Welcome, Raffi!

Guys, this is the best trade deadline day EVER! I cannot believe the Sabres picked up the guy who sang my absolute favorite childhood song!



This is SO much better than winning a Stanley Cup!!!

UPDATE: Oh. It seems there is actually more than one guy named Raffi in this world. In my defense, how was I supposed to guess that that would ever happen? It turns out the Raffi we got is actually featured in this video.

Heh. I suppose that's still pretty good. But if he thinks that's going to stop me from singing "Baaaby beluuuga, oh, baaaaaaby beluuuuuuuuga!" every time I see him, he's crazy.

Chillax, Spoilsports

I know this is going to seem hypocritical from the gal who was just demanding that the playoffs start, like, yesterday, but: people freaking out about the trade deadline need to stop getting ahead of themselves. I know that freaking out about trade deadlines is a long-cherished tradition among us Buffalo fans, but for whatever reason, all the bellyaching is really getting to me this year.

I guess I just don't get why the expectations for this team are suddenly so high. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the Sabres win the Cup this year as much as anyone, and I think we just might have a shot. But before this season started I was just hoping we would make the playoffs for a change, so I'm not about to go declaring this season a failure if Darcy doesn't get us the player we need tomorrow.

First of all, because I'm not sure the player is out there to be had. We have our weaknesses, sure, but that doesn't mean there's anything Darcy can do about it. Not many teams are selling, and those that are don't seem to have that much to sell. But then again, what do I know. As usual, I'm more than comfortable letting the people who get paid to figure this stuff out, figure this stuff out.

Second of all, because there's no reason our Stanley Cup dreams--if we insist on having them--should live and die based on what happens tomorrow. For better or worse, there's still plenty of hockey left to be played before we even make it to the playoffs, let alone the victory lap. Sure, maybe this roster isn't good enough to put a ring on everybody's finger, but maybe it is. We can't just skip to the end of the story, we have to wait and see.

Last of all (and this is my real point), so what if this roster isn't good enough to win the whole thing? Maybe I'm being too deliberately cheerful about this situation, but at this point I'm fully prepared to be satisfied with less out of this season. I know fans always want to see their team be the best (I'm no different, mind), but the truth is only one team can be every year. I've spent two years without a real interest in the playoffs, so forgive me for being ready to be happy with second or third or even fifth best.

Does no one remember how much fun the playoffs were to watch in 2007, when our expectations hit "Stanley or Bust" sometime around November? Answer: Not very, and I can't help seeing the correlation. Sure, our expectations didn't make the Sabres suck out loud against Ottawa in round 3, but they did make rounds 1 and 2 feel perfunctory. Did anyone really get to enjoy eliminating the Islanders in 5 and the Rangers in 6, or did it just feel routine? That 7.7 second goal was sweet, but it still felt like an opening act, didn't it? Knowing now that the headliner blew, I wish I'd given the openers more of a chance.

I'm not going to deny that since seeing Olympic MVP Ryan Miller at work, I've spent every night nestled all snug in my bed, with visions of sugar-Stanleys dancing in my head, but there's a difference between hopes and expectations. And in this case, the difference lies in how far I fall when things don't work out. I'm not saying that I don't believe they can win it all, I'm just saying that I'm not ready to expect them to do it, and I probably won't be raising my expectations that high until the third round, at least. To do so on the third of March seems like setting myself up for disappointment. And if there's one thing the Sabres don't need help with, it's setting their fans up for disappointment.

Let me just close this post by stating for the record that I'm not trying to tell anybody how to feel. As always, I fully respect the "whatever floats your boat" philophy of sport fandom, where feelings are often irrational and illogical, but never illegitimate. It's just that, from where I'm sitting, it seems like we have a hell of a ride ahead of us, and my feeling is, "Why spoil it?"

Backfire

Well, that didn't quite turn out the way I'd hoped. And I'm actually not talking about losing the gold medal to Canada. Believe it or not, I didn't have any hopes regarding Team USA going into this tournament, aside from that they'd keep Miller in one piece and maybe let him get a little rest if they could manage it.

No, what I had originally hoped to gain from the Olympics was simpler and more selfish: I wanted a break. I know you wouldn't be able to tell this from how fanatically I've been posting in this blog for the last two months, but I got kind of burnt out on hockey. Maybe I was letting myself get too carried away by the fact that the Sabres weren't sitting out of a playoff spot come January, but I was totally ready to skip the push and get right to the good stuff. I know it's counter-intuitive, but it seems the better the Sabres are playing, the fewer games I want to watch them play.

So I was counting on the Olympic break to let me recharge. I actually have a two-week-old post entitled "Give Me a Break" floating around in my draft folder detailing my exact hopes and dreams, but it seems I was too busy, uh, taking a break to expand it past that oh-so-clever title. I was counting on the fact that I don't own a TV to mean that I wouldn't be watching any Olympic hockey--or, in fact, any Olympic coverage at all. I was counting on two weeks without regular season hockey to mean that I would forget all about it and then be ready to accept it back into my life when it returned, as is.

What I wasn't counting on was Team USA making everyone in the tournament poop in their pants. I wasn't counting on them being instrumental in sending both Sweden and Russia home medal-less. I wasn't counting on Ryan Miller being the center of this near-perfect storm, and I wasn't counting on everyone and their blogs talking about how awesome it was. I wasn't counting on needing to cancel plans and crash living rooms in order to be able to watch this afternoon's game. But there I was, eating up every last delicious second of it.

And here I am, more rabid for playoff hockey than ever. Joke's on me, I guess.

I'm ready for the grit and the energy and the near heart attacks. I'm ready for the volume at home and the abrupt silence away. I'm ready for the sudden death.

I'm ready to see the Ryan Miller who plays out of his mind. Who accepts second place like it's last place. His post-game interview was kind of heartbreaking to watch, and you know he would have rather been doing pretty much anything else, but I couldn't help but smile at the way he very typically refused to sugar coat anything. He had both the opportunity and the right to treat the silver medal as a victory. After all, it was certainly more than anyone had expected of them, and they put up a hell of a fight. The team had nothing to be ashamed of, and Miller least of all. But he's not going to bullshit us with those platitudes. He's going to tell it like it is: silver sucks. That's not exactly what one would call a healthy perspective, but when all is said and done, that's the perspective I want fighting on my side come May.

Most of all, I'm ready to see Miller's five hole not allow Crosby to play the role of hockey savior on the national stage, for a change. Shit's getting old.

For now I'm just going to have to make do with the same old same old regular season hockey. It starts up again on Tuesday as the Sabres face the Penguins, and I can't imagine what could possibly be a story worth talking about connected to that matchup.

All I can say? Thank goodness it's not going to be on Versus.

Wait A Second

I know I've been out of the loop for a little while, but... the Blue Jackets are still terrible, right? Nothing has suddenly changed on that front? My only experience of tonight's game was a text of the final score, and I just want to make sure I'm grasping the full suckitude of this situation.

Boo.

A Letter to the Readers

Dear Readers,

You're right. I totally suck at blogging.

Whoops,
Gambler

A Letter to the Haters

Dear Haters,

You're right. Jochen Hecht totally sucks.

WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Gambler

That Game Blew, but Live Hockey is Fun

Maybe I'm a bad hockey fan because I spend money to support a mediocre administration, but sarcastically cheering Montador's lone shot in the first period tonight was almost the most fun I've ever had at a hockey game. So suck it, Sully.

As for the rest of it... well, let's just say I hope everyone on the team got Ryan Miller really good Christmas presents.

Tradition

We're big fans of tradition here in the Gambler household, especially around Christmas. I'm not going to bore you all with the entire list, but rest assured that me posting pictures of my family making fools of themselves on this blog as a way of wishing my vast readership a collective Merry Christmas has been tacked onto the end. So without further ado, I give you this year's Christmas card photo:

Happy Holidays!
Love, the Gamblers

Weighing In

Sorry about the long silence, but travel and social engagements have kept me too busy to blog recently. Today, though, my mom and I have vowed to do nothing but wrap presents, and watch The Muppet Christmas Carol, so I'm going to seize the opportunity to unload about something that's been clogging up my brain for too long.

I don't have much to say about the Sabres play at the moment that a simple "thumbs up" won't cover, so allow me to travel way back in time to re-visit an issue that has been pretty well covered by many blogs already. Just to refresh your memories:



You'll find the bulk of my reaction already expressed in the aforelinked posts, so I'm going to do my best not to be redundant, but there are two particular quotes that I want to respond to. The first comes from this article in The Buffalo News:

"I tried to hit [Kaleta] and missed a little bit," Ruutu told the Ottawa Citizen. "My shoulder hit his head and then his head hit the glass. That was really it. Not much you could do."

This is a quote I find akin to Alex Ovechkin's "Nobody can kill me" reaction to criticism of his reckless play. I tried to blog about that gem at the time, but as always when I try to articulate my hatred of Ovie, I was too blinded by crimson rage to manage anything more than incoherent sputtering. The words I couldn't get out then are the same I have to offer Ruutu now: In my opinion, this kind of attitude doesn't belong in hockey. This is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. It's a sport where grown (sometimes over-grown) men slam into each other while traveling at top speeds on a low-friction surface. It's a sport where players swing fiberglass sticks around to propel a piece of frozen galvanized rubber through the air at speeds approaching 100mph. Not to mention the fact that everyone has razor blades strapped to the bottoms of their feet. Someone certainly can kill you, Ovie. Even though it hasn't happened yet, it's not that hard to imagine. In fact, I almost have a harder time imagining how it hasn't happened yet. What I'm trying to say is hockey is the last place you want to play fast and loose with safety. This is a sport where unavoidable, freak accidents have ended in arterial spatter on the ice. So, in my opinion, "I missed," just doesn't cut it. Personally, I don't buy that Ruutu wasn't aiming for Kaleta's head, but even if he wasn't, he shouldn't get off suspension-free just because he says there was nothing he could do. Accidents do happen, but you should have better control of your body than that or you shouldn't be playing hockey. Period. And don't tell me it's that hard, because most other players seem to manage. If they didn't, players like Ruutu, Neil, and--yes--Kaleta wouldn't stand out the way they do.

I understand that that's not entirely fair--after all, not all styles of play were created equally in this regard. Tim Connolly not properly controlling his body will more likely result in him losing the puck than someone lying unconscious on the ice. So I understand that while some players are able to stay away from the line between safe and reckless play altogether, others are forced to toe it in order to perform their role on the team. So how are they supposed to stay toeing the right side of the line? Well, that leads me to my next quote:

I'll be worried about Kaleta's quality of life after hockey when he starts showing an ounce of concern for his fellow players' quality of life after hockey.

This was a comment to the blog post from Top Shelf that I linked to above. I don't really have that much of a problem with this statement, given that it's coming from a fan. As much as I like to think that I would still be uneasy about this hit even if Kaleta had been on the giving end of it, if it had been Neil or Avery on the receiving end, I probably would be less upset. But that's the entitlement of a fan. We get to have subjective judgment and hold unfounded and unjustly long grudges. The problem is that this seems to be the same stance the league is taking on this issue, and they don't have the same entitlements. They have obligations to keep the rules of the game well-defined and to keep the players of the game safe, and they don't get to ignore those obligations just because it's "just" Kaleta lying on the ice. Heather did an excellent job explaining why, when it comes to issues of safety, all players are created equal, regardless of their talent level--although it's really sad to think that the league needs a blogger to point that out to them. Letting goons and bruisers beat up on each other as much as they like as long as they don't touch the "important" players doesn't count as fair strategy. I'm not sure it counts as strategy at all, actually. Trusting players to police each other and trusting them to keep each other safe are almost entirely mutually exclusive, as it turns out, so the neutral authority is going to have to step in at some point. Like it or not, Kaleta showing respect for other players' safety starts with the league forcing other players to respect his. Until that happens, the vicious cycle of "a boarding for a boarding" will continue to leave the whole world with mushy brains.

Of course, it's not certain that more suspensions are the answer to cleaning up the game, especially with one of the league's premiere players going around telling the world that no amount of discipline is going to make him change his ways. But that's still no excuse for not trying.

One thing is for sure, though: everyone's looking forward to meeting the Sens on the day after Christmas, and right now I'm glad that I happen to have tickets. Here's hoping I'm still happy to have had them on the day after the day after Christmas.

By the way, about last night's game against the Capitals: I'm afraid that was all my fault. I forewent (if that's a word) watching the game in order to go see New Moon with my sister. That's a bold admission to make in a public forum, to be sure, but rest assured that we went in irony. I had planned on zipping through the game on DVR this morning, but it seems the Sabres took it upon themselves to try to play a game even worse than New Moon, in order to make me feel better about ditching them. I'm sure they didn't actually succeed, but I can't imagine watching a hockey game that even approached that level of awfulness was a pleasant experience. So I'd like to apologize to everyone whose night I ruined. Believe me, it will not happen again.

I don't mean to make this all about me...

But it's my birthday, and I'm pretty sure that win was just for me.

So the rest of you can cease your enjoyment of it. Right now.

WOO!