Great Time to Be a European Hockey Fan

The best hockey players in the world are flocking to Europe. So if you're a hockey fan in Europe, this lockout has been great news.

HC Davos of Switzerland has signed Joe Thornton and Rick Nash. The two played there during the last lockout, and probably chose the team because Davos is a ski resort town in the Alps. Sort of like playing in Aspen.

Mettalurg of Russia's KHL has been busy. They signed Sergei Gonchar, Evgeni Malkin, and Nikolai Kulemin of the Maple Leafs.

Some NHL players have taken advantage of the lockout to play closer to home. Christian Ehrhoff signed with the German team Krefeld, which is only 14 miles from his hometown of Moers. Mark Streit is playing in Bern, which essentially is his hometown town. Russian Ilya Kovalchuck signed with SKA St. Petersburg.

There are rumors that Bruin David Krejci will be signing with a Czech team.

I don't think Tim Thomas will be playing in Europe. But you never know.

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What Replacement Refs Are Like

I've come up with an analogy to illustrate the significant drop-off between proper NFL officials and the replacement refs that have tortured football fans for 2 weeks.

The proper NFL refs are like the US Congress. We didn't like them, they didn't seem to get anything right, and all we did was criticize them. But they actually knew what they were doing. They knew the procedures by heart, their mistakes were rare, and they knew how to do the job.

The current replacement refs are like the Norwood (or insert your hometown) Town Council being asked to do Congress's job. They're trying, but they aren't equipped to do the job, nor do they have the experience to figure out how to do it.

So imagine defense committees at Congress being run by people who are accustomed to zoning permits and organizing free concerts at the gazebo in the center of town. That's what these replacement refs are like running an NFL game.

Your Wes Welker Theories

After Week 2 last year, Wes Welker had 15 catches for 241 yards and 2 touchdowns. After 2 games this year, he has 8 catches for 109 yards and 0 scores. Why has his contribution been so dramatically reduced?

The last person anyone is blaming is Wes Welker. And some of New England's more dunderheaded sports fans have been attributing his lack of catches and lack of playing time to villainous scheming by Bill Belichick. My two favorite theories have been that Belichick doesn't want to pay Welker very much in 2013, so he's limiting Welker's production, thereby reducing his apparent value. The other golden nugget of imbecility is that Belichick is trying to "send a message" to Welker for the receiver's off-season contract negotiations.

People who actually believe such notions should be spayed or neutered in order to remove their faulty DNA from the gene pool and protect the human species from devolving back to simpler primates.

Other players have had contract disputes with the Patriots, then returned to the team, and their playing time didn't change. Why would Belichick start sending such messages now? And the suggestion that Belichick would jeopardize winning, or that Tom Brady would go along with such a change in priority, is laughable.

There are other FOOTBALL RELATED reasons that Welker isn't on the field as often. I think Josh McDaniels had wanted the slot-receiver role to be minimized in general. He wanted the tight-ends, Brandon Lloyd, and the running game to be the spearheads of the offense. That might change after Aaron Hernandez's injury. Welker certainly got more attention in the second half on Sunday.

And to be frank, maybe Welker hasn't earned more playing time than he's gotten. I can't forget his Super Bowl drop. Or his drop in Week 1. Or the drop on Sunday that preceded the blocked punt. He doesn't look as sharp as he did in years past. An maybe he doesn't look sharp in practice either.

Nobody is talking about this. Nobody is attributing the lack of targets or snaps to Wes Welker. I could only bear to listen to a few minutes of sports radio yesterday, but didn't hear Welker's pre-punt-block drop mentioned once. He had a chance to make a big 1st down play, and he failed. All 10 fingers touched the ball.

I don't pretend to know why Bill Belichick or his assistants do what they do. I try to come up with possible explanations that make logical sense. There is a complete lack of logic behind some of these Welker theories. To me it seems impossible that Welker's lack of targets/snaps is anything more than a football decision. You might not think it's a smart decision, but don't conjure harebrained theories about contracts or messages.

Oh, the Red Sox Won, That's Nice

Did you watch any of this game? I watched a few pitches. Basically, the Tampa Bay Rays are collapsing. The Sox never really collapsed this season, they've been deflated since Opening Day.

Jacoby Ellsbury had a good night: 3 hits, 3 RBI, and a homerun. This is a lost season for Ellsbury as much as it is for the Sox. Next year will be his price-tag year as he approaches free agency. So it's good to see glimpses of production from him this September.

Aaron Cook pitched 6 innings and only allowed 1 run. Boston native Rich Hill didn't allow a run in his inning. Junichi Tazawa threw yet another scoreless inning, striking out 2. Mark Melancon felt compelled to increase his ERA to 6.98 by allowing a run in the 9th.

The Rays are on the verge of falling off the cliff in the Wild Card race, so perhaps the Red Sox can win a few in front of 11,000 people in St. Pete and pass Toronto for 4th. Huzzah!

Photo Credit:
AP Photo

I Love Hakeen Nicks

Hakeem Nicks was questionable going into Sunday's game. That's how I knew he'd have a monster performance. He's always questionable, or doubtful, or limited participation, or no participation.

Then on Sunday he catches 10 passes for 199 yards and a TD.

That's why for the last four seasons, Hakeem Nicks has been a key member of my fantasy football team: The Fingering Penguins. Nicks personifies what the Fing-guins are all about. He's explosive, he falls in the draft, and for some reason I like him slightly better than anyone else likes him.

Thank you for the 25 points, Hakeem. The rest of my team disappointed this week, but that's the Fingering Penguin way. I need Matt Ryan to score over 20 tonight to win. Individual inconsistency is fine though, so long as teammates pick each other up. Penguins finger together!

Bruins Give Milan Lucic Stupid Extension

Just before the lockout was officially locked, the Bruins signed Milan Lucic to a 3 year, $18 million deal. It's the latest chapter in the Bruins' efforts to never again issue new jerseys or change roster sheets. The B's are deadset on keeping the same group of players together on this team.

Even though Lucic scored 0 goals in last year's playoffs, and a modest 26 goals in the regular season. He's got 15 goals and 20 assists in 65 playoff games. Which isn't good at all. He isn't good on a Power Play. You'd never want to see him on the ice short-handed. He's an inconsistent defender. He's slow, lumbering, inconsistently skates.

I'm just not sold on Lucic. Not to the tune of $6 million. And certainly not when this team is committed to having a roster as similar to the 2011 Cup team as possible.

The problem is, that team won the Cup because Tim Thomas played at inhuman levels. And the Bruins played some teams that they matched up well against (they could out-muscle Montreal, Tampa Bay, and Vancouver. The Flyers had catastrophic goaltending difficulties).

All the players that the Bruins have retained are good, even very good players. None are great. Milan Lucic is not a great player. He's got quality, but he's not a scorer, not a passer, not an any-situation-player, and his production is unreliable. He's a good 2nd liner. The Bruins have one #2 line, but lots of 2nd liners.

If hockey is played in 2012-13, we'll see how the Bruins contend against teams that have done more complex things to improve apart from extending all the contracts of their current players.

I'm Growing a Lockout Beard

The NHL players have been locked out. The owners wanted the players to lower the percentage of hockey revenues they got paid, instead of sharing revenues with smaller market teams. The idea the owners had was that small market teams could afford to pay players the same as big market ones, and big market teams could pocket all their additional profits. It's not surprising that Jeremy "Ebeneezer" Jacobs is spearheading this greedy endeavor.

There are two kinds of greed in this world. Short-term, avaricious, 7 Deadly Sin kind of greed that seeks immediate gain, forsaking all consequences and repercussions. And intelligent, productive, ambitious greed that "has marked the upward surge of mankind." There's greed that urges you to take all the pennies in the dish by the counter, and there's greed to start a business and produce something.

The NHL owners are hungry for immediate profit. And this foolish kind of greed will destroy this game.

Do you hear much outrage over the NHL lockout? Do you hear wailing in the streets, the sounds of large appliances being hurled through drywall as millions of angry fans struggle to cope with the loss of hockey?

No. Hockey is a regional sport, with a core of fanatic supporters, and a large contingent of casual fans. These casual fans are in football mode, fretting over their fantasy teams. And in February, when football stops, if there's no NHL they'll just watch college basketball and drink more.

For most sports fans in America, the NHL is like a girl you occasionally hook up with when you can't get anything better, and you don't have any strong feelings for. They threaten to never talk to you again unless you get serious with them, and you're kind of fine with that.

The NHL has done decently since the lockout. Total revenues are up. Ratings are better. The big market teams are doing well. Chicago, Boston, LA, New York, and Philly are tuning in to the game. This should be the opening stages of an upward trend for the NHL, not another massive hiccup.

This is no time for ultimatums, or short-term cash grabbing. This might be a time for small changes, but not major readjustments to the owner/player balance. The players are the entertainment. They're the ones with the skills. They're the ones making the plays, scoring the goals, unleashing the hits, taking the risks.

Why should they get less?

Until the owners can adequately answer this question, or until they realize they should stop asking the question at all, I'm letting my beard grow. I trimmed it Saturday. It's a blonde/black/ginger mix, so when it grows it gets sketchy. Tendrils of red hair curl over my lips. Patches of black hairs mix with blotches of blonde on my cheeks. It's not pretty.

This league seems to not want to take care of itself, groom itself, and keep itself presentable. So I will do the same.

Photo Credit:
AP Photo