Have you ever had the feeling it was one of those days? Well today is definitely one of them. So last night was a rare night where hockey DEFINITELY got one over on baseball. Not only was this good to see but to get it live on the podcast was priceless. Go take a listen last night about midway in when everything broke. The archive is up on the right side of the site. Also, the turkeys will be coming later but just not quite at their scheduled time. Apparently they have a case of cold feet and are a little nervous this week. I really cannot say or understand why they have the fear in their eyes.
Leading off………
This hardly never happens but we do lead off like I said with hockey trumping baseball in a grand way. Unless you were stuck behind a rock in a deep Afghan cave…you watched either the Stanley Cup Finals or baseball “sort of perfection” or both. Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game when the unthinkable happened. Umpires normally get these 1/2 step calls 99.9% of the time routinely. Unforunately, umpire Jim Joyce clearly missed this one as he called Jason Donald of the Cleveland Indians safe. Replays clearly showed Donald to be out by about a half step. Understandably, Jim Leyland (Detroit Manager) and all of Detroit was pretty well steaming. The thing is with the social media generation, this went around the world faster than well…you know.
It was a time where literally every sports tweeter I knew was talking about it in some way. Even in the live chat I was on at PHT, the perfect game that was not became instant news. Everyone knows about the blown call in the 85 World Series. Just imagine if social media was on the scene back then. Then again maybe no one does. That is the reality these days. News happens NOW! Let’s give Jim Joyce some credit here. He did man up and he did go to Galarraga and directly apologize. Does that change things? Well not really. I do not think Bud Selig is going to make an exception here and give the kid a perfect game like he rightfully deserves. This is sadly how it is. In the boxscores, it goes as a one hitter but anyone who watched knows otherwise. Oddly enough I can tell you this, anything this player signs from now on will instantly be worth quite a bit of dough. The other fallout will be replay but that is another Pandora’s Box to open at a much later time.
Now what does hockey do with a potentially sticky situation? They actually got it right and it could not have come at a more “perfect” time. In the second period of the Hawks-Flyers game last night, a puck had appeared to come very close to going across the line. Well the NHL waits until the whistle is blown and rightfully so. Even if its arond 100 seconds after the original play if need be. After maybe a questionable penalty on Dustin Byfuglien, Chris Pronger’s shot knuckles and trickles under as it was tipped by Scott Hartnell. Here is the video of all the goals last night. Take a look about 2:40 in.
So in the grand scheme of things, hockey clearly got one right. The review went up to Toronto and they got the right angle then simply made the right call. Early in OT, the NHL War Room would get it right again before the Flyers would ultimately win it later in the OT. The bottom line is on a night where baseball was talking all sorts of slings and arrows, hockey was actually being praised in the same token. Even ESPN was praising hockey when normally they act like vultures when something bad happens or ambivalent when something good occurs.
The hockey praise did extend into the twitter world but nowhere near as “viral” as the backlash heaped on Jim Joyce and it is still going….right into the morning sports shows and right throughout the day and probably weekend I am sure. But at least for one night, hockey could sit there and smile a bit knowing full well that for a change the heat was off them and on another sport for a change.
Off The Mat…….
Now maybe there was something that the hockey gods did not get right and its something I will talk about briefly here. I am sorry Flyer fans but acting then gooning it up is not how a team should play. Yes I played the game for many years but I have never seen so many players suddenly think they are going for an Academy Award. Also I do understand Rocky was nominated for Best Picture in 1976. I get it. I really do.
However when Dan Carcillo falls like someone shot him with an elephant gun every 30 seconds or Chris Pronger cross checks someone twice in five seconds and does not get called, I take a bit of notice. Especially when Dustin Byfuglien barely touched Pronger’s stick but it broke and naturally the penalty was called. Just because you cross check someone without a stick, the intent is clearly there. So if you have to call the slash on Byfuglien, it would have made some sense to call the cross check on Pronger. Last night was a blatant case where Mr. McCreary allowed the Flyers to play Flyers hockey. The Flyers may want to thank him for the OT win moreso than the NHL War Room to be honest. Intent is intent NHL refs. Get it right next time.
What will happen in Game 4 as a result? I do not know. But if Chicago gets rattled again by this brand of “curious officiating” then maybe there will be a series after all. The odd thing is despite all this, the Hawks were one bounce from an insurmountable (or so it seems) 3-0 series lead. New Jersey was driven insane by it first then Boston at the end of their series, then Montreal, and now Chicago. Maybe the NHL should watch that HBO special on the Broad Street Bullies because the Flyers are literally following the blueprint almost to a tee. Let’s play some hockey here!
Last But Not Least……
How much stock should be really put into Mock Drafts for this month’s NHL Draft. It is a very good question that deserves a fairly straightforward answer. What these “mocks” really do is set up a barometer for how the first round is going to go. Now it is true that some will “mock” the whole draft but to most, that is relatively insane. There are many sites that do the deed for hockey fans. There are scouting folk that all they do is run “mocks”. The bottom line is after the first ten picks, there are so many variables that go just into the first round of the NHL Draft.
This is expected to be a very active NHL Draft from a trade perspective. There may be as many as 30-40 trades in this weekend of action including the trading of players’ rights so that negotiations can take place. It will be a very crazy atmosphere in Los Angeles and also that will change the plans of some teams which will obviously impact draft order and much much more. I guess in a sense it comes down to seeing how close someone is to being right on something that is maybe the most inexact of sciences. Seeing into the future is beyond difficult but the flirtation of trying to see it correctly is very alluring.
What we are going to do on The Program is after the draft, take a look at some “mocks” and see how many the experts got right in the first round. This is more for the sake of curiosity than anything else. Like we said, there is no exact science here. So it should be intriguing to see what transpires in the first round in just a little over three weeks.
And with that we are done for now. The turkeys are coming later today and who knows what else is lurking. As always, comment away and have some fun with it with a little brevity and seriousness as well.
