Category Archives: General Hockey
Nassau County voters rejected a referendum to invest taxpayer money in a $400 million overhaul of Nassau Coliseum and its environs. We’ll see what the Islanders do from here, I suppose, and on one hand it’s sad to think this could end with the club leaving for greener pastures. But as the son of a Nassau Community College professor dealing with the fallout from rampant budget cuts, I find it hard to get too broken up about the fate of a woefully mismanaged hockey team that can’t draw well in such a densely populated area.
Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano will be joined by hundreds of local business, community and labor leaders on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. in announcing a major Economic Development and Job Creation Plan to build a world-class sports-entertainment destination center. After months of intense media speculation, the County Executive will also announce plans to pursue the construction of an Indian gaming casino.
- Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano, press release.
Well there’s just a ton here.
First off, it’s worth noting that Nassau County executives absolutely love pomp, circumstance and press releases. When I was in high school I won some stupid award for something stupid, and I swear we got a press release announcing that some county politician was coming to present the award, then afterward a second press release announcing that he came and presented the award, then later a signed 8×10″ black-and-white photo of me with the dude. It’s somewhere in my parents’ attic now, unless they threw in out in one of their biannual stuff-no-one-needs purges. For all I know it could have been Edward Mangano.
Anyway, I hope this guy Mangano is actually “joined by hundreds of local business, community and labor leaders” to announce whatever plans are so important that they merit capitalization. That’d be something to see: some 200 suits set up behind podiums while two reporters from Newsday and some guy representing all the Herald papers sit in an otherwise empty conference room, anxiously biting their nails and tapping pencils on notebooks, desperate to learn whatever it is that the county is doing to quiet all the speculating they’ve been doing.
It should be noted that I got this release through the New York Islanders, which really calls into question the use of the phrase “world-class.” The Islanders, you may know, have finished dead last in their division for four seasons running and shut out a member of the Professional Hockey Writers of America (and the SNY.tv blog network, to boot) from covering their team for entirely nebulous reasons.
But I suppose it is possible that the new “sports-entertainment destination center” planned for Nassau County will be world-class even if the team playing inside it is not, and at least there will also be a nearby Indian casino for betting against the Islanders.
Our man @dpecs puts together a Top 5 list of great facial hair in sports. Pour one out for Rod Beck.
With a mustache like this, Brandon Dubinsky deserves a hug:
Seems like a pretty effective way to get in the postseason spirit and creep the hell out of your opponents all at the same time. The Times has more. Via Tom Boorstein.
In honor of the Rangers’ playoff appearance, Katz’s Deli has unveiled the Rangers Hat Trick. It is pastrami, corned beef and brisket on rye, apparently with mustard. It looks like this:
Color me only vaguely enthused. Katz’s has an edge on most of the other old-school meatpile New York Deli places because its meat is, if I remember correctly, legitimately juicy, flavorful and delicious. And to this sandwich’s credit, it doesn’t look nearly as gimmicky as the Carmelo Anthony sandwich from the Carnegie Deli.
On the other hand, it costs $18.95, which is one of the problems with Katz’s. It’s not that they make bad sandwiches — anything but, really — but to be worth $18.95 a sandwich has to be pretty much mind-numbingly awesome, and I’ve never found them to be that.
Goalie fight! Not much of one, but a goalie fight regardless.
To me, Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore was the perfect comedy bad guy. Talented, lame, pompous, enviable and manipulative, Christopher MacDonald’s character made an ideal nemesis for Adam Sandler’s goofy, immature, capricious hockey-goon-turned-golfer.
MacDonald also played a classic comedy bad-guy part in Dirty Work, for what it’s worth, but he’s hardly the only actor who does it well. The EPA guy in Ghostbusters, Ted Knight’s judge in Caddyshack, Biff Tannen in Back to the Future, the local police chief in Super Troopers, basically the entire jock fraternity in Revenge of the Nerds, Craig Kilborn’s character in Old School, I could go on. It’s a cliched archetype: usually good-looking, always entitled and generally snively.
I’ve been thinking about comedy bad guys a lot lately because of how Bill Belichick and Tom Brady seem such perfect foils for the brazen, obnoxious, fat, freaky Rex Ryan. Brady, handsome star quarterback that clearly takes himself too seriously, could easily be cast as the bad guy in every single 80s teen movie.
But I have previously compared A-Rod to Shooter McGavin, specifically after the way he dismissed Dallas Braden in basically every sense after their mound incident and Braden’s perfect game.
So I’m wondering now which New York sports nemesis would make for the best comedy bad guy. I’ve included A-Rod on the list because even though he plays for a New York team, he seems to count as a nemesis for both Mets fans and a large portion of Yankees fans alike. Same thing for Sean Avery.
Loading ...Strikes me that some of you are probably too young to remember Craig MacTavish. Crash, as he was known, was the last helmetless player in the NHL by like a lot. I became conscious of hockey around 1991 or so, and I’m not sure I remember any other helmetless players ever. And MacTavish played without a helmet until 1997. It was the type of thing that seemed really awesome when I was 15 but strikes me as less awesome and more senselessly dangerous now.
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