Weekly Mail June 5, 2022

                                  Alexis Lafreniere

 Hey Everybody...

It's June! Almost halfway done with 2022. Beautiful weather this weekend. Hope everyone is hanging in there. 

HOCKEY: Rangers still going!

So first let's go back to last Monday night in Raleigh. The Hurricanes had been impossible to beat in their home barn, having beaten the Bruins in all 4 games there in the first round, and the Rangers the first 3 of the second round.  Of those 3 against the Rangers, Games 2 and 5 were hard to watch. The Rangers looked like the young, inexperienced playoff team the experts said they were. 

But the games at MSG, the Hurricanes looked equally inept and the Rangers looked like world-beaters. So it was hard to see how the hell they were going to pull it off. 

They pulled it off by taking it to the Canes, by not backing down, but not doing anything brainless either. Let them take the bad penalties and let us get the power plays. The Rangers power play has been a clinic. 

When Carolina cut it to 4-2 in the third period ESPN commentator Ray Ferraro was just about to say if the Hurricanes can get one more.... when the Rangers got the goal right back. All he could do was muster a "never mind" 

I would be less than honest if I said I wasn't surprised they put up 6 goals against the Hurricanes last Monday night. I'm not shocked they won, I figured they'd go down to the wire, but I thought they could win a close game. I wouldn't have predicted 6-2.

And it's hard to say what shocked me more, the 6-2 win over Carolina in Game 7 of the Conference Semis, or the 6-2 win in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final against the mighty Tampa Bay Lightning. That I did not see coming. 

I've been listening to NHL Network Radio a lot during these NHL Playoffs. On the FAN, Boomer and Gio have been covering the Rangers run extensively, so I'll listen to them for a bit. I refuse to listen to Tiki and Tierney, and with Carton and Roberts, you have one guy who doesn't like hockey (Carton) and the other guy whose an Islander fan (Roberts). So its been a lot of NHL Radio for me.

And while most of the Toronto based hosts haven't been openly hostile to the Rangers per se, few of them gave them a remote chance against either Carolina or Tampa Bay. Even our goalie, the great Igor Shesterkin called Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy the best goalie in the world. That's high praise. It's also hard to argue. What he did to the Florida Panthers, who BTW, won the President's Trophy, was insane. 

That and the fact that on account of the Bolts sweeping of the Panthers, they had over a week off before facing the Rangers, (who had one day between Game 7 vs CAR and Game 1 vs TB) and the consensus was that 1) the games would be low scoring and 2) the Lightning would prevail. 

Game 1 caught 'em all off guard. 

At the risk of sounding like Mike Francesa, there was a part of me that wasn't buying the whole "the Lightning are rested" theory, I believe that rink rust is a thing, and I felt that the Rangers could exploit that. I didn't think it would lead to a 6-2 win. 

I thought Game 1 would turn out more the way Game 2 did. Vasilevskiy was much better in Game 2, as the Rangers had almost as many chances as they did in Game 1. But he made some nice saves. 

Still the Blueshirts managed to get 3 by him, including another patented Mika Zibanejad rocket from inside the circle. What made Game 2 really satisfying, was that it was the first time the Lightning have lost 2 straight playoff games in 3 years, and also that the Lightning struck (seewhatididthere?) first, and the Rangers still came back and won. They are winning games in all kinds of ways. 

Today was a stinker though, lets face it. They were outplayed in the third period, they took a couple of dumb penalties, and spent most of the time in their own zone. Yet, the game had overtime written all over it till Ondrej Palat scored with 41 seconds left to give Tampa the W. It’s aggravating to think that they were up 2-0 at one point and had a chance to take a commanding 3-0 lead. But still, they have given the defending champs all they can handle. Hopefully they correct what went wrong and come out and try to get a split in Tampa on Tuesday.

MUSIC: What's Old is What's New.

I have never gotten into Stranger Things, the Netflix smash hit show, which just started it's 4th season last month. But I thought this was very interesting.

Apparently the show takes place back in the 1980's. and one of the character's favorite songs is Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill. Because of the song's presence in the show, it was one of the most requested/downloaded songs on Spotify the past couple of weeks. And it is re-entering the charts in several countries around the world. 

I honestly don't remember hearing the song that much back in 1985, I'm sure it was probably played a lot on alternative stations, but I've heard it more now since I listen mostly to satellite radio in the car and flip between the decades. Kate Bush has a really strong powerful voice and that is definitely a song that will get stuck in your brain when you hear it. 

I think this is a good thing, and I don't always feel that way about songs re-entering the charts. You are all witness to my annual rant against Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You topping the Billboard Charts every December. There have been other songs too, that I feel were better left to when they were originally released. 

But if younger people are digging Kate Bush and can relate to Running Up That Hill, I say good for them. I for one would welcome seeing that song amongst the Bad Bunnys, Harry Styles, and Kendrick Lamars of the world. 

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I've said this before, but apparently since I've been hearing a lot about it lately, it bears repeating....

I have several family members and countless friends who are teachers or administrators in schools. A grand total of none of them think that packing heat along with their school supplies and textbooks is a good idea. I hate to break it to my 2nd amendment peeps (of which I'm sure many have stopped reading my pearls os wisdom) but this is one idea that's not going to happen. 

By the time I started going to school, we were past the era of nuns cracking knuckles with rulers. And I bet even those nasty f-ckers wouldn't have wanted to carry a gun. I still think less guns made available to less people is a part of the solution here, but what the hell do I know? 

Here to explain further is Hawkeye Pierce.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS: Fantasy Football Feud 

I had to read this story a few times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, but two MLB players got into a pre game fight over something that was going on in the Fantasy Football League these two dopes are in.

The fight took place between Tommy Pham of the Reds and Joc Pederson of the Giants. 

From Yahoo Sports…

“We were in a fantasy league together,” Pederson said. “I put a player on injured reserve when they were listed as out and then added another player. And then there was a text message in the group saying that I was cheating because I was stashing players on my bench. Then I looked up the rules and sent a screenshot of the rules, how it says that when a player is ruled out, you’re allowed to put him on the IR. That’s all I was doing. It just so happened that he had a player, [49ers running back] Jeff Wilson, who was out. He had him on the IR. I said, ‘You literally have the same thing on your team, on your bench.’ Then I guess he was in two leagues and one of them he was on the IR and one of them he wasn’t, so maybe that was the confusion, but the ESPN league we were in he was listed as out, so it feels very similar to what I did. And that was basically all of it. There’s not much more to it.”

A couple of things here…. I had this discussion with co-editors Karl (the Ace) Ludwig and (Razor) Ray McGarvey…. I’m assuming that this fantasy league is NOT being played for pride and bragging rights, and being that these are major league players, I’m also assuming they are playing for a rather large sum of cash. Essentially these guys are betting on sports. And now with all these gambling sites actually sponsoring these teams, is it maybe time to revisit the Pete Rose decision, as the Ace suggested? I’m not going to get into that this week, I promise we’ll broach that subject in the near future. 

The other thing though is that this reminds me of one of the two reasons I stopped doing fantasy baseball.

The first reason is that I stink at it. And the reason I stink at it is the same reason I usually screw up my NCAA bracket.. I don’t pick teams I won’t root for, likewise I don’t draft players I won’t root for, so I end up drafting a whole team of swell guys who can’t play. Handing the entrance fee to the commissioner was basically paying a $50.00 cover charge to hang out at the draft. That’s money I could use to go drink at Donovans. 

The other reason I stopped and reading the above story just solidifies my reasoning, is that more often than not these leagues cause more tension than Middle East peace talks. None of the leagues I was in ever got physical, but a couple times friends stopped talking to each other or got into internet name calling. Even I who really just did this for $h-ts and giggles once had a spat with a real good friend over something I did in baseball. This is a friend whose doghouse I really didn’t want to be in. Thankfully it was cleared upo quickly enough, but I pretty much decided right there I had enough. 

I don’t know how close Pederson and Pham are in real life. I’m positive that neither of them expected or wanted any of this to spill onto the inter webs. Plus, Pham who slapped Pederson, was benched for the game. That had to be embarrassing. 

Just another day in paradise. 

Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 70th year on the throne this weekend. I’ll spare everyone the lame toilet jokes and just say Happy Anniversary to the lady with the easiest job in the world. 

All right that’s all we got

Stay Safe,

and Have a Great Week