Full disclosure: I haven't felt like writing anything at all lately since I've been pretty flabbergasted by how the playoffs are progressing. But Rudy is out of town this weekend and I've felt guilty for not contributing more to the blog recently, so ultimately I had no choice but to write all this craziness. And, as you'll learn in the rest of this piece, I really mean it when I say "I had no choice."

The debate over the existence and nature of "free will" has been going on for thousands of years. The concept has been discussed by great thinkers in philosophy, religion, and politics...and today it will be discussed by some yahoo on a hockey blog.

If you're totally unfamiliar with the "free will" question, you're probably an idiot. But don't worry, idiot: there's always Wikipedia. In brief, discussing whether humans have free will involves questioning why we do what we do, and how much control over our own lives we really have. Do we actually choose the actions we take, or is our every decision predetermined? If we had the chance to do our lives over again, would it turn out any differently? When presented with a choice, we feel as though we can choose to do A or B. But what determines which option we choose? What forces shape the mind and soul that make the choice?

To me, it seems pretty obvious that "free will," as most people use the phrase, doesn't actually exist. Here's why: everything that makes up who I am, my opinions and willpower and morality and likes and dislikes and everything, comes from either my biology or my environment. Those two things are all that make up a person, and nobody is in control of their biology or how environmental factors influence them, so therefore no one is really free to make a choice that isn't 100% determined by natural or external factors.

(Sidebar: if you're a religious person and you believe that a god plays some role in the person that you are, that's fine - a god can be seen as just another environmental factor for the purposes of this discussion.)

To elaborate: when a person is born they have certain innate tendencies due to their genetic makeup. As they mature their personality is further shaped by parents, friends, society, etc. And that's all there is to a person. There is nothing about who I am that I created. Even if I decided to study ethics or something in order to become a better person, my decision to do that is ultimately traceable back to biology and environment. I am completely a product of forces outside my control. This isn't an attempt to escape personal responsibility - this is an acknowledgment that, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, responsibility makes no sense. Why am I rewarded or punished for my actions, when my decisions come from genetics and environment, two things that I have nothing to do with and no control over?

Continue reading this post »

I have a co-worker that is close to my own age, and we talk pretty much constantly all day long at work. We share enough interests to get along moderately well, but we're also very different people.

This co-worker (I'll call him Donald for the purposes of this story) is a big basketball fan and, like most people, doesn't care about hockey. However since we have been working with each other for years and I like hockey very much, he's started to read more about hockey and to follow it more closely - and this is a big problem. Because Donald has decided (after watching parts of a couple of games and reading a lot of Bleacher Report articles) that he now knows everything about hockey.

To give you a proper understanding of exactly who Donald is as a person, here is a brief sampling of some of his opinions:

1. He believes basketball is the best sport because they score constantly. In his mind if scoring is good and exciting then the more scoring there is the better and more exciting a sport is.

2. He thinks alcohol should be illegal.

3. He believes hockey is bad because of the hitting. He says that hitting is "cheap" and is not a skill. In Donald's opinion basketball is better than hockey because it's purely based on "skill." Donald thinks it would be pretty easy for him to play in the NHL because all he would have to do would be to learn how to skate and hit.

4. One time we got in to an argument about race and he said that there are "only three races," apparently having a somewhat archaic view of race. I corrected him and he doesn't believe this any more, but the point is he was PASSIONATE and STUBBORN about an opinion which was completely ridiculous and based in ignorance.

5. He thinks a college degree is useless and higher education is a huge scam that doesn't teach you anything worthwhile (and in an amazing coincidence he doesn't have a college degree).

6. And, worst of all, he doesn't really care about hockey but he cheers for both the Ducks AND the Kings and gloats whenever either team wins. When I explained to him that trying to be both a Ducks and a Kings fan meant that he was really neither he rejected the idea.

Hopefully you're all with me here and understand what I'm dealing with.

Continue reading this post »

Google Image Search is a fast way to find a variety of pictures relating to a certain thing. When you search for a hockey team name, you get hundreds of results relating to that team: the logo, famous players, merchandise, etc. But when you scroll waaaaaaaaay down past all the most popular results, you can find strange and frightening things that are connected to that team's name

For each NHL team I searched for the team's name and have identified the most embarrassing, shameful, or simply insane image that comes up. Here they are for your enjoyment, along with a brief tidbit about what each picture can teach us about the team, fanbase, players, or whatever.

Anaheim Ducks

What the fuck is that?

Ryan Getzlaf and some folks in the whitest picture ever taken.

What does this teach us?

Getzlaf is a dork and a half who should never allow himself to be seen without wearing several hats and a full diving helmet.

Boston Bruins

What the fuck is that?

Some advertisement that for some reason comes up when you search for "Boston Bruins."

What does this teach us?

Boston fans are all fat.

Buffalo Sabres

What the fuck is that?

A 36 dollar 3D replica of that Buffalo logo everyone hated. It doesn't say anywhere how big it is so I'm going to assume it's ten feet tall. It's still wildly overpriced.

What does this teach us?

There is no God.

Continue reading this post »

Last week, Rudy purchased a Gatorade without checking the flavor. To his horror, he discovered that he had purchased a Gatorade with a "Lime-Cucumber" flavor. It was horrible.

Then Rudy took another sip. Rudy is dumb.

Anyway, that got me thinking about what other Gatorade flavors didn't quite make the cut. I contacted my friends down at Gatorade and got this non-comprehensive list. Behold!

Pumpkin Spice

Grape-Spider

Strawberry - Piss

Cinnamon - Tree Bark

Lemon - Lyme Disease

Chow Mein

Blood-Oyster

Continue reading this post »

So here's the thing:

Every year as teams get eliminated from the playoffs, the mostly-excellent Yahoo hockey blog Puck Daddy runs a series of farewell/season recap/roast articles about each team. These "eulogies," as they are known, are written by bloggers who are fans of rival teams, and are intended to be provocative, possibly offensive, and funny.

Not all of the eulogies are winners, as you would expect. Everyone has their own style. As rational adults we can read the eulogies and judge for ourselves if we like them. If we don't, we presumably just move on with our lives.

But this is not what happens with the people who comment on Puck Daddy eulogies.

For whatever reason, the comments on Puck Daddy eulogies are often insane, ridiculous, and moronic almost beyond belief. The commenters exhibit nearly every one of the seven deadly sins of Internet hockey fans.

Today I'm going to examine five different stupid things you can learn from reading Puck Daddy eulogy comments. For this post I read through the hundreds of comments on the five eulogies that have been published thus far, for the Red Wings, Sharks, Penguins, Canucks, and Blackhawks. By the end of this EXTREMELY TEDIOUS research process I wanted to kill myself only slightly less than I wanted to write this article making fun of Puck Daddy comments.

#1. Every eulogy is horrible.

The first thing the comments on Puck Daddy eulogies will make very clear is that Puck Daddy eulogies are all awful and every one is the worst one ever.

Note to Boudreaux:

Fuck you, you supercilious prick.

Continue reading this post »

The Professional Hockey Writers Association is a moronic organization full of lazy half-wits and homophobes.

I suppose I should elaborate.

The three finalists for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy have been announced: Daniel Alfredsson, Joffrey Lupul, and Max Pacioretty. Puck Daddy explained the Masterton Trophy quite well here:

The Professional Hockey Writers Association gives this award annually to "the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey."

Or, in summary: An award given to really old players that are nice to the media, or given out to the winner of the "my comeback from a horrific potentially career-threatening injury/personal tragedy was more dramatic than your comeback from a horrific potentially career-threatening injury/personal tragedy."

Yeah so...that's stupid. Is this a "Comeback Player" award or a "Service to Hockey" award or a "Good Citizenship" award or just a "Nice to Stupid Wiener Nerd Reporters" award? Let's take a look at the winners over the past few seasons and see if we can figure it out.

Jesus.

So five injuries, three cancers, one family tragedy, one battle with alcoholism, and one super vague "dedication to hockey."

If the point of this award is to recognize someone who overcomes an injury or disease, which it seems to be most years, then they should get rid of the "sportsmanship" part of the award description, and probably also the "dedication to hockey" part because it already says "perseverance" and that's redundant.

But the Masterton has the potential to be, and SHOULD be, much more than an award for guys who have horrible stuff happen to them. If the Hockey Writers Association actually paid any attention to the "sportsmanship and dedication to hockey" part of the award then it could become sort of a Lady Byng that people actually respect: an opportunity to honor a player who is actually a great human being, not just someone who had to deal with awful shit.

Are you getting uncomfortable right now, as I seem to dismiss the tragedies of players who battled cancer or horrific injuries? I understand - but that's the PROBLEM with the Masterton. Hockey Writers are all meek and cowardly, and none of them are going to vote for a guy on the grounds of "sportsmanship" when there's another guy they could vote for that suffered some awful tragedy because the writers are afraid of being seen as insensitive or callous. And that's why the Masterton Trophy is bullcrap.

After the jump I'll examine the three finalists this year, explain why they all suck and don't deserve the award, and then tell you who I think deserves a god damn trophy.

Continue reading this post »

The Sharks need to win three in a row against the St. Louis Blues.

The Blues lost three games in a row two separate times during the regular season.

The Sharks won three games in a row a bunch of times during the regular season.

So it's possible, is what I'm saying. The Sharks can get rolling and win three in a row. Stranger things have happened.

Discussion Points

1. The Blues are a really good defensive team.

2. Aside from the PK, the Sharks have played pretty well defensively in this series.

3. Antti Niemi has looked good enough in this series. Not stellar, but good enough.

4. The Sharks had trouble scoring all season long, and now are facing the opponent best able to exploit that weakness.

5. This sucks.

Prediction: The Sharks aren't going to score more than two goals, so if they want to win they'll need to give up 1 or 0. Sharks win 2-1.

Awesome gameday song NOT inspired by Blues music: Bound for the Promised Land

Back on November 17th, 2011, I wrote about the Sharks penalty kill. I discussed how it was, as the kids say, "crappy." I examined a few possible reasons for its crapitude, including 1) The Sharks allow too many shots 2) Niemi sucks 3) The Sharks miss Rob Blake and Manny Malhotra and 4) It's all just bad luck. We had some lively discussion about the PK and the consensus reached (well MY consensus anyway, which is all I care about) was that it was probably a combination of a few elements, but "bad luck" was an unsatisfactory answer.

As I said in the comments to that post, "If you get hit by a car, that’s bad luck. If you get hit by a car 82 times, you’re doing something wrong."

The Sharks finished the season with the worst penalty kill among playoff teams (76.9%) and it has only gotten worse. In their three playoff games thus far the sharks have killed 61.5% of their penalties - though hilariously both New Jersey and Pittsburgh are worse at 40%.

The PK sucks, and it's unlikely it's going to get a whole lot better in a short amount of time, so I guess the Sharks need to stop taking penalties, right?

I don't want Todd McLellan to get fired, regardless of the outcome of this season. I think he's a good coach and a good fit for the team - but I guess he doesn't know how to run a PK. Either that or he doesn't really care. It makes sense - he was an offensive coordinator for Detroit (consistently one of the least-penalized teams in the league) before coaching the Sharks, so why the heck would he know anything about the penalty kill? He needs help. The Sharks need to hire an expert in what makes modern penalty kills successful.

According to the Sharks website, the guy in charge of developing "penalty kill schemes" for San Jose is Jay Woodcroft. I'm going to assume this is still the case, even though the information about him hasn't been updated since 2010 (it says he works on the PK with Trent Yawney, who is now retired). I don't know anything about Jay Woodcroft, really (for some reason he only has a Wikipedia page in German). He seems like a nice guy. But the Sharks can't kill penalties to save their lives (or to win playoff games, which is even more important than their lives) so if Jay Woodcroft is still the guy designing the "penalty kill schemes" then it's time to fire his ass.

Sorry Jay.

With that out of the way, let's talk about more important things: Nana tweets.

Continue reading this post »

Awesome gameday song NOT inspired by blues music: The Dubliners - The Rocky Road to Dublin

Fights! Dirty hits! Elbows! Sucker punches! Line brawls!

In the immortal words of Mr. Glen Frey: The Hate is On!

In game two the Sharks and Blues decided to try and beat the hell out of each other instead of playing hockey. This was a poor strategic decision for the Sharks. The Blues are better thugs. They have to be. After all, remember what we learned about the area surrounding their home arena. It's a war-zone. T.J. Oshie probably has to beat off a half-dozen guys every day just to get to work (the other three he does for fun). The Sharks can't compete with that.

To win game three, the Sharks will need to focus on the "scoring goals" part of hockey rather than the extra-curricular stuff. Just tell Clowe he is free to do whatever is necessary (including fighting guys who happen to skate by the bench) to keep things under control and that will be the end of it.

Since the Sharks players seem to have found some good reasons to hate the Blues, it's time we the fans join in as well. Prior to this series many San Jose fans may not have known much about the Blues or felt any particular animosity towards them. Who the hell cares about Vladimir Sobotka anyways?

But now, with Playoff Hate in full swing, we need reasons to boo each and every single Blues player. Inspired in part by a similar post at St. Louis Game Time (but really more inspired by the time Rudy and I did this about the Sharks and Kings) I present:

Reasons to Hate Every Player on the Blues

Kris Russell: Always tries to do the "knuckle puck" in practice. It's not funny anymore, Kris.

Patrik Berglund: Thinks that lakes are better than oceans.

Andy McDonald: You know how when Puck Daddy runs their team eulogies the comments are always full of complete morons who totally miss the point? Every single one of those comments is from Andy McDonald.

Barret Jackman: Like most people in St Louis, he hates Jews.

Kevin Shattenkirk: Always leaves the toilet seat soaking wet with tears.

Continue reading this post »

Awesome gameday song NOT inspired by blues music: Icelandic Folk Music - Á Sprengisandi

One of the luxuries of writing for this weird redundant blog is that I don't have to worry too much about stats or serious journalism or any of that boring stuff. I can write about those things if I want to, of course, but I don't HAVE to, so I'm free to do stuff like this:

St. Louis, Missouri: Number 58 in population but number 1 in antisemitism. #StLouisSucks

Yes all day long on Thursday I (and also Rudy but who cares) was tweeting insults about St. Louis, mainly focused on their rabid antisemitism.

If you follow me on twitter you probably saw a bunch of these already, but I'm going to post them all here anyways because missing one of my jokes would be the greatest tragedy ever associated with the Jews.

The real reason John Ashcroft lost to that dead guy was because someone started a rumor that Ashcroft was Jewish. #MissouriSucks

Also fucking John Ashcroft was governor for eight years. #MissouriSucks

The famous Gateway Arch was originally intended to be part of the "N" in a giant "NO JEWS ALLOWED" but funding fell through. #StLouisSucks

Continue reading this post »

Awesome gameday song NOT inspired by blues music in any way: Beethoven's 9th Symphony, 2nd Movement.

If you're looking for a standard gameday post, there are plenty of other blogs you can check out to satisfy your mundane cravings. Once actual games have been played in this series I might start writing about hockey, but until then I have other plans.

The cities of San Jose and St. Louis don't have a lot in common (besides providing fans of alphabetical order a headache when listed together) but one connection between the two lies within their names. It's plain that the city of Saint Louis was named for a Catholic Saint, but what you may not know if you aren't as fluent in Spanish as I am (Yo soy un gringo estúpido quien pregunta a personas en el autobus para enseñarme frases en español) is that "San Jose" is Spanish for "Saint Joseph!"

Amazing, huh?

Saints are sort of like the Planeteers to God's Captain Planet (which means the Holy Spirit would be Gaia? And Jesus would be Suchi the monkey I guess). Saints are chosen by the Catholic Church because of their great and miraculous deeds, service to the church, and public appeal. There are more than 10,000 saints in all, including some really weird ones.

Every saint has certain people, places, concepts, or things of which they are the "patron." This means that you are supposed to pray to that saint in specific situations, rather than bothering God with all your petty bullshit. St. Christopher, for example, is the patron saint of travelers, so you pray to him when you're driving across the country so God can concentrate on helping Tim Tebow suck at football.

Stats and astrology have both failed to clearly predict a San Jose victory in this series, but this interesting Saints-connection has given me one final idea for a fool-proof method to find out which team will emerge victorious:

Which Saint Is Better: Saint Louis or Saint Joseph?

For this saint fight I'll examine some authoritative accounts of the two men, present some highlights, and then grade each saint on a seven-point scale in each of three different categories: Profession, Patronage, and Achievements.

Continue reading this post »

The Sharks and Blues get underway on Thursday, and hockey journalists around the world are doing their best to predict how the series will play out. There are a variety of methods we can use to get an idea of what to expect in the first round from these two teams. The best predictor of which team will prevail is probably the regular season series between St. Louis and San Jose. How did that go again?

Oh. Well the regular season games between these two teams don't really matter anymore, obviously. Any idiot knows that.

A far better statistic to use to anticipate which team will emerge victorious is 5 on 5 goal differential. That's a measurement that truly reflects how "good" a team is.

I, uh...hmmm. Shoot.

Well you know what? The playoffs are really all about goaltending. The Sharks have a Stanley Cup-winning goalie on their roster, so undoubtedly this is an area where San Jose has the edge -

What the hell? That's not even fair.

Maybe if we look at more advanced statistics? What about Fenwick Close?

I've never liked advanced stats anyways. It's nerd stuff, that's what I've always said!

Well so far, uh, things haven't looked too good for the Sharks. Maybe I should -

Wait, I know! We'll compare the number of sex offenders that live near each team's arena, and see if...

Oh god damn it.

You know what? To hell with stats. Who needs them? In tough times like these when everything is on the line, you've got to find something you can rely on without fail.

For me that's astrology.

Continue reading this post »

(This was written prior to Thursday night's game. My thanks go out to the Sharks and Kings for making it shockingly relevant.)

I'm leaving it up to Rudy to handle the BoC game day duties tomorrow. He promised that his post would be fair and impartial, so fans of both the Sharks and the Kings are encouraged to read it and discuss Saturday's possibly important game in the comments.

For my final regular-season gameday this year, I want to talk about fighting. We probably won't see too much of it from here on, as fighting in playoff games is a rarity. While the natural decline of fighting during the playoffs doesn't bother me much, the continuing decline of fighting in general in the NHL does.

Fighting rules, and I don't want it to go away.

First, let's take a look at exactly what I'm talking about when I speak of the "decline of fighting." Here is a table displaying the number of fighting majors (fights) over the past four seasons (with current-season data updated 4/5/2012)

A couple of brief observations:

1. God the Red Wings are such babies.

2. What happened to you, Ducks? You used to be cool.

3. Fighting has declined by roughly 25 percent over the past four seasons.

Continue reading this post »

We knew these final two games between the Sharks and the Kings were coming all season long, but who could have imagined they would mean so much?

As it currently stands, both teams have more than a 90% chance of making the playoffs, but 90 is not 100 (it's probably stuff like this that tricked that Stephen Hawking guy into thinking we were some sort of math blog). Even if the Dallas Stars continue the epic pants-pooping in which they have been engaged for the past couple of weeks, thus guaranteeing both the Sharks and the Kings a playoff spot, the division title and playoff positioning still depend on the outcome of these two games.

How did we get here? How did this journey of an entire season come down to these final two games? Let's take a look back at the Sharks' season month-by-month and find out (while at the same time recapping my favorite movies from #82 up to #3, which I have been featuring in my gameday posts all season long):

October: 6 wins, 5 losses.

The Sharks split games with the Coyotes, lost to the Blues, the Rangers, and the Ducks twice, and had a five-game win streak in which they beat the Red Wings and Bruins.The season started very slowly with a week off between the first two games as the Sharks returned from Europe. San Jose had games in hand on most other teams for much of the season because of this odd start.

(Oldboy, Finding Nemo, Cloverfield, Dawn of the Dead, In the Company of Men, Insomnia, Tombstone, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Schindler's List, Terminator 2, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)

November: 7 wins, 4 losses.

The Sharks started to get rolling in November, beating the Penguins, Red Wings, and Stars along the way. They split games with the Kings and lost against the Canucks and Coyotes.

(X2: X-Men United, Dark City, Beauty and the Beast, This is Spinal Tap, Frailty, In Bruges, Star Wars, Aladdin, The Fellowship of the Ring, Old School, Rear Window)

Continue reading this post »

The Sharks and Stars meet again tonight, each team desperate for points in the utterly insane Pacific division playoff battle. The Sharks won Saturday's match 3-0, and look to repeat their dominant performance tonight before closing out the season with two games against the Kings.

But there are more important things in this world than hockey, of course. Things like civil rights.

You're probably already aware of Patrick Burke's You Can Play project. It's a fantastic idea and promotes the acceptance of openly gay athletes and fights against anti-gay prejudice. Every week more players are joining the You Can Play team, pledging their support for the project and appearing in PSA-style videos that air during games. Players like Claude Giroux, Henrik Lundqvist, and the world's toughest 3rd-grader Tommy Wingels are all proud supporters of You Can Play.

Of course, not everyone is so open-minded and welcoming. It may be an uncomfortable subject to discuss, but there are certain players in the league that will never be part of You Can Play. There are players that embrace a more conservative, anti-gay mindset: players on the You Can't Play team.

Through hard work and award-deserving investigative journalism I have compiled a list of the ten biggest homophobes currently playing in the National Hockey League:

#10 Loui Eriksson, Dallas Stars - Loui Eriksson is so homophobic he frowns whenever he sees a rainbow.

#9 Jake Dowell, Dallas Stars - Jake Dowell is so homophobic he won't admit "We Will Rock You" is an awesome song.

#8 Mike Ribeiro, Dallas Stars - Mike Ribeiro is so homophobic he won't even touch his own genitals.

Continue reading this post »

In case you missed it after Thursday's loss to the Coyotes, sports analyst (and noted spokesman for flavored mustache wax) Ray Ratto had some advice for the struggling Sharks: "Just win the game!"

Some people (most prominently Sharks' broadcaster and Michael Rooker impersonator Drew Remenda) took issue with Ray's over-simplification and dismissive bluster, but die-hard Ratto fans (we call ourselves Rat's Bastards) know that this is just another example of Ray's trademark problem-solving skills at work. Mr. Ratto has no equal when it comes to straight-talk, and he has an uncanny ability to cut to the simple core of issues that other, smaller-brained people think are "complicated."

For the benefit of those who haven't followed Ratto's work as closely as me, here are some other examples of Ray's unmatched analytical mind at work:

Ray Ratto solves the unemployment crisis:

"Just get a job!"

Continue reading this post »

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "Third in the West is a fine place, and is worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.

Let's get this out of the way now: The Ducks' third goal last night was ridiculous bullshit and should never have counted. It probably wouldn't have mattered at all, of course, but stuff like this just makes the league look stupid.

Moving on: My fifth-favorite movie is Se7en. Today we're going to talk about the Seven Deadly Sins of Internet Hockey Fans. This a list of the mistakes and moral failings many bloggers, commenters, and fans engage in on a regular basis.

Try not to do these things, or you are probably being an asshole.

#1 Gluttony - Reusing the same old jokes.

Making the same tired jokes over and over again is bad for your comedy health. Yes, Kyle Wellwood is really fat, we know. Sometimes jokes about his weight can still be funny, but it's rare. Other jokes, like the "Sedin sisters" or "LA Queens," betray such a lack of imagination on the part of the person who writes them that I honestly feel embarrassed for the authors. Remember: it's far better to try for a fun and creative new joke and fail than to be the ten millionth person to make a joke about how the Ducks were once owned by Disney.

#2 Anger - Getting mad about stuff.

If you are getting angry about something that someone wrote about hockey on the Internet, you are doing something wrong. Just remember that the Internet allows random people to say pretty much whatever they want, regardless of how uninformed or stupid they might be. Additionally, lots of people online will disagree with your opinions, and getting angry about that only makes you look like a childish fool.

Continue reading this post »

Here's how this is going to work: I'm going to talk a whole bunch about Jurassic Park, and you're going to like it. Then if there's time, I'll talk about hockey a little bit. If you're in a big hurry you might want to skip right to the part where you jump up your own ass.

For many years, Jurassic Park was my favorite film. And although other movies have since taken its central place in my heart and pushed it down to my 6th-favorite, it is still the film that best captures the pure joy I felt as a kid watching a movie.

I could go on and on about all the things that make Jurassic Park a great movie, but I'll focus on the aspects of it that most appealed to me as a child, and that still resonate with me today:

#1 - DINOSAURS

I don't want to brag, but I was REALLY into dinosaurs when I was a little kid. I know a lot of kids are, but I can safely say that I was a bigger fan than most. I had a huge bucket full of dinosaur toys, read tons of dinosaur books, and knew all their names. When I found out that there was a movie that had REAL DINOSAURS in it I lined up immediately to get a ticket, despite being too young to drive to the theater or even really understand how buying a movie ticket worked.

#2 - EXCITING

Jurassic Park is a very exciting movie. There are lots of intense sequences and thrilling set-pieces (Remember the raptors in the kitchen? Or the car in the tree? Oh man!). The excitement was deepened by the fact that major characters in the movie are not invincible. This was refreshing to me as child raised on cartoons where no one important ever really got hurt. I was genuinely stunned when my favorite character in the movie, Muldoon*, was *SPOILER ALERT!* killed by raptors. And remember when Timmy got all fucked up from the electric fence? That sure was shocking.

My point is, Jurassic Park was just about the most exciting movie my tiny brain could possibly have handled without suffering serious damage.

(* = Muldoon was the guy I always played as in the incredible Jurassic Park board game.)

#3 - DINOSAURS!!

Dinosaurs are so cool. They're like monsters, but better because they were REAL. If someone wants to set up a kickstarter for a real-life version of Jurassic Park I will sell my own dick and give you the profits.

God damn do I love dinosaurs.

After the jump we'll begin the awkward transition into talking about tonight's dinosaur-free hockey game.

Continue reading this post »

We've got a breaking story!

Extra extra! Read all about it!

My 7th-favorite movie of all time is The Social Network. In the spirit of that film, today I will not produce anything original and will instead make a gameday post entirely out of the work of other people! Hooray!

Here are some (slightly out of date by this point) links of interest:

Sean Leahy on the fight for the Pacific Division title and the bottom spots in the West

With the Northwest Division locked up already, Colorado will have to find its way through the Pacific party in order to make the postseason. Losing in overtime to the Northwest champion Vancouver Canucks on Saturday night, they picked up a point to settle into the three-way tie at 86 points. Not good for the Avs is that San Jose and Los Angeles have two games in hand on them and Phoenix has one.

Continue reading this post »

As I write this on Friday, the Sharks have a 50.8% chance to make the playoffs. That's up 13.5 percentage points from 24 hours ago. As far as I can tell from my position here in the past, there don't seem to be any games involving Western teams in the playoff race on Friday, so the Sharks' odds should remain the same going into tonight's game against the Coyotes.

A fifty percent chance to make the playoffs. A coin flip.

For some situations in life, 50/50 odds are pretty nice. In any sort of contest or gambling scenario, a coin flip's chance is fantastic (which is why my favorite game in Las Vegas is the Luxor's coin flip tables). 50% odds of getting a job you want is pretty nice. Sometimes, a coin flip is a very attractive proposition.

When it comes to other uncertainties in life, however, 50/50 is bad. If that's your odds of surviving a disease, then that's certainly a bummer. If an extreme sport killed participants fifty percent of the time it would be unacceptable (though probably really awesome).

At the beginning of the season a lot of people would have said the Sharks had a greater than 50% chance to win the division. Now they need a coin to land in their favor to even see the post-season.

Call it, friend-o.

Prediction: It's tails! Sharks win!

Are you guys excited about The Hungry Games? I know I am. I'm so excited, in fact, that I don't really want to talk about anything else today. I don't want to talk about the game the Sharks are going to play tonight, against the Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins. I don't want to talk about the last game the Sharks played, against some stupid team I forget at the moment. And I CERTAINLY don't want to talk about the Sharks' current odds of making the playoffs.

No, we're not discussing any of that here. In fact if you talk about hockey at all in the comments I'll probably have Earl ban you.

Today is 100 percent Hungry Games. The Games Will Change Everyone, you guys!

The Hungry Games is an upcoming movie based on a series of wildly popular children's books by Suzanne Collings that were in turn based on a Japanese movie called Battle Royale which was itself adapted from an anime series.

When something has been adapted and copied this many times, you know it's going to be great.

For the uninitiated, I'll now give you a bit of background and some plot details. Don't worry, I won't spoil anything!

Suzanne Collings came up with the idea for The Hungry Games when she was flipping back and forth between an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place and a snuff film. After she finished and cleaned up she sat down and started writing. Eight days, zero hours of sleep, and 10,000 dollars worth of cocaine later, The Hungry Games was finished.

The story focuses on a futuristic utopia where everyone is so bored with their perfect lives that they decide to entertain themselves by forcing children to slaughter one another for their amusement. The children are drugged and kidnapped and dropped into a jungle or something and then given cool weapons with which to murder each other. After many awesome murders, the book ends with the death of the main character, Catniss Overdeen, when a box of bear traps falls on her head.

Oops, spoiler alert I guess. I just got so excited!

Anyways my favorite character in the book was definitely Lenny Kravitz so I'm very pleased they were able to get the real Lenny Kravitz to play him in the film.

Oh and also there are vampires and werewolves that battle each other and play baseball.

Okay okay, I guess that's enough about The Hungry Games. After the jump I'll talk about hockey.

Continue reading this post »

Another day, another Battle of California showdown. This time it's the Sharks and Kings, the two teams that many expected to break away from the pack and compete for the Pacific division title this season. And while there's still a good chance that the Sharks or the Kings will win the division when all this craziness is finally over, the whole "break away from the pack" thing clearly did not occur.

Here's a look at the tragicomic Pacific division standings:

Just...what? What? This can't be real, can it? It's not a trick (a trick is something a whore does for money...or cocaine) and I don't think it's an illusion, but I'm having a very hard time accepting these standings as authentic reality.

So what's the deal with the top four teams in the Pacific? Which ones are for real, and which are phony?

Is Dallas REALLY this good? Are the Sharks REALLY this bad? Did that magician REALLY just saw that lady in half?

(No, No, and Yes please somebody call the police he's crazy.)

In their final ten games the Sharks only play out of their division twice, and one of those games is against the Avalanche, so it's just as important as a division game. Every win against these opponents counts for double. Every game is huge.

The only possible way forward for the Sharks is to continue their Indiana Jones strategy. They can't worry about what other teams are doing. They can't waste time doing playoff math. All they can do is focus on the obstacle directly in front of them, and find some way around it.

Prediction: No one cares about the man in the box, the man who disappears.

My 10th-favorite movie is The Prestige, which I've previously featured in a gameday post.

Blog reader/commenter/ruiner Spade and I have a bet going on this season, regarding whether Joe Thornton or Ryan Getzlaf will have more points when it's all over. The winner (me, probably) gets a glorious t-shirt from this website purchased by the loser (Spade, in all likelihood).

Let's take a look at the stats!

The Sharks have eleven games remaining, the Ducks have nine. Thornton could probably just chill out and not score any more points for the rest of the season and he would still win the points race, but then the Sharks will probably miss the playoffs so please god Joe don't do that.

I think it may be difficult for us to truly appreciate how incredible Joe Thornton is as a player, since we're his contemporaries and we have seen his highs and lows and have watched him struggle. Great figures rarely get the proper respect in their own time. It's like how in Shakespeare's time everyone said his plays were stupid and made fun of him for wearing funny clothes and probably being gay.

Perhaps a future generation will be able to actually comprehend Joe Thornton's talent. It's ironic: I envy future fans for their advantageous perspective, but I'm sure they would envy me because I'm a first-hand witness to the miracle of Thornton! Hahaha, how very droll.

Long story short, Joe Thornton is amazing and Ryan Getzlaf is poo.

Prediction: I look really awesome in my new shirt.

Today's movie is Shaun of the Dead. That's all I've got about that.

Indiana Jones is a great hero, but he's not a planner. He usually doesn't have the time or the inclination to think very far ahead. He succeeds by dealing with the obstacle directly in front of him in whatever way he can. He whips stuff. He jumps off of shit. He kills people with guns, planes, and flaming skewers. He often gets himself into situations that seem pretty hopeless, but he always wins in the end, somehow. And along the way, if people ask him what his "plan" is, he'll just reply:

"I'm making it up as I go."

There is no better inspiration for the San Jose Sharks at this point in their season than Indiana Jones.

The situation the Sharks find themselves in looks pretty bleak. If events had proceeded according to any sort of "plan" this is most definitely NOT where the team would be with only twelve games remaining.

There's no time to think or to worry about the future. All they can do is deal with the obstacle right in front of them.

Preferably by chopping it to bits with a plane propeller, because that shit is awesome.

Prediction: The Sharks and Red Wings play the most violent game to ever receive a PG rating.

Back in December, I created a new advanced NHL statistic: the SONA index. SONA uses the Family Watchdog website to rank NHL teams by the number of registered sex offenders that live within a 1.5 square mile radius of their arena.

Here are the top six SONA teams in the NHL this season:

And here are the current top six teams in the NHL in terms of standings points:

Since the SONA index only changes when someone is bored enough to look up all the NHL arenas on Family Watchdog and update the sex offender numbers (not likely to happen any time soon), these SONA rankings are pretty much final. The top six teams in the standings can obviously change before the end of the season, though there is a two point gap between the Predators and the next team with only about a dozen games left to play for everybody (all the stats in this post were updated prior to Wednesday night's games).

Assuming these six teams remain the top teams in the standings through the end of the season, the SONA index will have successfully predicted five out of the top six NHL teams (not in the exact right position, of course). It's important to note that SONA doesn't include ANY Canadian teams because of the vast Mountie conspiracy to keep sex offender data hidden from the public, so the Canucks couldn't possibly show up in the top six for SONA. With this limitation in mind, I'm going to assign the SONA index a tentative Staccuracy rating of 5/6, with "Staccuracy" being a meta-statistic I just made up that measures how well a certain statistic predicts the top NHL teams in terms of standings points.

For a stat that should have absolutely no connection whatsoever to how a team plays on the ice, SONA has done an amazing job. There are a few possible explanations for this. First and most boringest, it could just be a crazy coincidence. Second, there may be some weird demographic quirk that connects cities with large sex offender populations in certain areas with fanbases and organizations that create quality hockey teams - we won't know if this is true until someone completes the craziest sociology thesis paper in history. Finally, perhaps teams that play in high SONA cities are motivated to play better because of all the creepy dudes surrounding them all the time.

I don't know, I'm not a scientist.

The point is, SONA Staccuracy is 5/6. After the jump we'll compare it with some other statistics.

Continue reading this post »

“I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.” -John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

So last night the Sharks managed to BARELY beat a team that is worse at hockey than all the teams in the East, all but one team in the West, and three basketball teams. The win felt good, obviously, but is this a reason for renewed optimism?

Not exactly.

Since the beginning of 2012, the Sharks have had trouble beating the "elite" teams in the league - the teams that we fans felt San Jose would have to overcome to finally achieve ultimate playoff success. Consistently competing with (and hopefully beating) teams like Vancouver, Boston, and Detroit was the regular-season goal back at the beginning of the season, when we all had grand hopes and shiny child eyes.

As it turns out, we Sharks fans may have been getting just a tiny bit ahead of ourselves.

Here is a look at the Sharks win-loss record vs. teams that are currently in playoff position, sorted by month:

Oct: 5-3

Nov: 5-3

Dec: 2-5

Jan: 2-5

Feb: 4-4

Mar: 0-3

That gives a grand total of 18 wins and 23 losses, or a 44% winning percentage against playoff-quality teams.

............fuck.

FUCK. That's horrible.

Continue reading this post »