The grandiloquence of the Colorado Avalanche's power play, Celtics roll on, NHL barn burner

Monday 3/9/26

I mentioned the Colorado Avalanche's power play earlier. Watched them go zero-for-five on the power play yesterday. All that skill and they don't score.

No one wants to shoot the puck. It's strange and, I suspect, maddening for an Avalanche fan. They do many of these width-of-the-ice passes, like they're trying to create open net situations. It's way too finesse.

They should get back to some basics and have someone--Makar--hammer it from up top. Don't be stagnant, but enough of the floweriness. It's like the hockey power play version of purple prose.

There's an analogy you couldn't see anywhere else, right?

Watched quite a bit of the Celtics-Cavaliers game, too. Tatum played as many minutes as he had on Friday night. Came out hot. Cooled off some, but did reach twenty points. Game ended up being closer than it ought to have been, probably, but wasn't much in doubt after the second quarter in which the Cavs only scored ten points. Can't give all the credit to the Celtics' defense. Cavs missed a bunch of clear looks.

Starting to feel like they waited until they believed Tatum could have at this thing and build himself back up to game speed and conditioning without needing to hold him out. We'll see. Don't envision him playing both ends of a back-to-back. I think the goal is to get him as close to his regular self this season. What's the most he could be? 85%? I don't know. If he's ever going to be the same player again, it probably won't be until next year or maybe the year after. This has gone well so far.

Bruins fell to the Penguins. Rough game for Sieve Swayman and Charlie McAvoy. Pastrnak had a goal, which feels like an oddly weird occurrence now given his goals-to-assists discrepancy.

Wish I had seen the Buffalo-Tampa Bay game, which the Sabres--the top seed in the East right now--won 8-7. Shades of 1983! Well, the Lightning didn't exist then, but you know what I mean.

Buffalo "won" the first period 1-0, Tampa won the second 4-3, then Buffalo won the third 4-3. Two of the best teams in the NHL right there. Wasn't exactly a goaltender's duel. Luukkonen had a .786 save percentage for the Sabres, while Johansson (so Vezina probable Vasilevskiy wasn't involved) came in at .810 for the Lightning. Yikes!

BC men's basketball coach Earl Grant was fired. BC used to be good, but it's been a long time now. Sometimes they had a top twenty-five team. That sounds like a crazy notion these days. I wonder if they ever will again. Where do you go after being fired as the BC men's basketball coach? Grant's pretty young. I thought he was older than he is for some reason.

72-92 record at BC. Best season--and the only one over .500--was a couple years ago, when they went 20-16 and made the NIT, but if memory serves they only made the NIT because other teams backed out.

Besides Quinten Post--who plays about seventeen minutes a game for Golden State--I can't think of anyone they've put in the NBA in quite a while. BC will need a new president before they're good at the so-called revenue sports again, if they ever are again. Even with the different spelling, the name Quinten invariably makes me think of The Sound and the Fury.