Much A Lil Bit To Do About Not Much

From "Chad," writing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, an essay in honor of the NHL's opening day:

Baseball spreads half its players across a pasture, hides the rest in dugouts, and then, proudly aware that it is the only sport without a time clock, proceeds apace as though its fans do not have one either. Football, played on one hundred twenty yards of distant field in increasingly canyon-esque stadia, packs twelve minutes of balletic violence into sixty minutes of game time and two hundred minutes of real time. Basketball provides near constant action and often intimate attention, but when scoring occurs every twenty seconds, only the last hundred or so seem to matter, and they often unfold over such an excruciation of stops and starts and fouls and timeouts and team meetings that even the most dramatic finishes unfold like athletic arrhythmia. Soccer drops one lost ball amidst twenty joggers, offers almost as many riots in the stands as goals on the field, and is beloved only by a loose affiliation of drunkards, Europhiles, and overprogrammed eight-year-olds who have yet to convince me I’m missing anything of interest.

But there’s something about hockey.

[…]

There are only two referees. There are no cheerleaders. There are no visits to the mound, no endless succession of pick-off attempts, no cascading pitching changes; the game has neither the time nor the patience for such piffle. There are no huddles, no audibles, no waiting for plays to be radioed into their empty helmets; plays and formations are called on the fly, run from memory, and most often improvised in brilliant bursts of athletic creativity. Each team gets only one timeout. There are fewer television timeouts in a whole game than there are in any one quarter of an NFL game. The time between prime scoring chances is generally measured in seconds, not in innings or minutes or hours.

Hockey is home to grace and grit, to brains and brawn, to prolonged periods of brute force followed by sudden explosions of astonishing elegance. It elevates teamwork and celebrates self-sacrifice. It bestows an annual award for sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct. It inspires awe and honors tradition and does both at once, at the end of each season, when its two best teams meet to win and hold and see their names engraved upon the most hallowed, the most regal, the most revered trophy in all of professional sports.

There's MUCH more at the link. If you're a hockey fan you know what Chad is on about and you'll nod your head north-south all the way through the piece. But I suppose the essay might be an even better read if you're NOT a fan. At least you might understand what we're on about here at EIP during the play-off runs in the Spring… and tonight, on Opening Day.

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Speaking of hockey… it slipped our mind yesterday that the Wings' exhibition game against Farjestad (a Swedish club) was being streamed live on NHL.com. Not completely, mind you, as we did manage to watch the third period in its entirety. The game was decided by the time I tuned in, with the Wings leading 4-1. 

Still and even, we did get to watch a complete period and it was pretty good. It didn't surprise me to see a liberal sprinkling of Wings jerseys throughout the stands, but I was surprised at a few things. First, there are no nets strung up above the glass behind the goals to protect spectators from errant pucks like there are in the NHL (those nets happened in NHL arenas when a fan was killed after being struck in the head by one of those errant pucks a few years back). The glass also appears to be somewhat lower than that of NHL rinks, as well. The upshot is you'd damned well better be paying attention at a hockey game in Sweden! Second, it appeared the NHL brought its own officials to referee the games in Sweden. Dunno why that surprised me, but it did. Third, Swedish fans are more like soccer fans in that there were a tremendous number of outsized club banners being waved back and forth in the stands. And lastly, there were no English-speaking announcers or commentary whatsoever. It was almost like being AT a game, rather than watching it on teevee. And there were no teevee timeouts, either… just wall-to-wall action. I really liked that!

Oh. One other thing: the streaming feed was good enough that I could watch in full-screen on my peesee without getting a headache due to herky-jerking buffering. There was some small amount of buffering from time to time, but on the whole it wasn't bad. And when you consider I was watching a hockey game taking place in SWEDEN… in real time… it's like "Wow!" I (heart) technology!

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I noticed yesterday we're on something of a record pace here at EIP this year. We're gonna break 600 posts for the year… if I continue posting at the rate I've been posting. That's a pretty big "if," when you come right down to it. I've been slightly depressed about our traffic of late, seeing as how our daily average has dropped below 100 visits per day for the first time this year:

 

About which… I suppose it only goes to prove "quantity has a quality all its own" only applies to tanks and cheap-ass little fighters and not blog posts, as readers seem to be voting with their feet. Oh, well. We do this mainly for ourselves and remain amazed anyone drops by at all, actually.  So... for you few, you proud:  Thank You!

―:☺:―

Today's Pic: … is a Yellowstone re-run I published at some point in the way-back. I was out for an early morning putt on the mo'sickle and stopped to watch these pelicans (yep, pelicans. Don't ask, I don't know why) quietly cruising along the lake. It was one of "those" moments… in spades.

I continue to be impressed with PBS' "National Parks" series and have not missed a single episode. Ken Burns was on "Charlie Rose" last evening and did a 20-minute interview on and about the series (you can watch the interview here). The man is MOST impressive, as is his work. You're really missing something, Gentle Reader, if you're not watching "National Parks." It's simply great good stuff.