There are times in the world of sports when events turn from being merely entertaining to being entertainingly ridiculous. This week is one of those times. From Mike Milbury actually making sense, to two professional sports teams competing for a trophy that’s named after the owner of both of those teams, the sports world seems to be stuck in a bizarre alternate universe where up is down, right is wrong and the Toronto Maple Leafs don’t completely blow.
On Wednesday evening, the Tampa Bay Lightning hosted the Philadelphia Flyers at the St Pete Times Forum. With offensive weapons on both sides, people were quite naturally expecting a well-played, attack-minded game. Guy Boucher and Peter Laviolette, the coaches of Tampa Bay and Philadelphia, respectively, had other ideas. Guy Boucher drew much acclaim last season for his 1-3-1 defensive scheme. Tonight, Peter Laviolette instructed his players to try a novel approach to beating the trap. Rather than advance the puck through the neutral zone, the Flyers held the puck in their own defensive zone, and waited to see what Tampa would do. The result was the world’s most boring game of chicken. The referee had to whistle the play dead twice because the puck was frozen despite no defensive pressure. It was a fascinating spectacle, seeing the fastest of sports slowed to a stop because neither coach was willing to budge from their game plan.
If that weren’t bizarre enough, Mad Mike Milbury had an opinion on the incident that didn’t make him sound like a complete moron. In the first intermission, Milbury took to the Versus airwaves to lambast Guy Boucher’s reintroduction of strict defensive systems play. He railed against NHL teams being over-coached, and coaches worrying so much about making their own house air tight that they forget they have to score goals as well. Milbury then praised the Flyers for calling attention to Guy Boucher’s attempt to channel Jacques Lemaire and drag the NHL back into the stagnation of the mid-1990s. He even showed a measure of humbleness in admitting he didn’t have the answer and that smarter people than him would have to figure it out. Milbury was back to his old self in the second intermission when he stormed out of the studio (presumably to fly down to Tampa, remove one of Guy Boucher’s shoes and beat Boucher about the head with it), but it was a solid take from a guy who usually acts like Don Cherry without the charisma or fashion sense.
Meanwhile, while the NFL and its players pulled their collective head out of their collective ass and signed a new collective deal for this year, the NBA is still arguing with its players about how best to divvy up a $3.8bn pot. If it didn’t have such an impact on surrounding businesses and economies, I wouldn’t care. The city of Orlando alone stands to lose $92 million out of their economy if the season is entirely lost to a lockout. I’m not picking a side here. You’re all obscenely wealthy. Sort it out.
Shifting down to Major League Soccer for a moment, the MLS Cup is being contested this weekend between the Houston Dynamo and Los Angeles Galaxy. This story needs a bit of background: going into the final game of the regular season last month, Houston was sitting in 10th place in the league. Their final match was against the 1st-place Galaxy, who had lost only four times all season at that point. A Houston win would see them into 2nd place in the Eastern Conference, guaranteeing them a spot in the quarter finals. A loss would mean they’d have to play an extra playoff game on the road. Even if they won that extra playoff game, they’d end up playing the Galaxy in the quarters. It seems like a straight-forward playoff scenario, until you realize that both the Dynamo and the Galaxy are owned by the Anschutz Entertainment Group. A win by Houston would guarantee AEG a minimum of one extra playoff game, and open the door to an all-AEG final.
The Galaxy fielded a reserve squad against Houston, the Dynamo won the game 3-1, and now here we are three weeks later with the same two teams in the final. If the Galaxy had rested their starters against any other team in the league, nobody would have blinked. They’d already clinched first, and it made sense not to risk injuries. The optics, however, of a team owned by one company rolling over to help out a team owned by the same company are atrocious.
To cap it off, the trophy they’re competing for is named the “Phillip F. Anschutz Trophy”. I wonder if he cares who wins.
Rounding out the ridiculous week that was is the stupidest riot in sports history. Following the decision by Penn State University’s board to fire Joe Paterno after 46 seasons at the helm of the Nittany Lions’ football team, a group of incensed PSU students rampaged. They rioted in support of a man who had been fired for enabling the continued freedom of a sexual predator who targeted children. There are people jumping to a lot of conclusions about JoPa, and most of them will eventually be seen as overblown or completely unfounded, but one thing is for sure: Vancouver sports fans can now be relieved that their city no longer holds the title of “place whose residents once rioted for the worst reason ever.”