Real Truculence

Okay so I'm living in St. John's, Newfoundland now, going back to university. As a night job on Mondays, Tuesday and Wednesdays, I'm emceeing at one of the local strip joints. Last night, while the Leafs were sleepwalking through their game with the Sens, getting pushed around with hardly a peep, I watched a 21-year-old stripper, who must be all of 5'3" (although you can add about eight inches to that with the clear heels), throw out a customer who had at least 85 pounds on her, before the bouncers could get over to help, because he smacked her ass during a lapdance in one of the private booths. She smacked him in the face, and pushed him out the back door, which is about ten feet from the booths. So my question to anyone who's reading this (which I admit is an overly optimistic statement), and to the Leafs themselves is, why can a girl barely out of her teens and weighing at most 105 pounds handle a guy that much bigger than her, and stand up for herself, but a bunch of behemoths can't defend each other and themselves from the goddamn Ottawa Senators? I say put the girl on skates and pair her with Francois Beauchemin, and maybe you don't have the entire Ottawa roster parked in front of the net to score that first goal, whether or not it was batted in from above the crossbar. Effin' sad I say.

But hey, at least the Monster looked good...

After Mats is back!

Okay I'm gonna do a real post tomorrow after the game. But yeah, 10 months, two falls off the cocaine wagon, and a cross-country move to Newfoundland later, this blog will be publishing again! More to come...

Impure Thought Alert

You know when you find out that the person you're with has been cheating on you, and you'd already noticed they were distant for a while and you had a feeling something was coming, so you break up, and you're out banging all kinds of other people, in ways your ex never let you try, and enjoying the hell out of yourself, and everything's super awesome, and then one night you're done having crazy monkey sex with some random hottie and you're laying in bed, and the person you're with is passed out and snoring loudly, and you're at that person's house and suddenly you start noticing really lame things like the Nickelback poster on the wall or the well-thumbed copy of the Celestine Prophecy on the nightstand, and that remind you of some stupid inside joke you and your ex had made in bed one time about the kind of people that read and listen to crap, and suddenly for a second you're totally overcome with emotion over what you'd lost, and it only lasts a moment and then you remember again that that bitch (or bastard) had cheated on you in the first place, and that you really are happier and you really are better off in the long run, but still that feeling lingers for another minute or two?

That's exactly how I felt about Mats Sundin for about three and a half seconds last night. And if you've read my posts on the subject of the former captain over the many many long, arduous, uh... days that this blog has been in existence, you know that that's a big fucking deal to me. Congratulations, Leafs, you officially made me miss a guy who less than 48 hours before I was labelling a douche and a traitor. Bravo.

And yes, I realize I just broke my very recently (read: like half an hour ago) implemented rule that I would not put more effort into writing about the team than they put in playing, but I decided to be the bigger person. In my defence though I never did claim that I didn't believe in the concept of being the bigger person, nor did I take months (and a summer and fall in Sweden) to come to the decision to be the bigger person.

Zing!

So yeah...

I was all primed to write something witty and scathing and clever... had it all planned out in my head. But you know what? Fuck it. Instead I decided that I will never, ever put more effort into writing about the Leafs than they put in the night before on the ice. Tomorrow I'll forgive them. Maybe...

Final Word On Mats Sundin

Actually, I'll probably talk about Mats for years to come, but this is the final word on his signing in Vancouver.

Firstly, I'd like to address a comment that a local blogger left on one of my Sundin tirades that suggests that Mats is a better hockey player than both Doug Gilmour and Wendel Clark.

It would be easy for me to go on an emotional tangent about this and just call this blogger a GIANT FUCKING MORON WITH THE HOCKEY SENSE OF A FRUITFLY, but I won't do that. I will even, as much as it HORRIBLY pains me to do so, concede that Mats is probably a better hockey player than Wendel Clark was. Man that hurt to type. But Gilmour? No way in hell! I don't understand how this can even be an argument. But since it is, let's look at some numbers:


MATS SUNDIN

REGULAR SEASON

GP G A P
1305 555 766 1321

PLAYOFFS

GP G A P
83 35 39 74

DOUG GILMOUR

REGULAR SEASON

GP G A P
1474 450 964 1414

PLAYOFFS

GP G A P
182 60 128 188

(Based on these pics, Gilmour should win on badass points alone)

So they're fairly even at a regular season points-per-game average of 1.01 for Sundin to .95 for Gilmour. Of course, Dougie played four more seasons than Sundin did. If you measure from the beginning of their careers to the end of their 17th seasons, which is where Mats is right now, you have 1.01 for Sundin to 1.03 for Gilmour. Now of course Sundin could sustain a higher level of play over the last four seasons of his career, if that's how long he plays, than Gilmour did over his last few seasons - only time will tell. The playoff numbers totally blow the Sundin Is Better theory out of the water though, I think. You've got Dougie's 1.03 career playoff points-per-game average, compared with Sundin's respectable but not other-worldly .89. You've got Gilmour's two best runs - 35 points in 21 games and 28 points in 18 games in the 1993 and 1994 playoffs, respectively, compared to Sundin's two best runs - 13 points in 11 games in 2001 and 16 points in 17 games in 1999. And you've got the fact that Gilmour has actually won a Stanley Cup, scoring 22 points in 22 games in 1989 while going all the way with Calgary. Dougie had three seasons with more than 100 points, while Mats has had one. Finally, Gilmour was a Hart nominee and a Selke winner, while Sundin was never up for any kind of major individual award (no, the Messier Leadership Award does not count). Mats is an excellent, excellent player. But better than Gilmour? No effin' way!


One more point I'd like to make about Sundin:

I'm sick of hearing the argument that Mats was just an employee and MLSE was just an employer and so anything that happened needs to be looked at within that framework. The employer/employee relationship is necessarily VERY different in pro sports than in, say, drywalling or computer software sales or bartending or any other crappy job any one of us has. You can't have an industry that is based on the loyalty of fans, as demonstrated through their willingness to watch your events and buy your merchandise, and then say that loyalty is unimportant between the organization and its players, or between the players and the fans. I know it's awesome and flattering to yourself to compare your own shitty work life to that of guys who play sports and bang supermodels and snort really high quality cocaine off of the cleavage of $1000-an-hour call girls, but it just ain't the same thing. These guys make millions and are massive celebrity sports heroes because we're LOYAL to them and their teams, and expecting some loyalty in return, in the form of perhaps not LYING to us about wanting to finish your career in Toronto, for example, I don't believe is asking too much. Yeah, players are mercenaries these days, more interested in the biggest contract than in loyalty to a specific team like they might have been in olden times (which I classify as any time before I was born). But once the line is crossed too often where fans feel ripped off or let down by players who too obviously covet financial well-being over loyalty to the people who sit in the seats and buy the jerseys, the whole rationale for the existence of geographically-based professional sports becomes kind of silly. Call me a little naive if you want, but if you just have a bunch of cities with teams full of employees who couldn't give a shit about the town or the fans or the organization or anything whatsoever other than what they're making (which is arguably almost the situation now), what the hell is the point of cheering for the home team? It becomes like saying McDonald's is better than Burger King because one is in your neighbourhood and one isn't, rather than because you like one better than the other. Pro sports is not your typical industry, folks, stop treating it like it is.

Anyway that's all, Mats is gone, I still think he's a douche, and that's the end of that.

Indisputable Fact #1

Mats Sundin hates you and everyone you care about. He told me so.

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