anyway, thanks for going down memory lane for me.  Can’t say I played like the Hansons’, but, damn, were they funny and right on with much of the mentality of hockey.  Even if the fighting is outlandish at times, the characters are dead-on.  So, if you’re looking for a classic movie, regardless of the hockey, rent Slapshot.

If anyone on the team gets caught, the whole team is punished just the same as the individual.  Peer pressure is making the individuals do the drugs in the first place, peer pressure will make them stop.  Get caught cheating and your whole team can’t race in the Tour De France, how’s that for a deterrent?

Would it work?  Not sure, I imagine the sports unions wouldn’t like it, but until they come clean on the issue of doping and steroids and require higher standards of their members, they don’t have much credibility.  I think it would definitely stop the arms race, as owners wouldn’t want their investment lost due to one individual, so they would place a higher value on doing things the right way.