Monday 5/13/24
The NHL went to a best-of-seven first round format in 1987, meaning that for the first time there were four playoff rounds, each of which required four wins to advance and/or claim the Cup. In that time period, no team has swept the first two rounds. Isn't that surprising?
Here's how I feel about the teams remaining in this year's NHL playoffs: the Bruins are done, the Canes are done, the Panthers aren't as good as the Rangers, and all four teams in the West are better than the Rangers.
Pastrnak: Such a stupid penalty early in last night's game. You can't take dumb penalties in the playoffs. You'll be burned. You really can't take them when you're giving up bundles of power play goals.
Another surprising stat: the Celtics are 15-15 in their last thirty home playoff games. This says a lot about make-up. Attitude. Readiness. Focus. Commitment.
I recall how everyone save one person was saying recently that the Denver Nuggets were all done and would likely be swept out of the playoffs. Then they went to Minnesota and won two games, and the series is now tied 2-2. It's like that guy knew what he was talking about.
The other day I said something about how you can't get excited when a baseball team, like the Red Sox, only surrenders 2 runs and wins and needed five pitchers to do so. Or used five pitchers. Soon as I wrote that, they gave up 2 runs, won, and used five pitchers.
If you want to be a great hitter, hit lots of doubles. It is virtually impossible to hit many doubles and not be a great hitter. It is possible to hit a lot of home runs and not be a great hitter or offensive force, but no one has ever done this with doubles, for the most part. Doubles are the most underrated of all hits. They make an offense go round.
Catchers scoring 100 runs in a season is like a defenseman scoring 100 points.
There is now a stat for bat speed, measured in miles per hour, which depresses me. Do we have to remove the mystery from everything? The poetry? Allure? The romance? We have to excise the mystery and replace it with something like 77.7 mph and uses asinine terms like "blast" and "barrel" which don't even make sense?
Did the people who do these things ever actually love baseball? I don't think they liked it or watched it or cared about it. I don't think they played games in yards and traded baseball cards and checked box scores to see how their favorite player did or dreamed about going to the ballpark.
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