Keefe To The City

Jan 29, 2015

Podcast: Mike Carver

Another Rangers-Islanders game and another loss for the Blueshirts to keep them winless against their rival this season.

Another Rangers-Islanders game and another loss for the Rangers to drop them to 0-3 on the season against their rival. In the three games, the Rangers have been outscored 13-4 with just one goal in the last 122:10 against the Islanders. If the two teams do end up meeting in the playoffs this spring, I hope the Islanders still haven’t lost to the Rangers at that point because that would be the only way I would feel confident about the series.

Mike Carver of The Butch Goring Show on Hockey This Week Radio Network and WFAN joined me to talk about why the Islanders have owned the Rangers so far this season, the changed perception of Jack Capuano for Islanders fans and how the reality of the Nassau Coliseum closing is starting to set in.

NFL • Podcasts

Jan 28, 2015

Podcast: Mike Hurley

A lot of people don’t like Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, but even as a Giants and New York sports fan, I have never understood it.

Super Bowl XLIX is almost here and that means we can actually watch and talk about actual football rather than have to hear about deflated footballs and speculate on what might or might not happen in the game. Sunday it set up to be a great day and a memorable one for Seahawks fans and those who consider themselves a 12th Man, like myself.

Mike Hurley of CBS Boston joined me talk about what Media Day is like, why people hate Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, how to balance being a fan and a media member, the idea of the 12th Man and why the Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl.

Blogs • Giants • NFL

Jan 28, 2015

A Giants Fan for Seahawks

A trip to Seattle for the NFC Championship Game made me realize the 12th Man does exist and I’m becoming an honorary one for Super Bowl XLIX.

The loudest thing I had ever heard at a road stadium was when Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS went to extra innings. Curt Schilling, Derek Lowe and Tim Wakefield emerged from the Red Sox dugout and began to walk to the bullpen as “Lose Yourself” blared throughout Fenway Park and every Red Sox fan in attendance, still high off the Red Sox’ two-run rally to tie the game in the eighth inning, went absolutely wild. And at that moment, I knew the Yankees were going to lose the game. I didn’t think they would lose the series with Games 6 and 7 to be played in the Bronx, but I knew that eventually on that Monday night, they would lose. Five hours and 49 minutes after the game started, the Yankees lost.

***

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I went to Seattle for 36 hours for the NFC Championship Game. I had no idea when I boarded a packed plane from Newark headed to Seattle at 7 a.m. on a Saturday (32 hours before the game) that my girlfriend and I would be the only ones not completely decked out in Seahawks gear. We were surrounded by 12th Man and Russell Wilson and Marshawn Lynch jerseys. Surrounded by cheerful faces of people, who couldn’t be happier to be in the city of Newark at the crack of dawn on an Alaskan Airlines plane for the next six-plus hours. I had a feeling I was dealing with a different breed of fans when I walked down the aisle to find my seat and saw an elderly married couple sitting in first class, eating breakfast with matching 12th Man jerseys on with smiles on their faces as wide as Vince Wilfork.

I lived in Boston for five years and through two Red Sox (2004 and 2007), one Patriots (2004) and one Celtics championship (2007-08). The only thing that kept me from drinking my way through every day was Super Bowl XLII when I watched the Giants avenge what had happened to the Yankees and to me in October of 2004. But even during Boston’s historical run when every person in the city seemed to be wearing a David Ortiz or Manny Ramirez or Tom Brady or Tedy Bruschi or Paul Pierce of Kevin Garnett jersey, I had never seen people this nutty. And I think “nutty” is the perfect word for Seahawks fans. They aren’t crazy or insane, they are just nutty.

I never understood the “12th Man”. I mean I have always understood what the Seahawks and their fans were trying to do, but I never understood how or why everyone bought into the idea of it. I thought it was weird to see fans wearing a “12th Man” jersey instead of a real player’s jersey and found it awkward to hear fans refer to themselves as 12s, while Pete Carroll and his players referred to their fans as 12s. It was odd to see “12” flags around the city and “12” banners hanging from buildings and storefronts. I have no problem with any fans thinking or acting like they are part of the team by using “we” when talking about their team, but thinking of yourself as a person or player on the field because of the noise generated? That always seemed a little strange. Nothing could possibly be as loud as CenturyLink has been made out to be even with everyone in attendance consuming an exorbitant amount of alcohol.

***

Seattle on Seahawks game day (or at least on game day when that game happens to be the NFC Championship Game) looks like Dillon on Panthers game day in Friday Night Lights. Most places were closed and those that weren’t had handwritten signs hanging in the window to let you know they would be closing at noon, which was coincidentally when the Seahawks would eventually be kicking off to the Packers.

But it makes sense since Seattleites only really have the Seahawks. Their basketball team moved to Oklahoma City and when it comes to the Mariners, they haven’t reached the playoffs since 2001 when the Yankees ended what was a 116-win regular season for the Mariners, and 11 years later, the Yankees traded for the face of their franchise in Ichiro. The Seahawks are all they have. Well, the Seahawks, Felix Hernandez, Robinson Cano (eff you, Seattle) and fat jokes about Jesus Montero. And I guess we can throw in Starbucks, non-stop rain and being the home to Pearl Jam to beef up their resume. But that’s it.

On the morning of the NFC Championship Game, the non-stop rain was still there. I had seen rain from right before the plane was about to land through my first day in Seattle and now 24 hours later, it was still raining. It wasn’t raining hard, but it was raining. Not until we left the hotel and began our walk to the game did the sky open up and in seconds turn me from “Hey, I’m going to the NFC Championship Game!” to “I need to go back to the hotel, order a pizza and watch the game on TV.” I was soaked. My jeans were stuck to me, my coat had absorbed enough water that it felt like the lead vest they give you when you get an X-ray and my decision to wear sneakers rather than boots proved immediately costly as my socks had become useless and now detrimental to my day. Fortunately, as we hid in Pike Place Market for a few minutes, the sun emerged for the first and only time of the weekend and stayed out long enough for us to walk to CenturyLink Field.

SEA … HAWKS! SEA … HAWKS! SEA … HAWKS! SEA … HAWKS! SEA … HAWKS!

That was the chant that filled 1st Avenue from Pike Place to CenturyLink and it grew louder with each passing block as the stadium grew closer. The scene on the blocks leading up to CenturyLink reminded me of walking through the parking lots of a tailgate at the Meadows in Hartford for a concert. The only things missing were stoners with three-foot long dreads trying to sell veggie burritos (there were stoners with three-foot long dreads trying to sell other things), people buying nitrous balloons and “Let’s Go Whalers!” chants breaking out.

SEA … HAWKS! SEA … HAWKS! SEA … HAWKS! SEA … HAWKS! SEA … HAWKS!

***

From the moment I got to my seat just before kickoff until the Seahawks rushed the field following Jermaine Kearse’s game-winning touchdown in overtime, it felt like that “Lose Yourself” moment at Fenway multiplied by about 29,536,758 for three-plus straight hours. I had become a believer in the 12th Man. It’s a real thing.

I have never heard noise like that. At least not generated solely by people. The construction going on outside my apartment on the Upper East Side (which starts at 7:30 a.m. sharp every morning) mixed with being inside a firehouse garage while the sirens go off, mixed with standing next to an amp during Guns N’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusion Tour” might equal the magnitude of noise at CenturyLink Field I experienced. And that noise came from people’s vocal chords.

No one sat down and no one stopped yelling. Unfortunately, the woman (a Packers fan) two rows behind me, who thought it was a good idea to yell “DE-FENSE!” over and over when the Packers’ defense was on the field didn’t stop either. I’m not sure if she thought that Dom Capers or Clay Matthews or Sam Shields could hear her from the upper deck over the voices of 65,000 Seahawks fans, but I hope she lost her voice the next day and still hasn’t gotten it back.

I didn’t care who won the NFC Championship as long as that team was prepared to beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl because even before the Patriots’ demolition of the Colts a few hours later, everyone knew the Patriots were going to the Super Bowl when they beat the Broncos in Week 9 and locked up the 1-seed. I felt like the Seahawks would have a better chance against the Patriots because they have the best defense in the league and because the Patriots haven’t seen a quarterback like Russell Wilson all season. Actually, they haven’t seen a quarterback like Wilson since the last time they met, when the Seahawks beat them 24-23 in 2012. I know that the Packers did beat the Patriots already this season, but the Packers beating a team 26-21 in Green Bay is virtually a win for the opponent, since a five-point win in Lambeau for the Packers is equivalent to a loss on a neutral field.

I wanted a good game and wanted the winner to come out of the game healthy in order to best represent the NFC in Arizona and have the best chance to continue the Patriots’ championship drought. In return, I got possibly the best non-Super Bowl postseason game of all time, the best fourth-quarter comeback in postseason history and a Seahawks team without any serious injuries ready to defend their title in Super Bowl XLIX.

Because I attended the game with Packers fans, I wasn’t going to root outright for the Seahawks and when every Seahawks fans offered their condolences to my girlfriend’s family after the game and tried to offer it to me, I let them know I was a Giants fan. And I wanted them to know that I needed their team to do what the Giants had done in Super Bowl XLII and Super Bowl XLVI and beat the Patriots.

Before the postseason began, I wrote My Super Bowl XLIX Dilemma and ranked the 12 playoff teams in order from which team I would most like to see win Super Bowl XLIX to which team I don’t want to see win at all. The Seahawks were 3. The Patriots? Last, of course. So this decision is easy for me. On Sunday, I will be an honorary 12th Man.

Blogs • NHL

Jan 27, 2015

The 2014-15 NHL All-Animosity Team

This year’s team is a little different, but there are some familiar faces in the lineup, including a goalie on his way out of the league.

NHL All-Star Weekend has always held a special place in my heart. My feelings about a skills competition and an exhibition game in which there’s no physicality, defense or anything that resembles NHL hockey other than nasty dangles are probably unshared. But when you’re a kid growing up with stars like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Ray Bourque and Brian Leetch and watching them wear those black and orange gems each winter on a weekend afternoon, it’s something that stays with you.

Even though Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin weren’t in Columbus this weekend and Henrik Lundqvist was home in favor of goalies of much lesser abilities (Hi, Jaroslav Halak), I still watched and still paid attention to the 60th NHL All-Star Game, the first in three years. Well, I paid more attention to the skills competition than the game, but I still paid attention. And since I don’t always agree with the selections for the All-Star Game, a couple of years ago I decided to build my own version of an All-Star team. The one difference is that this team is built up of players I don’t like.

(Of course the first time since I started creating these teams that Brian Boyle is eligible to be on it, he isn’t.)

FORWARDS

Milan Lucic
Welcome back, once again! After leading the 2012-13 team and 2013-14 team, Lucic is back on the 2014-15 team.

It wasn’t long ago that Lucic was considered to be Cam Neely 2.0 in Boston following his 30-goal regular season in the Bruins’ Cup winning 2010-11 season. But after watching his goal totals decline over the last three years, Lucic has just nine goals in 47 games for the Bruins this year. Instead of hearing from Boston about Lucic’s all-around game, it’s more likely you’ll hear about Lucic connected to trade rumors. During the Bruins’ struggles around the holidays, the Boston sports media was hoping they could create some package involving Lucic to send him to Edmonton in exchange for Taylor Hall because every team is willing to give away their former No. 1 overall pick for a power forward in the middle of a three-plus year slide. (Actually, Edmonton would be the team willing to do that.)

The Bruins have cap issues and because of this, Lucic could be playing for another team in 2015-16, and judging by every team’s eagerness to give out bad contracts and throw money at any and every free agent, teams will be lining up to offer Lucic a big payday. If he plays himself out of Boston and off the Bruins, there might not be a place for him on the All-Animosity Team going next year, but his three-year run on the team will always be a memorable one.

Alexander Ovechkin
My animosity toward Ovechkin has declined since Sidney Crosby officially won the Crosby-Ovechkin Debate (which was never really much of a debate anyway) and I no longer have to spend time and energy defending and supporting the best player in the world against a pure goal scorer, who couldn’t care less about what happens in his own zone.

In the Road to the NHL Winter Classic on EPIX, Capitals owner Ted Leonsis referred to Ovechkin as the most pouplar athlete of the four majors sports in Washington D.C. and I questioned it at first, but when put against Bryce Harper, Robert Griffin III and John Wall, I agreed with Leonsis. After watching Ovechkin attend the Wizards game in the EPIX series and seeing him act like a normal person and not a four-time 50-plus goal scorer and one-time 65-goal scorer, I actually kind of liked him. And then watching him hope to be the last pick in the All-Star Game to win a free car, despite being possibly the best pure scorer in the world, I actually liked him a little more. I’m a Crosby guy and always will be, but maybe there’s room to be a fan of both? Maybe Ovechkin’s personality is playing him off this team?

I’m sure I will be back to being anti-Ovechkin in March when the Rangers and Capitals play again and he spends the entire night taking shots at every Ranger on the ice. Even though I will annoyed, it will put a smile on my face that my animosity toward Ovechkin is back.

Brad Marchand
I had to figure out a way to make room for Brad Marchand on the team and that meant either cutting Alexander Ovechkin or Chris Kunitz. I didn’t cut Ovechkin, even though I actually don’t have as much out-of-game animosity toward him as I do for Kunitz. By “out-of-game” animosity, I mean that I don’t mind Ovechkin when he’s not playing a game against the Rangers, or a playoff game, and putting fear into me every time he’s on the ice or every time the Capitals get a power play. Kunitz, on the other hand, makes me angry to just think about since his career has taken off with the Penguins thanks to playing with Sidney Crosby, yet people continue to consider among the league’s elite players, which was never more true when he was given a spot on Team Canada in the 2014 Olympics. I thought about putting Kunitz on D for this team and sort of making a power-play unit out of the team, but then I decided … actually, wait, that’s a great idea! Put Kunitz on defense and cut Dion Phaneuf, who couldn’t be any more irrelevant as the captain of the downfall of the Maple Leafs.

Marchand is the ultimate player who you hate to watch your team play against, but would love if he were on your team. He’s dirty and annoying, he’s a pest and nuisance, but he’s good. Or at least he can be good. There are stretches where you wonder why it looks like he doesn’t care and other stretches where he’s involved in every play and leading an unstoppable forecheck. His lapses in judgment and total disregard for player safety are what makes him hated and in the Rangers-Bruins game on Jan. 15, there he was earning a two-game suspension for slew-footing Derick Brassard (a technique that Marchand turns to frequently). The only thing worse than Marchand’s antics in that game were Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley calling the game for NESN and saying they didn’t see a slew-foot.

DEFENSEMEN

Zdeno Chara
I don’t know how Chara would feel knowing that on this team Milan Lucic wears the “C” instead of him, but if he were upset about it, I would have no problem throwing an “A” on his jersey for him.

It’s weird to think that the Bruins will retire Chara’s number one day considering the team they were when they signed him and the team they have become now seven years later. But Chara is as big of a reason as anyone in the Bruins’ turnaround from finishing the 2006-07 season with 76 points to eventually winning the Cup and being in another Cup Final. It felt like it would be at least another three decades until the Bruins won again when Chara arrived in Boston and he should be recognized for … wait a second … this is supposed to be about why I don’t like Chara. In that case, let me repurpose what I said about him last year:

Jack Edwards will likely tell you that Chara is the best defenseman in the league, but he’s the same guy who thinks fights are decided by whichever plays ends up on top of the other player on the ice. Is there anything worse than when broadcasters talk about Chara’s 108-mph slap shot in the Skills Competition in a real game? No, there’s not. Because there are a lot of times in real games when you get to sprint untouched from the blue into a still puck in the slot and rip a bomb into an open net. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg that is the lovefest for the 6-foot-9, one-time Norris Trophy winner.

Chris Kunitz
The Rangers’ 3-1 series comeback against the Penguins in the Eastern Conference semifinals last year was an amazing five days, in which any shot, bad bounce or deflection could have ended the Rangers’ season a month earlier than it lasted. And aside from the jubilation from watching the Rangers come back against a team that had its way with the Rangers in the postseason forever, came the jubilation of watching Chris Kunitz score once in the series.

I moved Kunitz back on D on this team just to keep him on and it was a move I had to make after originally thinking of leaving him off this year’s roster. But the more I thought about him and the more I thought about him putting up stats and getting paid as the product of playing on a line with the best player of this generation, I had to find a way to keep him on the team.

When I was in college in Boston, there was a place called New York Pizza next to the Boston Common on Boylston St. that I would always eat at 2 a.m. at the earliest when I wasn’t exactly sober. I swore to everyone that visited me that New York Pizza was the best pizza in Boston and every person I told this to agreed with me because I would take them there after a night of drinking. It wasn’t until one time when I went to New York Pizza in the middle of the day and had a slice and could barely get two bites down that I realized that the alcohol had masked the true taste of the pizza. Chris Kunitz’s career pre-Sidney Crosby was me eating New York Pizza sober in the middle of the day and Chris Kunitz’s career with Sidney Crosby has been me eating New York Pizza drunk.

Last year, I said, “I feel like you could stick pretty much anyone and I don’t mean just any NHL player, but rather any actual person on a line with Crosby and they would be good for 15-20 goals,” and I believe that to be 100 percent true. And because that’s true, let’s stop pretending that Chris Kunitz is the type of player that he isn’t.

GOALIE

Martin Brodeur
Like last year … was there any other choice? And unless you’re a Devils fan or have changed your stance on the Ten Commandments, then you will agree with Brodeur as the starting goalie once again.

Yes, I stole that line from myself from last year. And maybe there were other choices (cough, cough, Carey Price, cough, cough), but with Brodeur set to retire on Thursday after trying to play at the age of 42 for the St. Louis Blues, it made sense to bring him back one more time.

Rather than ride off into the sunset as a lifetime Devil, who could have enjoyed a final game in New Jersey last season, Brodeur had to come back this season. After 1,259 games with the Devils, his stats will always have those glaring seven games at the bottom of the list. Sure, he added three more wins to his all-time record of 691 wins, but it’s unlikely that number will ever get touched, so instead of leaving it at 688, it’s now at 691 with a little bit of stink on it.

There are some players that are just supposed to play for one franchise forever and Brodeur is one of those players, considering he has been on the Devils since I was in kindergarten. Yes, I said KINDERGARTEN! Very rarely does a Ray Bourque-like move work out and instead it just gets weird when someone like Brian Leetch, who was a Ranger for 17 years, ends up playing 15 games for the Maple Leafs and 61 games for the Bruins at the end of his career.

I also said that about Brodeur last year and now that he’s no longer a one-team career guy, it’s a shame that he put on another jersey in an attempt to try to hang on to the only thing he has known to do in the winter for his whole life. I thought Martin Brodeur would retire at the end of last year and he should have. But now that he will make it official on Thursday (barring another Roger Clemens-like midseason comeback) it’s time for me to say it again:

I will miss Martin Brodeur when he retires, but my animosity for him will stay the same.

NFL • Podcasts

Jan 23, 2015

Podcast: Mike Cole

I didn’t care who won the NFC Championship Game as long as that team planned on beating the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX because everyone knew the Patriots were going to win the AFC Championship

I didn’t care who won the NFC Championship Game as long as that team planned on beating the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX because everyone knew the Patriots were going to win the AFC Championship Game. I felt like the Seahawks had a better chance than the Packers because of their defense and because the Packers were only able to beat the Patriots by 5 at Lambeau Field this year, which is essentially a win for a road team there. If the Packers could barely handle the Patriots at Lambeau, playing them on a neutral field didn’t feel like it bode well. So when the Seahawks came back in miraculous fashion in the final minutes of a game they had given away, I felt confident in the NFC representative’s chances of winning the Super Bowl.

Mike Cole of NESN.com loves Boston sports, except for one team: the Patriots. Cole grew up in Massachusetts as a Packers fan and watched his team collapse in Seattle and give away a Super Bowl trip and now, like me, he will be rooting against the Patriots on Super Sunday. Cole joined me to talk about everything that went wrong for the Packers in the NFC Championship Game, how he grew up rooting against the Patriots, what to make of Aaron Rodgers’ career and we even touch on some hockey.