What Hockey Commentators Say During Breaks

I am so fortunate to have missed that entire game. I went to see the play Flowers for Algernon.... And, oh, am I ever glad I did. The funny thing is that as soon as the play ended, between 9:45 and 10:00, I checked my phone for the inevitable text informing me of the final score as well as the names of any Sabres players who scored. And, uh. There wasn't one. In fact, I didn't receive a text until 10:03, after the internet had already ruined it for me. Somebody was a little bit ashamed of the team and didn't want to send out the final score.

So, as someone who did not see one minute of the game, I am certainly not in a position to offer any criticism of the team. I somehow doubt I would have any praise with a final score of 6-1. I have heard a lot about how terrible the defense was, and I ask this: why were they terrible for Lalime but (seemingly) good for Miller? They only gave up two shots on goal the fifteen minutes he was in net. Guys, let me tell you a little secret: if you're going to suck defensively and give up all kinds of glorious chances, you're supposed to do it when the starting goaltender is in. You hang your starter out to dry, not the backup. You're supposed to be great for the backup! (insert eye roll here)

In lieu of the fact that I cannot even pretend to have the ability to review this game, I will instead share what exactly it is that hockey commentators say during commercial breaks and intermissions. I can do this because the feed on which I watched the Blues game was... interesting. Rather than ever go to commercial, or even to an intermission report, it just switched to a camera that was in a fixed position at Center Ice, and I got to listen to all of the talking that went on in the booth between the Blues' comm. Here are some quotes:

"No goaltending. Look at the shots. 12-12. How can we be down by two?"

"Microcosm of this entire road trip. No goaltending."

"Are we going? Are we going?"

"(into the mic) Hello. HELLO! They said like twenty seconds. You want to take a seat?"

"Checkcheckcheckcheckcheck."

"Do you have your makeup with you? Do you have it with you? Is there a bathroom down there? Is it in the bathroom? I bet you left it there. Did someone look already?"

"Hey, Tim. What are we going to see?"

"Tim, you can't switch headsets with Phil?"
"I mean, I can hear you enough, but it still isn't..."

"Hey, Phil. Phil. How depressed was that Detroit crowd last night?"
*laughter* "Oh, that was lovely."
"Oh, and I loved your shot of Babs at the end of the game, sipping water at the end of the game. It was great." *laughter*
"It was 4-1 and 5-2, so you never know. I mean, we're not talking Detroit-Pittsburgh, but."
"In today's NHL, you can come back."
"I tell you, Osgood's bad, and Fleury wasn't much better last night, but you know what, he got the win. The W."

"Timmy. Show Paul our goal if you can. He didn't see it. Paul, here it is. Goes up in the air. Knocks it in."

"Oh, there we are. La-dee-da."

That's all I have, unfortunately. From that point on, I was able to watch Rick Jeanneret. I loved the commentary going on during breaks, but... RJ beats all.

The KHL is not being specific about the heart problems found in their players, although they are being up front regarding the fact that "one or two" players have defects significant enough that they essentially can no longer play hockey. Interesante. If they are never more specific, then this entire thing will be forgotten.... At this point, though, hockey in Russia is tainted to me. It shouldn't be, but that's the way it is, and it will likely never change. I cannot bring myself to blame the KHL or anybody else for Cherepanov's death, because honestly, that is pointless, and nothing will bring him back, but... It's a combination of that and everything that has happened since then that causes my overall view to be rather negative.

If only one or two of the players had defects dangerous enough to end their hockey careers, I no longer suspect anything sinister. That is possible to happen naturally, even if statistically it may not make sense, depending on what those defects are. Last month, two athletes at Indiana Tech, a school against which my college plays, died just over two weeks apart. They were both female. One was a senior and the other a sophomore. One was a volleyball player who died in her apartment, and one was a basketball player who died during a scrimmage. One had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and the other an unnamed "congenital heart defect" (and for the record, a defibrillator was immediately used on the girl with HCM, who collapsed during a scrimmage; that is another reason that I refuse to blame anyone for the death of Cherepanov). The chance of sudden cardiac death due to any cause in young female athletes is only .17 per 100,000, and the chance of death in young male athletes is .75 per 100,000. Those are extraordinary odds, and yet it happened twice, both times to women, on a tiny college campus, within the span of two weeks last month.

I suppose the moral of the story is to never take life for granted and all of those wonderful things that people always say but that really have no... meaning.... not until you know for yourself what it is like to know a young person whose life is abruptly ended. Most people do. I do.

I am so pulling an "I'm gonna edit my blog entry even though people have probably already read it! lulz!" to add this poem that everybody knows.

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

--A. E. Housman

At least nothing, for now, seems to be wrong with hockey in Russia. And that is a great, great thing. I just wish it wasn't ruined in my mind, because there really is no reason at all for it, not anymore.