More Winter Classic thoughts

January 1, 2009   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

Not much else to add to an outstanding liveblog by Derek.  I’ve thought of doing a liveblog one of these days since I never have, maybe later in the season for a big Devils game.  Might as well just chime in on a few matters:

I didn’t see the whole game yet, but did catch most of the first and third periods and taped it in any case.  It was nice to hear the Hawk legends (Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and I think Denis Savard?) sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ with a twist and also cool to see the teams shake hands at the end of a physical game.  You usually only see that for the end of playoff series. 

If the next Winter Classic is Rangers-Islanders as has been rumored at times, watch Ty Conklin sign on Long Island this offseason.

As much as I missed hearing Doc Emrick and of course nobody can replace his personality, at least Dave Strader is a better p-by-p guy than most of the other VERSUS and NBC guys and has a decent voice. 

I forget whether it was Strader or Pierre McGuire who said that Wings GM Ken Holland petitioned the league to have the Winter Classic be the back end of a home and home – and it certainly amped up the physical play even more than usual between two rivals.  That (and his team’s awesome skill level) shows why Holland’s one of the the smartest minds in the sport.

Yeah I didn’t really look at Mason’s overall numbers but knew he had the three straight shutouts.  Man, he really will be a candidate for the Vezina if this keeps up.  I have paid a bit more attention to Versteeg cause he’s been on my fantasy team almost the whole year.  I didn’t realize he came from Boston, man imagine how good they’d be with him – I guess every team has a couple guys like him who get dumped early on and break out elsewhere.  Derrick Brassard (also of the Jackets) could have been another finalist for ROY but he had to go and get in a fight in a recent game in Dallas and wound up going on IR for the rest of the season.

Some people think a 1 PM start is too early for a New Year’s Day game, but you really can’t start it later than that, first of all there are potential winter delays (thankfully this year didn’t have any) and you can’t have those poor fans in the crowd sitting outside at night.

And finally, the above picture was lifted off of HF Boards.  I didn’t realize Babcock was wearing a cowboy hat?!  Cute, at least it’s better than Bill Belichick looking like a homeless guy in his hoodie sweater during NFL games.  Though I’m not really a fan of the third or special jerseys most of the time, at least with Detroit it made sense considering it was their original uniform and the D looked like a Detroit Tigers D, keeping with the baseball background of Wrigley Field.