The 2013 NHL Predictions You Didn’t Ask For!

You mean… I’m allowed in the playoffs?!

It wouldn’t be the start of a hockey season without some prognostications before the first puck drop no matter how horribly wrong I am, would it?  Here are my picks for how the 2013-uhh..13 NHL season will play out:

Western Conference

1 – Los Angeles Kings
2 – St. Louis Blues
3 – Vancouver Canucks
4 – Nashville Predators
5 - Chicago Blackhawks
6 - Detroit Red Wings
7 – Edmonton Oilers
8 – Phoenix Coyotes
9 - Minnesota Wild
10 – San Jose Sharks
11 – Dallas Stars
12 – Colorado Avalanche
13 – Anaheim Ducks
14 – Calgary Flames
15 – Columbus Blue Jackets

I as always go with my usually wrong “stick with the champs until they are no longer the champs” rule but in this case I think picking the Kings to win the Pacific and finish first in the West is a fairly safe pick.  St. Louis should be right there fighting for top spot with them and the Canucks as much as everyone hates to admit it still have pretty much the same roster that has had them win the presidents trophy back-to-back.

I had thought about leaving Detroit out of the playoff picture but let’s face it, Detroit is Detroit.. they’ll make it. Not many are picking the Oilers to make the playoffs, but I do think they have a decent shot at it if the kids don’t wilt under the pressure.

Of the non-playoff teams I have that could make it in?  Minnesota and Dallas.  It’ll be odd to see the Wild try to score more than one goal a game and win games that way and maybe that’s what is throwing most people off when picking them.  Dallas meanwhile is going into the season without Jamie Benn and with a couple of 40 year olds and a guy coming off surgery as their go-to-guys on offense and if this was a full 82 game season I’d say for sure they wouldn’t make it, but there might be just enough gas in Jagr and Whitney’s tanks to get the Stars in.

Of the playoff teams I have picked that I could easily see drop off?  Phoenix & Detroit.  I’m not convinced that Mike Smith’s goaltending last year wasn’t a bit of a fluke and Detroit certainly isn’t the west conference powerhouse they’ve been in the last 20 years.

Eastern Conference

1 – New York Ranger
2 – Boston Bruins
3 - Carolina Hurricanes
4 - Pittsburgh Penguins
5 – Buffalo Sabres
6 – Washington Capitals
7 – Ottawa Senators
8 – New Jersey Devils
9 – Philadelphia Flyers
10 – Winnipeg Jets
11 – Florida Panthers
12 – Tampa Bay Lightning
13 – Toronto Maple Leafs
14 – Montreal Canadiens
15 – New York Islanders

Rangers are stacked from top to bottom and they are my pic to win the Stanley Cup.  Carolina has quietly loaded up on some skill and the Bruins will walk away with the Northeast division easily.  Pittsburgh could be a nightly highlight reel of offense and I truly think the Senators are going in the right direction.

The Flyers to me have been a team of smoke and mirrors the last couple of seasons and I never pick them to make the playoffs and yet they do anyway despite the goaltending issues. I like Winnipeg’s top end skill but their overall toughness as well as depth I feel is suspect.  I know Florida won the division last season but like everyone else I have no clue how they did it so until they do it again, I’m not going to take them that seriously.

Picks of the playoff teams to drop out?  Buffalo and New Jersey.  Sabres should have been better than they were last season, but then again they could prove that last season actually is an indication of how poor they are.  I have New Jersey getting in but it won’t be by much – maybe a single point or even a tie break.

Teams that could make it into the playoffs? Philly, Winnipeg, Florida and Tampa Bay…  To me the east is such a crap shoot – more so than the west – because even at 13 where the Leafs sit I keep thinking “Leafs aren’t THAT bad a team” but it’s hard to figure where they’ll get in over say the likes of a Philly or Jersey…  Numbers 6 through 14 may by separated by just a mere 5 or 6 points when all is said and done.

At least the Islanders can look forward to moving in with Hova.

And as for my Stanley Cup pick?  Give me Rangers over Blues.

 

My Brief Flirtation With The NFL

The NHL Lockout is (tentatively) over!

As we all look back on the craziness that we’ve all had to go through the last 113 days or so, we all have our favorite “memories” that will last us forever and ever.

Or at least until the first cheap shot hit that only nets a two game suspension and we all go back to bitching about how the NHL justice system is broken.

Anyway, while others may look at #DregerFace or Guy Serota as the best parts about a dreadful lockout, my own personal memory from the lockout was the 5 question Q and A I did for Sam Fels over at @RealFansProgram back in November when the Houston Texans took on the Chicago Bears for Sunday Night Football – otherwise known as the game the Texans were on national TV and didn’t get completely humiliated.

Looking back on it, I’m not happy I came across as little less than an expert about the Texans but then I’ve only been really following the Texans for about four seasons or so now, so I’m hardly an expert so in a way that Q and A was an accurate representation of just how much I know about football.

And for the sake of posterity, I am now keeping it here in PDF form…  The Committed Indian vs. Houston Texans.

This little bit of work actually re-sparked my interest in blogging again, but I’m glad I don’t have to blog about the NFL because truth be told I really don’t know that much about it compared to a lot of other die-hards.

So I’ll just go back to being the guy who thinks he knows a lot about hockey but in reality don’t know that much about it compared to a lot of other die-hards.

 

I Hate You NHL! Please Come Back NHL!

So for the last few months – since this whole NHL lockout bullshit started really – I’ve been steadfast in my resolve not to support either the owners or players.  This of course means no buying of NHL or NHLPA merchandise but also I haven’t worn any of my NHL sweaters or clothing since the lockout started taking away games back in September of 2012.

And if you know me, you know that choosing not to wear any of my NHL gear pretty much accounts for half of my wardrobe.  Sad but true.  (Full disclosure, there has been the odd lazy Sunday where I haven’t had anything else to wear that I’ve slipped on a Winnipeg Jets or Dallas Stars shirt, but I haven’t gone out in public with it, so I still say it counts)

On top of that, I’ve made it known that I’m very much ready to move on even when and if the NHL decides to come back.  For every day the NHL has been locked out I’ve said that I’ll stay away for double that.

So if the lockout officially ended today (Friday Jan 4th) which is day 111, I’d stay away for 222 days meaning I don’t even as much flip my TV on to an NHL game until August 13…  Which wouldn’t feature an NHL hockey at all and now that I’ve typed this out and thought it through, feel this is kinda lame.

But anyway the whole idea is I felt we wouldn’t have an NHL season at all this winter and thus things likely wouldn’t get settled until August or September of this year meaning we’d have gone almost a whole 365 days with lockout non-action and that would mean my self-imposed hockey hiatus would be double that.  So say for example things were settled Sept 1st… That’s 351 days which doubles to 702 which means I say sayonara NHL until August 4th, 2015

That’s a little more like it!  That’s a walk away with some meat (and conviction) behind it!

But here’s the thing… I miss NHL hockey.

Sure I’ve had CHL and AHL and the World Junior and Spengler Cup tournaments have been great… I watched some of the Winter Classic marathon ESPN Classic Canada had on New Years Day…  All of that has been fun, but it hasn’t been the same as actual live-as-it-happens NHL action.

And I miss wearing my NHL clothes.  I miss wearing my Winnipeg Jets jersey because for as much as I hated when Reebok changed the whole uniform system, I have to admit they made a damn comfy sweater.

I miss being able to buy whatever cool NHL item I saw on a store shelf… Like that heated Winnipeg Jets blanket I saw at Walmart the other day that I would have KILLED to had, but I gotta stay strong and refuse to support the selfish owners and ignorant players and make my stand as a fan that I will no longer…

… Only I caved a bit and got a copy of NHL 13 this past Sunday.  In my defense it was only 20 bucks on sale at Future Shop so at least they didn’t get all the moneys they could have from me.  But it was in that moment I plugged NHL 13 into my Xbox I realized I really do miss having the NHL in my life.

That stupid, stupid NHL full of greedy bastards.  Man do I hate the NHL right now.

But I love the NHL so I’ll be back buying clothes and getting tickets to games and spending hours watching highlights or scouring stats.

Just not for a good long time after they settle this stupid, stupid lockout.  There are other things I can watch like soccer and basketball.

But in my heart of hearts soccer and basketball can’t hold a candle to NHL action so maybe the day after they end that stupid, stupid lockout I’ll line up and buy as many NHL McFarlane figures as possible.

I can’t stand the owners.  Greedy billionaires not giving a damn about the actual customer and only interested in my money which they won’t have for a good long time as I need to be part of the group that speaks with my wallet. 

Which yet may still open up to them as soon as they reach a CBA agreement.

The players are clueless and hopelessly out-of-touch with reality with all their heads firmly planted in their asses and I refuse to give them the gratification of having me back right away.

Although I may cheer the moment they drop the puck.

 

Finally Some Competition For Ugly Christmas Sweaters!

It’s 1 am and I’m actually killing time before Canada’s opening game at the World Junior Championships against Germany (damn you 2 am starts!) so for a brief moment I want to express how nice it was to actually have basketball on all Christmas Day.

Granted I know the NBA has done the Christmas Day thing for years now, but with no NHL this year I kinda gained a new appreciation about it… Well, almost everything about it…

Dear NBA: Stop it.

I get the whole wanting to make some sales off merch for a one day event and I know you’re not the only sport to flirt with this idea of a ‘one color’ jersey, but this was just stupid.  Especially New York and OKC, they deserve better than this.

The Lakers and Heat to a degree (bad pun alert) are tolerable if you forced me to pick two out of the group, but once the other sets were on the court they were very hard on the eyes.

 

The Christmas Gift To Myself…

Surprise, It’s my old blog!

A funny thing happened this past year in which a lot of things happened in my life, I became tired of writing which for many years was my one true passion and “hobby” as it were.

It started with my work over at Defending Big D helping cover the Dallas Stars.  It was actually a little over a year ago I filed my last post with them – a game recap of the Stars beating the Ottawa Senators 3-2.  I guess since it wasn’t likely I wasn’t about to ride off into any blogging sunset writing about a Stars playoff victory, I had to take the next best thing and write about my team being victorious over one of my best friends’ favorite team. (Sorry Joe.)

Truth was though I was very ready to quit before the 2011-12 season even started.  At the time, I felt my heart wasn’t into writing about hockey any more on a almost nightly basis and what with the excitement of the Winnipeg Jets I didn’t even know if my heart was fully into being a Stars fan any more. (Jury is still out on that one by the way if I am being completely honest with myself.)

So I left and felt that would “cure” things and that without being limited to just Dallas Stars game recaps, I’d re-find my passion for writing.  I resolved to do a post-a-day because in my head I was still in my “volume is king” blog mode that had been kind of drilled into me over years of being with the MVN and SBNation networks.

Not that they are wrong of course, but that’s not what MY blog should have been about.  Some of my favorite blogs don’t see updates for a good two weeks.  For some reason I didn’t clue in that I could have just as easily blogged once a week or whenever the feeling stuck me, been fine and resume being a happy little writer.

Instead I took my already tedious feelings about sitting down at my computer every night and feeling obliged to produce SOMETHING for content and burn my love for writing right into the ground.  Even doing bullshit things like Sporthetics (and when I say bullshit I don’t mean it quite so harshly as I am a hueg fan of jerseys and goalie masks and general sports aesthetics type things, but after a while it felt like the most tedious thing I had ever done that no one gave a damn about blogging wise – and that includes the times I tried to pick out which Dallas Stars wore a certain number the best, and that crap was so bad I’m not even going to bother trying to find a link for it even though I know it’s out there) which was first done to try and provide something for content only ended up making me feel like a cheap and worthless blogger.

Add to that the frustration that is sometimes dealing with WordPress and with GoDaddy.com as a domain provider (NEVER use GoDaddy.com unless you want to make Baby Jesus cry) and by June (as you will see below this post) I was done.

Of course I had JUST paid for two more years of the GameTimeArt.net domain (Not with GoDaddy of course. Fool me once shame on you..) so in order to not feel like I had totally wasted my money, I moved everything over to Tumblr because I felt that would give me the perfect way to just post pictures when I really didn’t feel like typing anything and then MAYBE if I felt like saying something, I still had that chance.

As you may be able to tell, I hadn’t really felt like it… Oh and Tumblr kind of sucks in terms of just straight up creating word posts.

But over the last month or two I HAVE felt like blogging again and it actually kinda started with this comic I read from the ever magnificent Matt Inman over his site The Oatmeal.  All his work is great (I own both his books in both physical and E-reader versions) but this comic spoke to me on a personal level because for the last two years I had kinda felt like he described in many ways.

Seriously, go check it out.  It’s kinda long so you go see it and I’ll wait here.

Did you read it?  No, no don’t just “skim through it” .. Go read it!

Read it?  Ok… Moving on.

Anyway, a lot of that is how I felt.  And it sucked.  And it made me want to rather just plop down on my couch and play XBox all night.  Granted, I always feel like I could do that, but that’s besides the point.

But from about June until just fairly recently I was done with writing.  Only I wasn’t really done with having an opinion on things or done with making snide comments about what I see going on in the world. (I think my Twitter feed is enough proof of that.) It’s as I once heard in a famous movie…

You goddamn right Boromir.

So here I am, back at my old blog – because Tumblr sucks remember – and with a lot on my mind to say.  This time, I’m just not going to put any pressure on myself to say something every day or every week for that matter. I’ll try of course, but no promises.

Other than to just pace myself and keep re-reading that comic from The Oatmeal.

 

A Tumbl I Did Go

So a little bit has changed since I last posted on here.

For one, I’m not posting on here any more.  I am on Tumblr however and if you type in GameTimeArt.net you’ll go to the new site already.  However you may have found this page through an old bookmark or a link on a search engine – to be honest I really have no idea how those things work so it’s possible if you’ve searched for “Chris Bosh Crying” and you’re now here…

And for what it’s worth, images of Chris Bosh crying are so 2011…

Anyway, like a bad tenant I’m leaving this place and not taking anything with me and leaving it all laying around for people trip over…  I had been tempted to move ALL my posts – or at least my favorites – to the new site, but between the combination of me being lazy and not really wanting to change some of the formatting of the posts here which in turn may take away with how I wanted these posts “presented” (I am a blog artist after all.. or a “Blogrtist”) I figured it’s just best to leave them here.

But really, check me out on the new blog.. That has the same URL as the old / this blog had…

www.gametimeart.net

 

Sporthetics: Just Do It(?)

Starting today you can start to pre-order the new Nike NFL uniforms that they unveiled a couple of weeks ago so I headed over to the NFL’s online shop to at the very least check them out – the Nike Houston Texans uniform looks no different from last year’s Reebok Texans uniform so I doubt I’ll feel a need to rush to retire my old Andre Johnson uni quite yet.

But as I was flipping through the online catalogue - quick side note, I miss flipping through Sears catalogues don’t you? – I saw some questionable shirts from Nike…

Uhhh… Ok.

I have no doubt these shirts will be top sellers with sexual innuendo firmly in place although “Redskins Just Do It” seems almost border line offensive while “49ers Just Do It” just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But I’m a little surprised a stick-in-the-mud like Roger Goodell would have been ok with this.  But then embracing hypocrisy seems to be an area of expertise for the NFL doesn’t it?