News

Zambonis in NYC Tonight

justwide — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:31:52 GMT

This news from the Zambonis' mailing list:

"About two weeks ago, The Zambonis held our second band meeting in 15 years. We decided to really prioritize our gigs — only play those for big money or big exposure. A few hours later, we're contacted by a band with an indie-Irish flair that sings great songs about pirates! The moral of the story is: band meetings are stupid."

That unbeatable double bill — songs about hockey and pirates — makes up tonight's entertainment at Connelly's Rock 45 (121 West 45th Street in Manhattan). It's ten bucks to get in and the Zambonis go on at 22:00 so as not to preclude your enjoying the Rangers/Caps game first.

Even if you've no intention of attending, you might enjoy this promotional video of Zambonis frontman Dave Schneider trying to coax the (nude!) Hockey Monkey out of a tree.

JWFHL 2007-2008: Call for Participants

justwide — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:07:37 GMT

We're back for the new season, bringing glad tidings of the 2007/2008 Just Wide Fantasy Hockey League! To sign up, go to http://hockey.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/JustWide. The password is "gowings" (no quotation marks) and, if you need it, the League ID number is 82482.

Just like last year, it's a head-to-head league, where every team is pitted against one opponent per week. We'll draft our rosters automatically, so set up your player rankings right away. I'll set the draft settings to "ready" as soon as I see that we have enough teams signed up.

Looking forward to another great season!

Chris Phillips Scores, To His Everlasting Regret

justwide — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:38:33 GMT

Watching Chris Phillips put the puck past his own goalie last night, I was reminded of an old joke:

A Scotsman is drinking in a pub and complaining to the bartender. "Say, you know that stone fence at the top of the village?" he asks. "I built that fence. Built it with my own hands. But no one calls me 'Duncan the Fence-Builder.'"

No, no one does, agrees the bartender.

"And I've made more chairs than I can remember — some of them are in this very pub! But no one ever calls me 'Duncan the Chairmaker."

Certainly not, says the bartender.

"And do you know that I've delivered milk and eggs to town every Monday for over thirty years without missing a single week? But no one calls me 'Duncan the Milk-and-Egg-Deliverer.'"

It's true, no one does, the bartender says.

"But you screw one lousy sheep..."

Chris Phillips's playoff performance, solid as granite right up until the end, will be remembered for that one gut-wrenching moment at 15:44 in the second period. That was the moment at which, as the Edmonton Sun put it, "Lady Luck elbowed him in the head."

"Now I know how Steve Smith felt," he told reporters. And — fighting back tears, according to TSN.ca — "I felt bad obviously, it was a mistake, not something I wanted to do obviously. We were right there in the second period until my screw-up seemed to take momentum away."

Which is true, it totally did. But it's not as if the Sens ever accumulated all that much momentum in the first place, so it was no huge loss. Daniel Alfredsson's 14 playoff goals led all scorers, so he could afford to be generous: "It's just a terrible break," Alfredsson said. "I feel bad for him. He's had an incredible year for us. Those things happen."

Phillips's own goal, the eventual Cup-winner, seemed (understandably) to really rattle him. Television viewers could see him muttering to himself on the ice immediately afterward, and he was still at it on the bench after the next commercial break. What was he saying? Maybe repeating some kind of positive-thinking mantra? Maybe just calmly lecturing himself about what he'd done wrong? Where's that stupid "Sounds of the Game" feature when we finally need it?

Sens Advance, NBC Sucks

justwide — Sun, 20 May 2007 16:48:01 GMT

The Ottawa Senators are headed to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in franchise history, thanks to captain Daniel Alfredsson's overtime game-winner at 9:32 of the overtime period.

What could be more exciting than sudden-death overtime with the Conference championship on the line? Well, if you're NBC's dimwitted Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, the answer is obvious: the ponies. But hang on — NBC didn't just cut from the decisive moments of the Stanley Cup semi-finals to the Preakness; they cut from the Stanley Cup semi-finals to 90 minutes of Preakness pre-race coverage. That's right: instead of Alfredsson's clutch goal ending the President's-Trophy-winning Sabres' season, NBC viewers saw a couple jockeys get interviewed and exterior shots of the stables. We're sure that shit was compelling television to someone, but we sure as fuck don't know who.

(At first glance, NBC's decision to abandon the hockey game at the end of regulation, at the very apogee of suspense and excitement, seems like poor planning and bad judgment in the extreme. But in the network's defense, it's true that horse racing has traditionally drawn much larger audiences than ice hockey. By "traditionally," though, we mean "in the 1920s and '30s.")

Ebersol seems to have a real tin ear for sporting entertainment. Here's the guy who, more than any other individual since Roone Arledge, has been responsible for keeping the Olympics on television in the face of steadily escalating viewer insouciance. That's right — the Olympics: that seemingly endless festival of the world's least telegenic sports, not broadcast live, schmaltzed up with idiotic pre-games pageantry and countless nauseating short features about athletes' relatives' struggles with exotic diseases or financial hardship — each vignette a transparently desperate and utterly futile attempt to get us to give a flying fuck which of a legion of obscure jocks gets to the other end of the pool and back first. What a thrill, indeed!

When a network arranges to carry a sporting event, it assumes the responsibility of carrying the entire event. The more significant the game, the weightier that responsibility. Yesterday's Preakness fiasco was enough to put us off of NBC sports permanently. It was Heidi-Bowl bad. NBC should stick to what they do best these days: sending that smarmy prick Chris Hansen trolling for pedophiles. If we never see another important NHL game on their network again, it'll be too soon.

Here's a good Globe and Mail column on hockey's Heidi Game.

Rangers Sweep, Bobby The Brow Self-Flagellates

justwide — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:53:23 GMT

How 'bout them Blueshirts, hunh? Last night New York completed the playoffs' only sweep so far, ending the Atlanta Thrashers' season in four games, and outscoring them 17-6. Thrasher center Bobby Holik had this to say about his team's performance: "We weren't even close to being competitive in the playoffs. There should be no sense of accomplishment whatsoever." What a Debbie Downer, that guy!

In 2002, after a fruitful decade in New Jersey, Holik came across the Hudson to the Rangers, whose chronic underperformance gave him countless opportunities to disparage his own and his team's performance. For two years, it seemed that whenever you saw Bobby on TV or in the papers, he was giving another unkind quote — criticizing Bobby Holik.

At first, it was refreshing. This is how a champion should think! He should expect success! Any result short of victory, he should greet with bitter disappointment! He should congratulate himself only when his opponents are vanquished (and not even in all such cases)! The Devils won the Stanley Cup again in 2002-2003, that first year of Bobby's exile, and the Rangers failed to make the playoffs. Bobby's dissatisfaction seemed like exactly the kind of righteous fury they needed at Madison Square Garden, a cloister of complacency!

But as the seasons passed, and Bobby suffered further indignity, his continuing self-flagellation started to get kind of depressing. Now the two-time Stanley Cup winner languishes in Atlanta. Now his team is swept out of the playoffs by — oh, dear, the New York Rangers, who, before this post-season, hadn't earned a single playoff win since game two of the 1996-97 Conference Finals. Now it's Holik himself who's without a playoff win since departing the Devils. It's a long way to fall from the top.

Anyway, let's all hope Bobby's spleen ebbs a little over the off-season. He's had a long and productive career, the kind of which a less malcontented player would be proud. One day, maybe soon, the tranquility of retirement will finally allow him to unfurrow that jutting brow.

Gordie Howe Statue Unveiled

justwide — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:51:39 GMT

Gordie Howe's been immortalized in bronze at Joe Louis Arena, and the Free Press has photos of the unveiling. With this high-profile commission following his statues of Tiger greats at Comerica Park, artist Omri Amrany is the Jean-Antoine Houdon of the Motor City jockstrap set.

I like this statue (judging only from the photos), but I do think Amrany's signature multiple-exposure effect and weird, chunky, dirt-clod motion streaks work better on the baseball works.

Detroit's single greatest piece of sports-themed statuary — still champion, and unlikely to be soon defeated — is Robert Graham's Monument to Joe Louis at Jefferson and Woodward.

We're Back, Kind Of

justwide — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:33:43 GMT

We've been out of commission for months now, but buck up, pucknuts: America's favorite weird hockey news web-log is back, kind of.

Why "kind of?" Well, you'll notice that the archives are of limited utility -- all our old posts are still available for reading, but without the (sometimes crucial) images that accompanied them. Worse, all user comments have been forever lost. Our most interesting content was provided by readers who contributed to discussions on our message boards, so that's too bad both for us and for them. Sorry.

We'll be revving back up to full speed now, though, with two or three posts a week, just in time for the 2007 NHL playoffs. Poke around, test drive the new message boards, and let us know if you come across any glitches. We welcome you back to Just Wide, and hope you'll welcome Just Wide back into your online time-wasting regimen too.

Just Wide Fantasy Hockey

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 15:26:00 GMT

It's that time again: join the 2006/07 JWFHL! It's on Yahoo! again, with all the same rules as last year. To join, go to Yahoo!'s fantasy sports page and look for League ID 81345.

The league name is "JustWide" and the password is "gowings" (without quotation marks).

Try it, you'll like it!

Brendan Shanahan a Ranger?

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:40:00 GMT

It's not all that surprising that the aging-but-still-potent left winger Brendan Shanahan should find a new home with the Rangers. He's not just a great player; he's also great with the press. Given New York's media-rich environment, the resurgent Rangers will probably call upon Brendan for his facility with words as often as for his on-ice abilities. With reporters, see, he shoots from the hip! On the ice, he'll shoot from anywhere.

What is a little surprising, though, is that a big-budget, large-market outfit like the 'Gers would sign off on the suspiciously doctored-looking photograph above. We've got a hundred Just Wide Hockey Nerd Points for the first person who can produce the original image from which this chop job was produced. Presumably, it's of Brendan in Red Wing crimson?

In case this picture has been replaced by the time you click over to the Rangers' official site, here's a screenshot of the above photo in context as it appeared this morning.

It was spotted, by the way, by Just Wide's resident Rangerwatcher, Tim, who, when Shanahan produces for the Blueshirts, will have to take back these words: "overrated," "soft," and "couldn't take a hit from a 12 year old girl."

Tony Twist Fiasco Still Ongoing

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:54:00 GMT

Earlier this week a State appeals court in Missouri upheld Tony Twist's $15 million jury verdict against SPAWN creator Todd McFarlane for naming a comic-book villain "Tony Twist." Here's the Comics Reporter's summary of the case so far.

The longer this goes on, the more Tony Twist seems like a self-important, opportunistic jackass. Are we supposed to believe, as Twist purports to, that this relatively obscure toon cost him fifteen fucking million dollars in hot tub ads for local TV? Consider this report, claiming Twist's NHL salary maxed out at $725,000 (1998/99). Even if you accept the transparently ludicrous argument that McFarlane hampered the Twister's endorsement potential (and come on, seriously), this award is grotesquely out of proportion.

And anyway, all of that is beside the point as we see it: this is a First Amendment issue, and not a very tough one. After this trial ends — if it ever ends — Twist had better start signing his autographs with a little ® after his name like Gordie Howe.

Wait, does anyone even ask Tony Twist for autographs? Oh, yeah, no, they don't, because of SPAWN. If not for that comic book, though, he'd be selling signed eight-by-tens for 20 bucks each. By the hundreds of thousands. Right?