Praise for Tomas Holmstrom

Like every other hockey fan, I'm pretty irked with the NHL right now (thanks for the lockout, idiots....). But, this doesn't prevent me from admiring the truly remarkable career of Tomas Holmstrom, who retired recently.
Take a look at some highlights:



I think that every goalie in the NHL was glad to see Holmstrom go -- he drove them CRAZY. He scored most of his goals 3-4 feet from the net -- most of these were redirections and "garbage goals". He made a fine art out of these goals, but of course he had to work really hard and take a TON of abuse for each one.

Can you imagine having a job in which it is your task to stand in front of the goalie, trying to obscure his vision while a giant defenseman tries to move you out of the way?  Oh, and then, what happens next is that some guy shoots a small hard rubber puck in your general direction at around 100mph....and while the defenseman is seriously abusing you, it is now your job to "tip" the puck with your stick, hoping to direct the puck into the net.   This is what Holmstrom made into art.

I'm a hockey fan, and I cheer for the players more than I do for the teams. I'll miss seeing Homer out on the ice.

Penguins Win The Stanley Cup!

Wow. What a game! The Penguins have just won the Stanley Cup.

This was a hugely improbable event. The Penguins beat the Red Wings in Detroit, and the Wings are an incredible team oozing with all-stars. The Penguins had some ups and downs during the series, but, in general, they won the series by keeping their foot on the gas when it mattered. At the end of the series, the Wings looked beat-up, shell-shocked, and out of energy.

I can't believe that former Bruin Hal Gill is going to get his name on the cup. Denis Leary must be ranting in some bar right now, screaming "unbelievable!".

In Praise of the Old Guys

Gary Roberts, one of my favorite gritty, character players in the NHL, has retired. I'm sorry to see him go. I have been a fan for a long time of Roberts' leadership qualities and everything he brought to the game. You always knew when Roberts was playing that he was giving one hundred percent of his effort towards making sure his team won.

Let's see, with the retirement of Roberts, who is my current favorite old guy in the NHL? This is an easy question for me to answer: Brendan Shanahan. The Devils recently hired Shanahan and he scored a goal in his first game. I swear, the look on his face after he scored the goal was something like "see, kids, scoring goals is easy -- just like riding a bike!". There was clearly no rust on this old guy.

I think that one of my favorite incidents involving Shanahan occured a few years ago when Shanahan got sick of Donald Brashear's antics so Shanahan decided to do something about it. The thing that you need to understand here is that Brashear is one of the most fearsome enforcers in the NHL. He is VERY good at his job (he is also a very interesting person off-ice). So, when Shanahan dropped gloves with Brashear, this was immediately a very interesting event.



The best part of the whole incident occurred right before the fight, when Shanahan told Brashear to remove his helmet, as if he was saying:

Good Sir! I will be striking your head with my fists soon, and I would be grateful to you if you were to allow me to do so without marring your helmet.

Old guys are great.

Get up, boy! I'm not done with you yet...

Yay! Gary Roberts is back. He scored two goals tonight.

On nearly the last occasion we saw Roberts (age 41), he took Ben Eager (age 23) to task because of a cheap elbow Eager had thrown to one of Robert's teammates. So, Roberts decided to teach Eager a lesson:



My favorite part of the fight was when Eager was just about to fall down and Roberts pulled him back up, almost as if he was saying "I'm not done with you quite yet!".

As for Eager, after getting beat up by a man that could have been his father, his team traded him soon after.

It's so nice to see a middle-aged man like Roberts be such a good....educator.