Neil Keefe

Nov 4, 2011

Giants Will Beat Patriots and Boston Agrees

It’s Giants-Patriots and it’s time for an email exchange with Mike Hurley.

By Neil Keefe
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It’s been almost four years since I watched the Giants end the Patriots’ perfect season on arguably the greatest night of my sports life. And when it’s possibly the best night of someone’s sports life, it’s likely the worst night for someone’s sports life on the other end of the game.

Enter Mike Hurley of NESN.com.

I have known Mike Hurley for almost three years now and not a day goes by that I don’t try to slip the names “Jay Alford” or “David Tyree” into a conversation with him or send him an email that asks “Is Plax going to play defense?” I have tried to make him relive a night he couldn’t have seen coming and a night that I wish I could relive every night.

I don’t have to make him relive it anymore. For the first time since Super Bowl XLII, the Giants and Patriots will play Sunday. No, it’s not the Super Bowl or the playoffs or in a neutral setting, but it’s as good as we’re going to get unless the Football Gods are willing to give us another miracle this winter. With the Giants heading to Foxboro and looking to maintain their lead in the NFC East, I decided to conduct another epic email discussion with Mike Hurley to get his feelings on the game and possibly bring up a moment or two from the past.

Keefe: Over the last two-plus years (almost three now), I have bombarded your email inbox and Facebook wall with videos of Eli Manning scrambling to find David Tyree, and Jay Alford soaring through the air like Bobby Orr trying to end Tom Brady’s career and not the Stanley Cup finals. I have sent you Tom Brady’s pre-Super Bowl XLII press conference asking, “We’re only going to score 17 points? OK. Is Plax playing defense?” after the wide receiver’s famous 21-17 prediction, and I have sent you remixes and mash-ups of that same press conference. I have tried to get you to watch Bill Belichick postgame session with Chris Myers outside the Patriots locker room. You have told me you will never watch that game again or any play from that game again and you usually end up threatening my livelihood.

But not anymore. Not this week. This week I know you were unable to escape the loops of the Helmet Catch and the replays of Plaxico Burress breaking Ellis Hobbs’ ankles in the end zone on every possible sports channel. I know you were unable to look away from every major sports website that’s been coated with coverage of the XLII rematch with endless content as everyone tries to relive that glorious day.

The other day I found myself wondering what would have happened if Brett Favre didn’t throw an interception to start overtime in the NFC Championship Game or what would have happened if Lawrence Tynes missed another field goal in that game. The answer is that the Packers would have played the Patriots in the Super Bowl and the Patriots would have been considered the best team in the history of football.

I thought about Bill Belichick deciding to go for it on fourth-and-13 instead of attempting the field goal, or his decision to not challenge the fumble ruling that would have been overturned in the Patriots’ favor. I remember being nervous that Brandon Jacobs wasn’t going to convert a fourth-and-1 and the Giants would turn the ball over on downs and lose in anti-climatic fashion, or that Steve Smith wouldn’t get that third-and-11 before going out of bounds. Sometimes I visualize Asante Samuel coming down with the ball that went through his hands and watching him go down and then get up only to run around the field celebrating with the other members of the Patriots defense. Once in a while I watch the Helmet Catch and wait for the officials to blow the play dead or for Rodney Harrison to knock the ball loose, but neither thing ever happens.

I know this is a lot to take in right off the bat and you’re probably crying or trying to not cry, and you might not even want to participate in this email discussion anymore. Now you’re probably searching on YouTube for clips from one of the three Super Bowls the Patriots won at the beginning of the last decade to try to build some self esteem and pride. I will give you a moment…

(Giving you a moment.)

Let’s start with last week. The Patriots never lose off a bye week. I know this. You know this. Everyone knows this. So what happened in Pittsburgh where the Patriots always win? What’s happened to Bill Belichick’s defense? How do the Patriots have the worst passing defense in the league? How do the Patriots have the worst anything in the league?

Hurley: That was absolutely, without question, the worst thing I’ve ever read. I hate you.

I’ll be honest, I’m having a little bit of a hard time answering your question at the end there, because you spent the first five paragraphs delivering haymakers. I’ll do my best though.

If you want the Patriots’ defensive problems explained to you in simplest terms, I can do that: Antwaun Molden, James Ihedigbo, Sergio Brown, Phillip Adams, Josh Barrett. Those are the names of guys who are being leaned on heavily to slow down opposing teams’ passing attacks.

Undrafted cornerback Kyle Arrington is actually having a decent year. Adams and Barrett were both seventh-round draft picks, and they play like it. Molden was a third-round pick by Houston in 2008 but was waived in August (Houston had the worst passing defense in the NFL last year).

That leaves Devin McCourty (first round, 2010) and Patrick Chung (second round, 2009) as the only reliable players in the secondary. Chung can only cover one person at a time, and McCourty’s experiencing a definite regression in his second year. Namely, he has no idea where the football is. Ever. That’s a problem when your job is to know where the football is.

Ben Roethlisberger did Sunday what Chad Henne did in Week 1 (Chad Henne!), Philip Rivers did in Week 2, Ryan Fitzpatrick did in Week 4 and what Eli Manning should do in Week 9. It’s not going to get any better for New England. Throw the ball against this Patriots defense, and you’ll get your yards and you’ll control the game. It’s really that simple.

Keefe: No retaliation from you? Nothing? You’re not going to tell me that the Giants haven’t won a playoff game since that Super Bowl or that they have missed out on the postseason the last two years? Oh, that’s right. The Patriots haven’t won a playoff game since before that Super Bowl and might as well have not made the playoffs the last two years with first-round exits at home to the Ravens and rival Jets. OK, I’m done with the insults. I promise.

You have already told me that you think the Giants will win. Chad Finn of the Boston Globe told me the same in the podcast I did with him. What is going on in Boston? What is in the water up there? I have never heard a Boston sports fan predict that their team is going to lose or that the thought of failure has even crossed their mind, especially when it comes to the Patriots. And you of all people think they will? This is unprecedented.

You made me feel good about the Giants’ chances by reminding me that Chad Henne picked apart the Patriots defense along with every other quarterback that has taken the field against the Patriots this year. But now it’s my turn to make you feel better about your team’s chances.

Ahmad Bradshaw is reportedly out with a cracked bone in his foot. That means that 2011 Brandon Jacobs is going to play. You remember Brandon Jacobs as a monster and beast of a running back whose career was about to take off after his impressive play in the 2007 playoffs and in the Super Bowl. But (almost) four years is a long time, and now Jacobs doesn’t run hard, doesn’t run people over and instead stands on the sidelines pouting when he isn’t throwing his helmet into the stands. He is a problem when he is the locker room or on the sidelines or in the game, and I’m surprised the Giants didn’t cut ties with him before the start of the season.

On top of that, Hakeem Nicks hasn’t practice all week with a hamstring injury (people usually heal from those quickly…) and his absence would put a massive dent into the Giants’ passing game and take away their deep threat. Yes, Victor Cruz and Mario Manningham have been good, but they aren’t Nicks.

So, now that you know that the Giants might be without their starting running back and possibly their best receiver, do you feel a little better?

Hurley: Questioning my integrity as a sports professional? How dare you.

What’s in the water up here is that the Patriots’ defense is bad and has been for a long time. You could take Ty Law and Rodney Harrison off the street and put them on the field, and it’d be an improvement.

I do like how this has turned into an argument where we each argue why the other’s team is going to win. Seriously this is the first discussion of its kind here.

I know Brandon Jacobs is hilariously bad. The Giants, for whatever reason, are on in Boston almost every single weekend, so I have to watch them with their super-tight, armpit-exposing jerseys, and their non-shiny, all-too-revealing gray pants. I think it’s a conspiracy to get Bostonians to buy the satellite packages because it’s so boring to watch the Giants play football every single Sunday.

So I saw last week as Jacobs fumbled a handoff, which Dan Dierdorf blamed on Eli for being “a little high,” and I know he’s terrible, but the Patriots have no problem stopping the run. They’re actually top 10 in that category (hey, go Patriots!!). They’re going to have problems stopping Eli though.

Now, if you want to have some faith in the Patriots, which you clearly already do, you can rely on history. The Patriots don’t lose twice in a row. They just don’t. They lose Super Bowls when they’re 18-0, but they don’t lose twice in a row. They lost two in a row in ’09 and ’06, but have actually posted six of eight seasons since ’03 without losing consecutive games. That has a lot to do with the coach and quarterback, who are obviously still in New England, so there’s reason to believe Tom Brady could act like Tom Brady and throw for 400 yards and five touchdowns.

You can also maybe hope that Eli puts up a stinker (it will always kill me that he threw 23 TDs and 20 INTs in 2007 but beat Brady’s team in the Super Bowl), which is always a distinct possibility.

But all of that is hope and has nothing to do with the events we’ve all witnessed this season. Don’t make me say Antwaun Molden’s name again!

Keefe: There isn’t much integrity to question.

You love saying Eli is “terrible or “horrible” or “embarrassing” or “the worst” or “a joke.” Maybe it’s you trying to compensate for XLII or maybe it’s just you wearing a Pat the Patriot costume when you say those things. Does Eli put up the numbers that his brother or Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees puts up? No. But he’s still one of the best quarterback in the league, and you just said that the Giants are on every Sunday in Boston so you should know this.

It’s hard to defend Eli all the time because of his inconsistent stats. But you know as well as anyone that there should be a stat for interceptions that are tipped by receivers or dropped by receivers, and if that category existed, Eli would lead the league in it because of the play of his receivers (mainly Steve Smith) the last few years.

Right now everyone is all over Eli for his gaudy stats and for his third-best QB rating and his fourth quarter QB rating. He is getting the attention he has deserved for a while and the credit he hasn’t been given before by leading a very banged-up Giants team to a 5-2 record despite losing what seemed like the whole team in preseason. This isn’t anything new though. Giants fans have known what Eli is capable of for some time now, and we have known what he can do in the two-minute drill whether it’s at the end of the first half or the end of the game. I think Cowboys fans remember it from the 2007 playoffs, and I know you still remember it.

So before we continue, I need you to finally admit to me that Eli Manning is good and not the 24-year-old goofball, “gee whiz” southern boy you still view him as.

Hurley: I think I can say that Eli is good while still saying he’s the “gee whiz” kid that I say he is. He’s at the lower end of the second tier of quarterbacks in the league. Rodgers, Brady and Peyton are the cream of the crop, with Brees, Rivers and Eli the next up. I’ve always maintained that, just as I’ve maintained Rivers is better than Eli.

I say that in part because I know we’re running out of time and space and it’s going to make you lose your mind without the ability to write about it, but also because I believe it.

So I don’t know what you want me to do. I’ll throw a parade for Eli on Sunday for being a slightly above average quarterback. A poor man’s Carson Palmer, if you will. Hooray for Eli!

Keefe: A poor man’s Carson Palmer?!?! A poor man’s Carson Palmer?!?! I feel like Zoolander questioning Mugatu … “One look?!?! One look?!?! I don’t think so!”

The mood in Boston this week has been one worth watching from afar. The Patriots lost one game on the road to a team that went to the Super Bowl last year and a team that could go to the Super Bowl again this year. It’s one loss at Heinz Field! Yet somehow Bill Belichick’s coaching and drafting techniques have come into question here over the last week, and you would think the Patriots are 3-4 and that the dynasty is finally over (even if it ended that night in 2006 when the Broncos beat them).

That’s what makes this week even more interesting. If the Giants can beat the Patriots in Foxboro and stir up old memories of XLII, and have the Patriots at 5-3 with a trip to the Meadowlands next week to face the Jets, who might have the same record then with the Bills (the Bills!!!) sitting in first place, well I know how I will be spending my Monday: reading every Boston sports site and listening to Felger and Mazz starting at 2 p.m.

What’s going to happen on Sunday? Well, I hope it goes something like this…

The Giants score the go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter on the first play after the two-minute warning on a pass to Victor Cruz, and he salsa dances in the end zone. Now, there’s 1:57 left on the clock and the Patriots have two timeouts, trailing by four and needing a touchdown to win. Tom Brady gets the ball and has a chance to go down the field in under two minutes at Gillette Stadium and be the hero he couldn’t be in Super Bowl XLII. Brady completes his first four passes and the Patriots are at the Giants’ 38 with 49 seconds left and they use their first timeout. The first play out of the timeout, Justin Tuck busts through the line, reenacting the Jay Alford sack from XLII. The Patriots burn their last timeout, and on the first play after that timeout, Corey Webster picks off Tom Brady for the win.

Giants 31, Patriots 27.

What do you think?

Hurley: Look, I know you love Eli, and you wear his jersey T-shirt to bed every night, but facts are facts.

31-year-old Carson Palmer’s career stats: 62.8 completion percentage, 7.0 Y/A, 1.50 TD-to-INT ratio

30-year-old Eli Manning’s career stats: 58.4 completion percentage, 6.9 Y/A, 1.43 TD-to-INT ratio

In terms of how I think this Sunday will play out, I don’t think it will be all that different from your prediction. However, I will not be referencing anything that rhymes with “Hay Malford Jack” because that is just cruel.

As much as there’s that gut instinct to believe in Brady and the offense, I can’t picture anything other than a whole lot of passing from the Giants.

Giants 34, Patriots 30.

Follow Neil on Twitter @NeilKeefe

Blogs • NHL

Feb 10, 2011

How to Fix the NHL

There are three main problems with the NHL and the way they currently police problems in the league that just need some slight modifying to make the game better and safer.

There’s no real beginning and end to any sports year, but I like to think that the Super Bowl is the New Year’s Eve of the sports year. The only difference is that everyone is hungover the Monday after the Super Bowl, but it’s not a holiday (though it should be) like New Year’s Day. And like New Year’s Day meaning the end of the holiday season and the long winter months ahead, the Super Bowl means the end of football and not quite the beginning of baseball with February and March still to go.

I didn’t care who won the Super Bowl. It was a lose-lose situation. If Ben Roethlisberger won for the third time there would be stories about how he “changed” and “turned” his life around over the course of a season. And if Aaron Rodgers won for the first time there would be stories calling him the next big thing and prematurely putting him in the same class as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees.

So, no good could really come from the outcome of Sunday’s game. I just wanted the Rocky Mountains to be blue, the pizza and wings to be good, the commercials to be funny and for David Letterman to not sell out and do any more spots with Jay Leno like he did last year. All of these things happened, so for me it was a good Super Bowl. And if the Giants couldn’t win it, I’m just glad that the Jets, Eagles, Patriots and Cowboys couldn’t either.

The Super Bowl without the Giants in it serves sort of the same purpose as Marathon Monday did for me in college in Boston. I wasn’t running the marathon and I wasn’t going to attend or watch the 11 a.m. Red Sox game, so it was just an excuse to party and still is. If the Giants were playing on Sunday, it would still have been an excuse to party, but I would have actually been emotionally attached and focused on the game and wouldn’t have watched it in the setting that I did. But the Giants’ season ended six Sundays before XLV when the eventual champion Packers finished a job the Eagles started.

As soon as the Super Bowl ended, the awkward time of the year began as it does every year after the Super Bowl. The time between the Super Bowl and spring training, which is really the time between the Super Bowl and Opening Day. Because aside from a few highlights like the first day of pitchers and catchers, the first spring training game, St. Patrick’s Day in Hoboken and the first four days of March Madness, February and March are as bad as the weather.

Luckily I’m a hockey fan and with the weeks leading up to the trade deadline and under 30 games left on the calendar, the NHL is getting primed for the stretch run. The Rangers have 26 games remaining to find out if they can score more than two goals in a game on a consistent basis and John Tortorella has that time to prove that he should be back for another season in New York. The next eight weeks should be a lot of fun.

With the Rangers having four days off, I spent Wednesday night watching the Bruins-Canadiens game, which had the feeling of the Bruins-Canadiens games of two and three years ago with the melees of Bruins-Canadiens games from decades ago. It was the best game of the year and the NHL probably feels like it won the lottery that it aired on Versus (though I watched it on the NESN feed).

It’s safe to say that sold-out crowd of 17,565 at Boston’s TD Garden will be going back for another game in the near future. 14 goals. 192 PIMs. 12 fighting majors. Seven misconducts. Two line brawls. One goalie fight. It was nearly a three-hour infomercial for the NHL and the best unintentional advertising the NHL has done since last February’s Olympics. If only the NHL could figure out a way to market their game better on purpose then games like Wednesday night could just be the cherry on top. Then maybe they could compete with the other three leagues.

But what made the Bruins-Canadiens gongshow on Wednesday so entertaining that my Twitter and Facebook feeds were full of people commenting on the game and why my phone was constantly vibrating was because it was everything the NHL is supposed to be. The only thing it really lacked was big saves, which is odd because of two of the six All-Star Game goalies were playing.

The one thing the game didn’t have was cheap shots. Lingering problems from January between the teams were taken care of the way they are supposed to be: by dropping the gloves. No one had to get run from behind or given a flying elbow outside the finishing-your-check window. No one ran anyone’s goalie (though I was hoping for this to incite another bench clear), and no one tried to dangerously take out a skill player from the other team.

Why is this all of this a big deal? Because earlier in the afternoon, the NHL’s posterboy for dangerous play, Matt Cooke, was given a four-game suspension for his vicious hit from behind on defenseman Fedor Tyutin, which was the latest dangerous play on a resume that could go toe-to-toe with Darcy Tucker’s from seven and eight years ago. Cooke has become a household name in the NHL for all the wrong reasons – another unintentional marketing campaign by the NHL.

For the most part, the league office has protected Cooke because of wordy and awkward rules that leave a lot of the game open to interpretation. But when your head of discipline is Colin Campbell, nothing should be left open to interpretation. Otherwise we get situations like last year when Cooke left the scene of his brutal hit on Marc Savard unscathed, while Savard has battled severe post-concussion syndrome and is now out for the remainder of the year after suffering another concussion. So instead of all-around physical games like the Bruins-Canadiens game on Wednesday, we have games in which Cooke and other players that don’t care about the livelihood or careers of others are free to do whatever they choose because they know the league might not have an answer for them.

There should be more games like the Bruins-Canadiens played and fewer games in which skill players can’t use their skills because players with lesser talent like Matt Cooke aren’t skating around with intent to injure on every shift. There are three main problems with the NHL and the way they currently police problems in the league that just need some slight modifying to make the game better and safer. And since the only thing Gary Bettman has to worry about right now is how he can book Hoobastank to perform at next year’s All-Star Game, I think he would be willing to listen for once.

1. The Instigator Rule

We could talk about all the ways that Gary Bettman has ruined the NHL, but I don’t think anyone is willing to sacrifice two years of their life talking about Bettman’s questionable leaderships and nonsensical decisions. But the one rule that Bettman has enforced worse than any other rule is the instigator rule.

The instigator rule was implemented to protect players that couldn’t protect themselves from being jumped. Instead it has done the opposite, by letting players that can’t protect themselves commit acts against they shouldn’t be.

If Player A wants to do something to Player B they can, and then if they don’t drop their gloves and fight, it’s OK. And then if Player B or a teammate of Player B wants to get back at Player A or a teammate of Player A later, they can’t because Player A is protected by the instigator rule. It’s disgusting.

There’s a reason why Wayne Gretzky played as long as he did and was able to put up the points he did aside from his natural talent. Because Gretzky and other scorers of his era didn’t have to worry about players like Matt Cooke taking runs at him since Dave Semenko and Marty McSorley wouldn’t stand for that.

Sidney Crosby hasn’t played in a game since January 5 because of a concussion and no one really knows when he will return. The game’s biggest star is sitting at home with the stretch run of the season getting underway because he was hit in the head, and there is still nothing being concretely done to prevent hits to the head with the NHL’s most important marketing tool of this generation out of commission.

Crosby’s teammate Cooke (who will probably end up getting Crosby killed eventually) tried to take out the game’s second biggest star, Alexander Ovechkin, with a leg trip that would make you throw up your most recent meal. What if Ovechkin had gotten hurt or been forced to miss a lengthy amount of time? Any league is only as good as its best players and the NHL would be without their best two because of scum skating around doing whatever they please because the rules built to protect the victims are actually protecting the dirty players.

The instigator rule isn’t going anywhere because the NHL doesn’t want to increase fighting, though they do at least recognize it’s a necessary part of the game. But if you don’t want to increase fighting, make it so that head shots are no longer a part of the game, by enforcing serious suspensions for those that think it should be a part of the game. Otherwise the only way Matt Cooke will learn his lesson will be once it’s too late and someone puts a Tim McCracken-like bounty on his head.

2. Suspensions

I’m not sure how the NHL decides the length of suspensions. You would think there would be some sort of rulebook for suspensions or some sort of procedure or at least some logic to determine if a player should be suspended and the severity of the suspension. But none of these things exist. For some time I thought that Colin Campbell used a cootie catcher to decide suspensions, and I still think he does because he has done nothing to dispel this idea.

Last week, Daniel Paille of the Bruins, whose dangerous play resume consists of drinking too many Cokes during games in which he is a healthy scratch for the Bruins (which is often) made an illegal (though this is questionable because Scott Stevens made a career off similar hits and is considered a legend for it), but not dirty hit. He was given a four-game suspension.

Matt Cooke’s dangerous past should be enough where he shouldn’t be able to make money playing hockey anymore, yet after being a repeat offender, he was given the same suspension as Paille despite CHARGING at Tyutin, LEAVING HIS FEET and drilling Tyutin FROM BEHIND with a few feet between Tyutin and the boards.

For anyone that has followed Campbell’s time as the league’s principal disciplinarian, it’s evident he has no idea how to fairly decide the difference between legal and illegal the way that I can’t figure out the difference between navy and purple and dark green and brown sometimes. Jack Edwards, Bruins TV play-by-play man, captured Campbell’s unique decision making with a piece two seasons ago.

3. The Officiating

Maybe it’s just me but I think the referees and linesmen do a terrible job of letting things play out on their own. (I’m pretty sure it’s not just me). Instead of letting players police themselves the way it used to be, the officials interfere too much with the flow of the games and don’t let situations take care of themselves.

Too many times the officials interrupt the pace of the game try to stop things before they happen like the pre-cogs in Minority Report. Sometimes you need to let the game play its course and let the players play the game the way it’s been played forever. No one paid the insane prices the NHL charges to go see the officials. They paid to see the players. Let them play.

The NHL has tried its best to make fighting as clean and socially acceptable as possible from the wordy fighting rules to the tie downs on jerseys, and even the way fights are officiated with the refs hovering around the fight so close that it looks they are nervous parents allowing their children to walk for the first. Watch a fight from before the game was toned down when refs would be nowhere in site and players had a chance to actually settle the score without being separated before it ever gets going.

Sure there were dirty players then. There will always be dirty players trying to get an edge by attempting to injure others. But no one had to worry about Matt Cooke trying to tear their ACL or paralyze them because the league’s rulebook had evolved so poorly.

Blogs • NFL

Jan 19, 2011

And the Winner Is …

My plan is to co-write a book titled The Last Night of the Patriots Dynasty with Mike Hurley some day. On the cover I hope to have Jay Alford trying to actually end Tom Brady’s

My plan is to co-write a book titled The Last Night of the Patriots Dynasty with Mike Hurley some day. On the cover I hope to have Jay Alford trying to actually end Tom Brady’s life from the final seconds of Super Bowl XLII, the way Mariano Rivera is standing hopelessly on the mound at Yankee Stadium on the cover of Buster Olney’s book. The problem is that the way the Patriots franchise is going I’m going to have to keep re-releasing the book in different versions every year with new material since it never seems to end with the Patriots.

New Englanders like to think the Patriots are the Yankees. And from 2001 on, they have been (unless the Steelers find a way to win this year), but now they have finally completed their transformation into what the Yankees were from 2001-2008 and what Mike Lupica likes to call “The Greatest Regular Season Show on Earth.”

On Friday, I talked about how I wanted to see “the look” on the faces of Patriots fans on Sunday night after a New England loss. And on Sunday night when I walked down Washington Street in Hoboken to get pizza after the game and “J-E-T-S!” chants were breaking out all around me as if Fireman Ed was leading a parade, I began to think back to February 4, 2008, the day after Super Bowl XLII, when I woke up and walked down Hanover Street in the North End in Boston and it looked like the opening scene from I Am Legend. There was no one to be found and if you did find someone they looked like their whole life had been devastated. It was a great feeling.

Obviously the feeling from the last few days isn’t nearly the same as three years ago since I’m not a Jets fan and this wasn’t the Super Bowl. It’s nowhere near the level of happiness that I experienced after Super Bowl XLII. It’s more like the relief I felt when the Rays beat the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2008 ALCS. I still despise the Jets (aside from Sunday when I joined Gang Green for a day), but I didn’t hesitate to start sending text messages to Boston friends that sent me text messages after the Rangers finished off the Yankees in the ALCS when they didn’t have a horse in that race. There are still a few people that haven’t responded, and it’s now Wednesday, so I’m actually worried for their well being after that embarrassment.

I watched Super Bowl XLII with my current roommate, Redz (also a Giants fan), and I watched Sunday’s game with him as well – both games the Patriots couldn’t possibly lose. And after the game on Sunday, I asked him “Would you rather be here right now where everyone is in a good mood since the Jets won and Boston lost, or would you rather be in Boston to see that “look” again on the faces of everyone who predicted another Super Bowl because Bill Belichick and Tom Brady can’t lose?” We both agreed. We wished we were in Boston.

The Jets’ win wasn’t exactly Team USA beating the Soviet Union in 1980, but the Jets are faced with the same situation Team USA was. Team USA was built to win the gold medal, but the team they were built to beat they ended up playing in the semis. And after they beat the Russians, it was almost as if they had already won the gold, but they still had to play Finland and not have a letdown that would make the win over the Soviets a lot less meaningful. The Yankees were in the same spot following the 2003 ALCS and they had a letdown against the Marlins in the World Series and it took away from how significant Aaron Boone’s home run was. Beating the Steelers on the road for the second time will be hard enough. Beating them after upsetting the Patriots will be even harder.

Now that the Patriots are home for good and the Jets have advanced, I find myself in another predicament in that I’m running out of teams to hope win the Super Bowl. Most of the teams I didn’t want to see win the Super Bowl are gone. The Eagles are gone. The Patriots are gone. The Ravens are gone. The Saints are gone. But the Jets, Steelers and Packers are still alive and well. The Bears are my only option left and I don’t know if they’re the answer. I feel like a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and I’m running out of lifelines, and I’m running out of options.

Jets-Steelers is another matchup that has a lot of potentially awful repercussions. The Jets could win and send the city into a green-and-white frenzy. Or Ben Roethlisberger, the role model he is, could win for the third time in six years. And on the other side, Joe Buck’s Packers and Aaron Rodgers are still in it. That leaves me with only one option … become a Jay Cutler fan and hope Soldier Field can propel the Bears into the Super Bowl and then hope they get lucky in Dallas. I don’t think I can trick my brain into believing in Jay Cutler for a second let alone an entire game on Sunday and then again on Super Sunday.

I still have a few days to sort out the pros and cons of what’s left of the NFL playoffs and the teams still playing and who I want to win, but for now, it’s time to look back on a win that solidified the Jets and a loss that shook New England’s foundation on the same night of the Golden Globes. It’s been almost three days since the Boston sports world got kicked in the privates and bottled, and the time to capitalize on the misery of my Boston friends who thought that the Jets would lay down and serve as a red carpet for the Patriots to the AFC Championship is coming to an end. With the attention turning to Jets-Steelers and the upset of Sunday fading, let’s take one more look back at the events of Sunday by handing out some hardware. I just wish I had Ricky Gervais to give an opening monologue.

The Trent Dilfer Award for “The ‘Experts’ Were Wrong Again”
I will never forget during the 2008 preseason when Trent Dilfer said, “The Giants will be the biggest disappointment of the year and will miss the playoffs.” They did end up disappointing the tri-state area after Plaxico decided to carry a gun into Manhattan, but starting the year 11-1 should have had ESPN searching for a new NFL analyst.

I like Bill Belichick because he likes the Yankees. I like that he’s consistent with his answers to questions from the media. Dumb questions get dumb answers, and if you have a problem with Belichick’s answers then you really have a problem with the questions. But my whole problem with Bill Belichick isn’t a problem that he created. My problem with Bill Belichick is a problem that the media created for him.

All week we heard about how “You don’t want Bill Belichick to have two weeks to plan against you. You DON’T WANT Bill Belichick to have two weeks!” Now Belichick didn’t ask for people to believe in this theory that if given an extra week to prepare he’s untouchable and will think up this flawless plan to beat any opponent. We heard about it before Super Bowl XLII. We heard about it this week. But the last time I checked, Rex Ryan is a coach in the NFL too, and he might not have three rings, but in Bill Belichick’s first two seasons in the NFL he didn’t make back-to-back AFC Championships.

The three Super bowls in four years at the beginning of the decade put Belichick in a league of his own, but since the Patriots’ Super Bowl win over the Eagles, they have gone 5-5 in the postseason, losing the last two years at home in their first game of the playoffs each time.

It’s hard to have a winning record in the NFL. It’s even harder to win a championship let alone three of them in a four-year span, which is basically impossible at this point in a league of parody. But maybe it’s time to relax on thinking that it’s a foregone conclusion that Bill Belichick WILL win in the playoffs, and if given an extra week, will embarrass his opponent.

The Tom Brady Award for “Making A Prediction When You Say You Don’t Make Predictions” 
Let’s go back to the week leading up to Super Bowl XLII …

“We don’t make predictions. We just let our play do the talking,” said Tom Brady.

Now let’s go back to last week …

“We’re just going to do our talking on the field. That’s the way we’ve always chosen to do,” said Tom Brady.

Umm … it might be time for TB12 to find a new line.

A lot of comparisons are being made between the Giants game plan in Super Bowl XLII and the Jets game plan on Sunday since both times Tom Brady didn’t look like himself in a big game. But in 2007, the Giants had Brady on his back the whole game with continuous pressure and he didn’t have any time. Brady had time against the Jets, he just couldn’t find an open receiver.

Brady looked like he was traded to the Patriots on Sunday morning and had three hours to learn the entire playbook and the offense. He was standing back in his statue stance without pressure, panning the field and still couldn’t make a play. And when he did try to hit a receiver, they usually weren’t looking or the ball would land at their feet.

The look on Tom Brady’s face throughout the game look like he just got pantsed waiting for the bus in junior high school, and I would like to thank the TV director for all those shots of him.

The Geico Insurance Award for “Mike Westhoff Probably Keyed The Cars Of Everyone On Special Teams” 
If you told me that Nick Folk and Steve Weatherford went out drinking on Saturday night, I would say, “OK, that makes sense.” Could a kicker and punter have had a worse combined effort? OK, Giants fans, don’t answer that.

When David Harris didn’t run it in on the Tom Brady interception, I thought, “Nooo!” When the Jets ran three running plays after that, I thought, “Nooo!” When Nick Folk missed the field goal, I yelled, “Nooo!” and started thinking about the Jets letting the Patriots off the hook as if a team had just left the bases loaded against the Red Sox with no outs in the first inning.
And then when Weatherford decided that he would make Matt Dodge not feel so bad about his career and started bombing punts into the end zone, I figured the Jets couldn’t win with their kicker and punter taking the day off. Thankfully, I was wrong.

The Eli Manning Award for “People Didn’t Believe in Eli Either” 
I don’t know what Mark Sanchez is just yet. I don’t know what he’s going to be. But I know one thing: he wins playoff games. And I was wrong about him all along and I admit it.

Sure, Mark Sanchez was brought into a great situation in New York and it’s not like he was drafted by an expansion team and asked to be a hero and carry the team, but he can only play in the situation he was put into, and he’s a doing an impressive job in it. In the last calendar year, he has more playoff wins (4) than Tom Brady has in the last three years, and he has as many playoff wins as Eli Manning has in career (all four of Eli’s came in 2007).

I want to not like Mark Sanchez. I used to not like him. I still kind of don’t. But he says the right things and goes out and plays hard. And he made Pete Carroll look like the jerk he is by proving him wrong about leaving college early. It’s no secret that Carroll only wanted Sanchez to stay at USC for his own personal reasons. A class act that Pete Carroll is!

No, I’m not about to jump on the Sanchize bandwagon, but I respect him, and he’s making it hard for me to not like him.

The Tino Martinez Award for “Everyone Thought He Would Bring Back The Winning Magic In His Second Stint With The Team” 
On Opening Night at Yankee Stadium in 2005 when Tino Martinez came in as a defensive replacement, I honestly thought the right field bleachers were going to cave in. The cement under my feet felt like it was going to give at any moment, and when Tino made that diving stop after being in the game for only seconds, I was confident a riot was going to ensue. That is what Tino meant to Yankees fans and that is how badly people thought that by brining Tino back, the Yankees were brining back what they had lost in the four years he was away from the team: the ability to win it all.

The Patriots would have beaten the Colts in 2006 if Deion Branch were on the field instead of Reche Caldwell. Instead he was in Seattle because the Patriots didn’t want to pay their two-time champion and Super Bowl XXXIX MVP.

This year, the Patriots got rid of Randy Moss to bring Deion Branch back, and all anyone heard about was that Deion Branch “is the Patriots” and everything they have been about since 2001. Now that Branch was back in the mix, the Patriots were going to win the types of games they won when they were winning championships.

Well there was Deion Branch dropping the pass that would have given the Patriots a chance to win the game in the fourth quarter, and there he was after the game crying the way that LaDainian Tomlinson cried when the Patriots celebrated on the field in San Diego. The way I feel embarrassed for Larry David when he does something in Curb Your Enthusiasm that just makes you feel awkward on the couch of your living room is how embarrassed I felt for Branch complaining about the Jets “flying” around Gillette Stadium. If you don’t want the opposing wide receivers to run around your field pretending to be jets then don’t lose home playoff games as the No. 1 seed and heavy favorites. Otherwise say that it’s disappointing you lost, accept blame and responsibility and clean out your locker and go home until next year.

The Christian Bale Award for “Best Supporting Actor” 
I’m scared of what Bart Scott has in store for sound bytes if the Jets win the AFC. I’m petrified of what he is capable of if the Jets win the Super Bowl. And I think Sal Paolantonio probably feels the same way.

I respect Bart Scott because when he talks trash he actually talks trash. He doesn’t say “he is going to let his play on the field do the talking” and he doesn’t need to make clever foot references in a press conference to get his point across. He just comes out and tells it how he sees it and doesn’t care who he offends. And then he backs it up.

The Nick Swisher Award for “Making Poor Decisions On Your Own”
I hate when Nick Swisher tries to bunt because he should never be bunting and he simply doesn’t know how to bunt. But Swisher tries his stupid bunting in the middle of July against the Orioles. What Patrick Chung did (if he really did call for the fake punt) would be like Swisher bunting in the fifth game of the ALDS with absolutely nothing to gain.

How is Patrick Chung, a second-year player, allowed to make that decision? How does Bill Belichick allow that play to be called? In the end, Chung isn’t the one that this loss taints. It taints Belichick and Tom Brady, the faces of the franchise. Just like when the Colts took the penalty for roughing the punter near the end of the Jets game and they showed Peyton Manning on the sidelines, you just knew he was thinking, “This loss will come back to me and be a blemish on my career and not the career of the 53rd man on the roster playing on special teams.” Unacceptable play, but, hey, I’ll take it.

The Billy Walters Award for “Being The Man” 
On Sunday night, CBS ran a piece on 60 Minutes about Billy Walters, a sports gambler in Nevada that bets hundreds of thousands of dollars on football and basketball games and won $3.5 million on the Saints in last year’s Super Bowl.

I take back anything bad I have said about Rex Ryan. He’s a hero. And I’m not joking when I say that. He’s the man.

When Rex ran into the end zone to celebrate Shonn Greene’s touchdown with the players, he won me over. For a minute I thought Rex was the one that scored the touchdown and seeing the players celebrating with him and letting him be one of the guys for that moment made you realize that when Bart Scott says he would “die for Rex Ryan” that he probably isn’t the only one on the Jets that would.

When I look at my team, the Giants, I see a team that if Tom Coughlin was fired tomorrow, the players would give remarks like, “football is a business” or “it’s not Tom’s fault” when really the majority of the team probably wouldn’t care and would likely be happy. (And Antrel Rolle verified this on Tuesday.) If Rex were fired, I could see the Jets threatening to not show up and play. That’s the vibe you get from this Jets “team” and it’s something you don’t get from the Giants.

The Jets are Rex Ryan. The entire team has bought into his trash talking system, and during Hard Knocks when he kept reiterating, “Play Like A Jet” I thought, “What is wrong with this guy?” Playing like a Jet meant not winning championships. But what Rex meant was that “Playing Like A Jet” meant “Playing Like A Jet From When I Took Over This Team.” Nothing with the Jets before Rex Ryan matters and like he said, “Same old Jets going to the AFC Championship for the second year in a row.”

Blogs • NFL

Jan 14, 2011

A Giants Fan For Jets

Jets. Patriots. Someone must win. This really is my nightmare.

There are people that wonder why I despise the Patriots since they play in the AFC, and there are people that wonder why I despise the Jets since they represent New York. Well, let me explain…

I grew up as a Giants fan and therefore it’s a birthright to not like the Jets. I am not a New York fan that likes all New York teams just because they are New York. To me, there is no such thing as having an AL team and an NL team or an AFC team and an NFC team. You have one team and that’s it. And as someone that lived in Boston for five years, in which the Patriots won the Super Bowl and the Red Sox won two World Series, I have a hatred for Boston sports team that runs much deeper than the normal New York fan that dislikes Boston teams.

So now on Sunday, I am forced to sit back and watch as one of the two fan bases I am not a fan of gets to celebrate a trip to the AFC Championship. It’s not as bad as if the Mets and Red Sox were to ever meet in the World Series again, but it’s up there.

Back on December 6, I went to Gillette Stadium for Monday Night Football thinking that I would see a possible AFC Championship preview and what was being hyped up as the “Regular Season Super Bowl.” After about 10 minutes of real time, the “Regular Season Super Bowl” became as painful and boring to watch as Ronnie and Sammi have become. I left Massachusetts thinking, “45-3? Did that really just happen?” and thinking that the Jets might be taking the Tom Coughlin Way To Postseason Elimination: an epic collapse.

When people talk about this Sunday’s game, they talk about that Monday game. No one is bringing up the Jets’ Week 2 win over the Patriots way back in September and no one remembers that there was a time not long ago when Eric Mangini and the Browns dropped a 34 spot on the Patriots. But I guess there is a reason for that. A lot has changed since the Patriots lost to the Jets, and a lot has changed even since November 7 when the Browns embarrassed the Patriots. Mangini isn’t even the coach of the Browns anymore and on Wednesday, he was on ESPN talking about the Browns hiring Pat Shurmur. It was so awkward I had to change the channel.

I think the Jets can win on Sunday. I hope they can. And every time I think, “How do I not take the Jets at +8.5?” I think of sitting in the press box at Gillette Stadium a month ago and wondering if the Patriots would ever punt again this season. I hope that the Jets are able to play the way they did against the Colts and keep the game close, but I keep envisioning Tom Brady completing pass after pass across the middle and Mark Sanchez doing what he usually does in Foxboro: throw interceptions (seven interceptions in two games).

The Jets are playing with house money. They went into Indianapolis as the underdog and won. Now they are going into Foxboro against the No. 1 seed and facing the best head coach/quarterback maybe ever and being asked to win again. The only problem is that the Jets haven’t accepted this underdog role, so they sort of took away the whole “house money” concept. Over the last week they have run their mouths off like the wild teens that go on Maury and end up in boot camp and now no one feels bad for the Jets or views them as an underdog away from the point spread.

The Patriots are the ones in the tough spot. A lot of people believe the Jets-Patriots rivalry is equal to or greater than the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, but any sober person would tell you that’s not the case. The Patriots aren’t the Yankees of the NFL, but they are in the same spot that the Yankees found themselves in every season up until the devastating events of 2004. If the Patriots win, they are supposed to win (whether or not Rex Ryan believes that), and if they lose, it’s catastrophic, as NESN.com’s Jeff Howe told me. Any Yankees fan that enjoys playing the Red Sox in the ALCS is delusional. There is nothing fun about it. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose. And if the Yankees and Red Sox were to meet in the 2011 ALCS, the same standards would hold true even though the Red Sox have won two World Series in the last seven years.

I’m not sure if the Jets will win in Foxboro, but I know that’s it’s a lot better for me personally if they do. Here are five reasons why a Jets’ win on Sunday would be good for me (aside from the obvious fact that the Patriots would be losing):

1. The Chance For Rex Ryan To Get To The Super Bowl

I once saw Dave Attell do stand-up and the show started at midnight, and Dave had already done two shows that night. Saying he was drunk would be like saying Marisa Miller is good looking. But as the show went on and on and a waiter kept delivering drinks to Dave, the show only got better and better. I’m sure the people at the 8:00 show got a good show, but it was definitely not as good as the people who went to the 10:00 show, and their show definitely was not as good the show that I saw at midnight. This is what’s happening with Rex Ryan.

Rex started off talking trash on the first episode of Hard Knocks, it got better once the regular season started and then once the Jets began to play important games. Then the playoffs started and he began to call out anyone that walked by him leading up to this game where he has used material on Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Just think about some of the crazy things that have come out of Rex’s mouth and then think about this: he has NEVER been the head coach for a team in the Super Bowl. Imagine Rex Ryan with two weeks between the AFC Championship (if the Jets can get there) and the Super Bowl? I think only a two-week marathon of The Office or Friday Night Lights could keep me as entertained.

2. Revenge For LaDainian Tomlinson And Antonio Cromartie

I have never been a LaDainian Tomlinson guy since he would always find a way to find the bench during postseason games against the Patriots when he would sit with his helmet still on and tinted visor with the oversized Chargers coat keeping him warm as he kept the bench warm. And I didn’t get why it was such a big deal what the Patriots did after they beat the Chargers in the AFC Championship in 2006 when they celebrated on the Chargers field. Don’t want teams celebrating on your field? Don’t lose at home in the playoffs. It’s pretty simple.

But Tomlinson and Antonio Cromartie have great disrespect for Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and the Patriots, and they are just waiting to erupt with trash talk after finally beating the Patriots in the postseason. The kind of trash talk that will show up as “[expletive]” in the papers and with the censored “BEEEEEEEEP” on TV. Tomlinson and Cromartie find things to say to Brady and the Patriots now and they have never been successful against them in their careers. It’s scary to think what they are capable of if they do finally beat them.

3. “We’re only going to score 17 points?”

On December 7, I said, “I should hate Tom Brady. He is a legend and an icon in Boston and has brought immense happiness three times to the sports city I hate more than any other. But everything about Tom Brady says I should like him.”

I still don’t know if I like Tom Brady or not, but I know one thing: I don’t like the way he talks to the media about big games. “We will let our play do the talking on the field.” I think I heard that comment before. Oh, that’s right, I did.

Listen, Antonio Cromartie is in no place to be saying what he did to Tom Brady when he should be worried about not having a repeat performance from that Monday night game. But, it’s always fun to see how uncomfortable Tom Brady gets when someone has choice words for him and to see his reaction.

I have a question for Tom: Is Plax going to play defense?

4. Patriots Fans Dealing With The Ultimate Embarrassment

Patriots fans still can’t believe they lost to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII. They can’t believe that David Tyree made the helmet catch or that Plaxico Burress was as open as he was in the end zone for the game-winning touchdown. But what they really can’t believe is that they lost to Eli Manning with the perfect season on the line.

No one in New England gives Eli respect. Then again, no one outside of the tri-state area that doesn’t see him play every game does, so it’s not surprising. But there is a big difference between losing to Eli Manning and Mark Sanchez. A big difference. If you think Patriots fans have a hard time still accepting that the Mannings ended their season in consecutive years, think about the trouble they will have sleeping if Mark Sanchez goes into Foxboro and comes out with a trip to the AFC Championship

5. Daggerrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Since the Patriots’ last Super Bowl win, their season have finished the following ways…

2005: Lost to Broncos in divisional round

2006: Lost to Colts in AFC Championship

2007: Lost to Giants in Super Bowl

2008: Didn’t make playoffs

2009: Lost to Ravens in wild card round

It has been dagger (Champ Bailey) after dagger (Peyton Manning erasing an 18-point deficit) after dagger (Eli to Tyree) after dagger (Brady’s ACL) after dagger (Ray Rice) for the Patriots. A loss at home as the No. 1 seed to their division rival … well, that certainly won’t be easy to get over.

I will never forget watching Super Bowl XLII at my friends’ apartment where the ratio of Patriots fans to Giants fans was about 35 to 5. During the second half, all the Giants went into one of the bedrooms to watch the game, and when Randy Moss caught the go-ahead touchdown pass with 2:42 left, all of the Patriots fans came charging into the room where we were and started prematurely screaming and yelling in our faces. Minutes later we came crashing into the living room where it looked like every Patriots fan at the party had just heard a car had run over their family dog. It was one of the greatest feelings of my life. The look that everyone in the dorm saw on my face when Ruben Sierra grounded out to end Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS had once again found the faces of Boston sports fans.

Part of me wants to go to my friends’ apartment in Boston this Sunday to watch the game for the chance to see that look again. But another part of me knows what it’s like to see the jubilation of winning on Boston fans’ faces, and even if I don’t like the Jets, it will pain me.

On Wednesday, I texted my friend Mike Hurley, a lifelong Patriots fan, and asked him “On a scale of 1-10, how devastating will a loss on Sunday be?” He replied, “16.5.” I have seen that 16.5 before. Actually I saw what was probably a 36.5. I want to see it again.

For the first time and only time in my life … J-E-T-S! JETS! JETS! JETS!

Blogs • Rangers

Jan 12, 2011

Random Rangers Thoughts

I miss school for nights like Tuesday night. Nights when the forecast is calling for snow and I spend my entire night watching The Weather Channel and scouring the internet for every last piece of

I miss school for nights like Tuesday night. Nights when the forecast is calling for snow and I spend my entire night watching The Weather Channel and scouring the internet for every last piece of information as if I were an actual meteorologist trying to determine whether or not I’m looking at a school cancellation or a 90-minute delay.

There wasn’t a better feeling than deciding to go all-in on my own forecast and choosing to not do the book report due the following day by gambling that school would in fact be closed. Growing up in Guilford, Conn., I became scary good at knowing the state’s cities and towns in alphabetical order to know how many more schools before “Guilford” would come across the school closings ticker on the bottom of the TV of the local newscast.

Many times I left my grade in the hands of the superintendent hoping they would decide that we would just go an extra day in June when there isn’t any homework and teachers are showing movies rather than showing new ways to find the value of “x.” I was basically the Tom Coughlin of challenging when it came to predicting snow days, and I wasn’t always right, but more often than not I came away with an extra day to work on the book report I had yet to start.

With snow crushing the tri-state area on Tuesday night and all of the talk in the area focused on the J-E-T-S and their divisional playoff game against the Patriots on Sunday, and the Yankees trying to make good with their fans by entertaining the idea of bringing in Justin Duchscherer (I do like this idea), it was just another devastating day in what has become a cold winter for Yankees and Giants fans.

But there’s always the Rangers and Knicks and on Tuesday night the two teams that call the Garden home provided a getaway for any fan who can’t stand the fact that there’s a real chance Sergio Mitre (who probably shouldn’t be in Major League Baseball) might be in the $200 million Yankees rotation, and for anyone that might not be able to take another contradictory and outlandish press conference from Rex Ryan.

I haven’t given enough attention to the Rangers this season. Partially because the Yankees and Giants have already given me enough material to take me through 2011 and we are just 12 days into the year. And partially because the 2010-11 Rangers are exactly like every Rangers team of the last few years: good enough for the No. 5 or 6 or 7 seed, but not good enough to make it out of the second round. If you showed me the standings from 2006-07 and 2010-11 on January 12, I probably couldn’t tell you which year is which given the Rangers place in them. I’m not sure this season is going to end any different than the last few.

Sure it would be nice for a Stanley Cup run this summer, just as the baseball standings are beginning to take shape and just as the Knicks return to the playoffs for what seems like the first time in my lifetime. But when hoping for the Rangers to score three goals in a game becomes as hopeless as asking the Yankees to score runners from third base with less than two outs, I’m not sure a championship run is in the cards.

For nearly six hours on Tuesday night, my TV was on MSG with the Rangers hosting the Canadiens and the Knicks following with a game in Portland. After a long hiatus from talking about the Blueshirts I decided that now is as good a time as any to revisit some familiar issues with the Rangers and bring up some new ones. Here are five things that I thought about at length during and following Tuesday night’s 2-1 loss to the Canadiens.

How good is Henrik Lundqvist and why is he making only his second All-Star Game appearance?

I stand by my belief that Henrik Lundqvist is the best goalie in the NHL and has been for a while now. I am confident that if he was on the 2008-09 Red Wings, they would have won the Cup, and if he was on the Red Wings, they would probably be looking at their fourth in a row and we would be looking at the an unstoppable dynasty. The only problem is that he doesn’t play for the Red Wings. He plays for the Rangers where scoring goals is unheard of and odd-man rushes are as common as Amtrak delays.

On Tuesday, Lundqvist was again spectacular. Two goals against on 38 shots might not seem like much, but we have an Eli Manning situation here where you have to watch Lundqvist every game to understand just how good he is. The one difference is that Lundqvist is better at his position than anyone else, while the same can’t be said for Eli. But if you did watch the Rangers on Tuesday, you would have seen several shorthanded 2-on-1s for the Canadiens and an improbable amount of times when white shirts were able to get behind the defense and crash the net coming into the zone. At one point in the first period, I honestly thought that the Canadiens were playing “Rebound” against Lundqvist.

Lundqvist is the best and most important player on the Rangers and the sole key to deciding how far this team can go this season. I still hold out hope that at some point Glen Sather will make a move or two that will make this team an actual contender, and I hope these moves come before he uses up all of Henrik Lundqvist’s prime and his career. The King deserves better than that.

Is Mats Zuccarello my new favorite player?

My favorite player in the NHL is Brian Gionta though Chris Drury (fellow Connecticut native) and Marian Gaborik (was fastest in the league while with Minnesota) are close in the standings. I have watched Gionta since his days at Boston College when I got to see him play against Yale in New Haven twice when he made a mockery of NCAA hockey with his scoring ability. Listed at 5’7″ (most likely an exaggeration), it was remarkable to see what Gionta was capable of as the smallest player on the ice at all times, and now he is looking at his seventh straight 20-goal season, including the impressive 48-goal season in 2005-06.

I think Mats Zuccarello could be what Brian Gionta has been for me if given the chance. With basically the same build as Gionta and the scoring ability that you have to be born with, Zuccarello brings the same sense of excitement and anticipation as Gionta when he’s on the ice. Tuesday night was just the ninth game of Zuccarello’s NHL career, but you can see how much more comfortable he has gotten with his decision making since his debut, and he is taking shots and chances that he wasn’t taking even a week ago as the new guy in town.

My favorite player title is Mats Zuccarello’s to lose.

Defense?

After six years of campaigning for the Rangers to get rid of Michal Rozsival, they finally did! So, let’s take a minute to celebrate that! But there is still a lot of work to be done with this young defensive group.

After the first period, Mike Sullivan was congratulated for having Marc Staal selected for the All-Star Game, but no one questioned the man in charge of the Rangers defense as to why the Canadiens were dominating below the hash marks and inside the slot for most of the first period. It’s easy for Mike Sullivan to look like he’s doing his job when Henrik Lundqvist is in net.

I’m glad that the average age of the Rangers defense is 24.9 (thanks to Brian Monzo for that fact), but the only problem is that it would be good if Henrik Lundqvist weren’t four years older than that average. Sure it would make for some miserable seasons at the Garden (not like we haven’t seen those before), but I’m scared that by the time the young defensive group becomes an elite unit in the league, Henrik will be on his way out his prime and starting to get benched like Martin Brodeur.

Can we finally fix the NHL All-Star Game for good?

There are few people more excited about the new way the teams will be decided for the NHL All-Star Game than me, but there are probably just a few people in general excited about the 36 players the league’s hockey operations department selected to play in the game. I haven’t decided exactly who I would cut from the roster for the NHL Slightly Above Average Players Game, but I know that having Ales Hemsky and David Backes showcasing their talents isn’t good advertising for the “casual fans” that Gary Bettman has been seeking approval from since the day the lockout ended.

On Tuesday when Brandon Dubinsky scored a pretty goal in the first period when he went around Hal Gill (who hasn’t?), Joe Micheletti jumped to Dubinksy’s side when he nearly blew out the speakers on my TV yelling at Sam Rosen, “He’s upset he didn’t make the All-Star team!” To be fair, Dubinsky is having a career year (17-20), and probably should be on the team over some players that did make it, but I don’t know if even Brandon Dubinsky should be in the “All-Star Game.”

I like the idea that the NHL has made the game more like a pickup game with their captains and picking teams, but any format in which Alex Ovechkin has to be picked by the committee because the fans didn’t vote him in needs some adjusting. Maybe it’s time that the players just picked the rosters since the fans and the league office seem incapable of doing so.

Will Gary Bettman answer my phone call?

Gary Bettman is always looking for ways to increase his fan base. He’s moved cold weather teams to warm weather, he’s added instigator rules and tie downs on jerseys and locked out the league for an entire year. He’s changed the rules to increase scoring, allowed head shots to take place with little consequences and even painted a trapezoid on the ice behind the net to make sure the best goalies can’t use some of the skills that make them the best. OK, so maybe all of his ideas are horrendous, but come on, at least he’s trying! Give the man an “A” for effort!

I might not have the answer to every problem that Gary Bettman has created since he started his mission in 1993 of trying to make sure the NHL is extinct by 2020, but I have one way to increase the interest in the tri-state area for anyone who might have not grown up playing hockey or wouldn’t know what channel to find a Rangers or Devils or Islanders game on if there was a gun to their head.

My proposal is to let Joe Micheletti and Chico Resch call every Rangers-Devils from now on. Sure, it would be devastating to lose the magical voice of Doc Emrick for these special games, but I guarantee that there would be a brawl in the booth within the first five minutes of the game, as the game would sound like it’s being called by a Rangers fan and a Devils fan sitting at a bar with Chico yelling, “Ohhh Joe, what a save by Martyyy there!” and Joe making excuses for the Rangers.

And it doesn’t have to stop there. We can have Joe Micheletti do the color for a Rangers-Bruins game and let Jack Edwards (who still has never seen a Bruin lose a fight) do the play-by-play. I’m an Andy Brickley fan, but I think even Brick would step aside to see the spectacle that Jack and Joe could bring in a game based upon who could be the bigger homer. If regional networks are going to let this type of broadcasting take place then why not let the NHL capitalize on it?

Author: Neil Keefe

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