Hockey Ping!
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Posted on 04/10/2011 8:34:00 PM PDT by airborne
Next year the CUP will FLY a few hundred miles South!
FLYERS getting a goalie..............!
Luongo didn’t lose it for anybody. If the team would have kept playing after giving up a goal they could have recovered from any soft goals he gave up. But every time Boston scored Vancouver just plain stopped skating. Game 6 was the classic example, they owned the momentum at the beginning, were winning all the faceoffs, getting all the shots on goal, Luongo gave up one goal and Vancouver didn’t win another faceoff or get another shot for 4 1/2 minutes, they gave up 19 shots on goal in that period and most of them were in that 4 1/2 minute stretch. You let the other team treat your goalie like a carnival duck you’re gonna lose.
I hope the booing of the comish continues as a tradition long after Bettman has retired. I just like the idea of the fans hating the comish, somehow it feels like old time hockey.
I was booing along with them.
Can’t stand the guy.
I actually don’t think Bettman is anywhere near as bad as his legend, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I like him, but I don’t hate him. But I love him getting booed when he hands out the end of year hardware.
I would have preferred moving the ‘Yotes to Winnipeg instead of Atlanta. Either way, I have serious doubts that the city will be able to keep a team financially solvent for long. Again.
It all depends on if the team is any good. Having hit 100 points in the regular season this year after making the playoffs for the first time in ages last year attendance is way up. Losing teams that don’t have a traditional fan base hanging our bleed money, wining helps build that traditional fan base for later. If they can start putting together some seasons where they’re legitimate contenders they’ll be solvent, look at the Sharks, same basic environment but the team is consistently good and rakes in the cash.
And moving the Yotes back to Winnipeg would have been admitting defeat, they might move somewhere but Winnipeg was never really an option. And at this point for the taxpayers they already paid for the stadium, now the question is do they want a slim chance of getting their money back or none at all.
Speaking of old time hockey,I go back to the Milt Schmidt playing days and the original eight and all that great stuff.
Tempus fugit.
Those weren’t Vancouver fans. They were professional left wing thugs that come out at every big event in the city. Last year at the Olympics they did the same thing in their black ski masks. A better example of the fans was when they booed Bettman, but cheered Thomas when the lifted the cup.
Right. I still have a VHS tape of Game 4 of the 1995 Stanley Cup finals between New Jersey and Detroit. Bettman was being interviewed on Fox between the second and third periods, and in the background at the Continental Airlines Arena you could hear a constant chant of “Bettman Sucks!” pouring down from the crowd. LOL.
My biggest complaint about him is that he brought an NBA perspective to the NHL and was never a hockey fan. But I have to concede that he's become much more concerned about the importance of the game's traditions. Some of the changes that have been made in the NHL over the years -- like the Winter Classic, the Christmas break, etc. -- have been very positive moves and should be a positive aspect of his legacy.
I give him points for going out there year after year and facing the boos. There aren’t that many people who would take it, most would at least ask the networks to turn off all their mikes and only take the feed from his to at least minimize how well the TV audience can hear the boos. He’ll never go down as a great commish, but he’s willing to pay the price for his mistakes real and imagined.
Yeah he had a steep learning curve but he actually learned. After some pretty big early missteps he’s done some really good things. Heck they finally have a long term TV contract, and it even pays them some half way decent money, OK it’s still probably the worst national TV contract of the major sports but they’re getting cash upfront and have stayed on the same networks through multiple contracts each. Plus all the stuff you mentioned, love me some Winter Classic, and Hockey Day in America was pretty cool too.
NHL Network to air Stanley Cup victory parade
June 18, 10am est
Hockey Ping!
(let me know if you want on or off the ping list)
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