SimonOnSports

Not to brag or anything but I nailed the Stanley Cup finals last year both in its participants and winners. Pure genius on my part, take that hockey analysts. Since I'm quite obviously better at predicting things I know very little about as opposed to sports I pay attention to, perhaps you should take heed and remember these predictions come June... Or not. Your choice. NHL West Standings West Conference Finals Chicago Blackhawks over Vancouver Canucks - The Blackhawks bring back their two studs and that's enough for me to think they can get through the tough Western Conference for the second straight season. NHL East Standings East Conference Finals Washington Capitals over Pittsburgh Penguins - It's time for Ovechkin to put up or shut up and time for him to knock off his nemesis. If the Capitals can't get it done this year then the window might be closing. Stanley Cup Finals Washington Capitals over Chicago Blackhawks It's incredibly difficu...

Because my preseason predictions in Hockey are named Completely Useless 09-10 NHL Predictions one would think that they are completely useless but apparently not. As of this current moment I am looking solid having predicted a Blackhawk vs. Flyers final with the Blackhawks taking the Stanley Cup back to Chicago for the first time in 50 years. Oh and ignore those silly predictions from last month . I was drunk.

So for those of you that don't know me, I am a mixed bag of Boston / New York fandom. Blame my father for growing up in the one neighborhood in Worcester Mass that was dominated by Yankee fans (aka the Italian section). As a result I am both a Yankee fan and a Bruin fan, so Friday nights debacle was eerily similar to 2004. For the fun of it let's just compare which was a worse collapse using six different criteria: Opponent/Opponent's Ramifications, Effect On the Franchise, League History, Games 1-3, Games 4-6, Game 7. Opponent / Opponent's Ramifications The Bruins loss to the Flyers was against a local rival but obviously does not compare to the Yankees loss to the Red Sox. The Yankees were coming off the heart wrenching Game 7 win over the Sox in 2003 and pretty much had owned baseball for a decade. Both the Flyers and Red Sox were in long Championship droughts but even if the Flyers win this year it won't hold a candle to the Red Sox snapping the 86 year d...

Here is my poor attempt to predict the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs... I'm taking the Capitals (big leap) to beat the Blackhawks in the finals. I picked the Blackhawks to win in the preseason but changed my mind, likely foolishly. I have the Bruins upsetting the Sabres just cause and then NHL still does the whole realignment/reseeding thing right? If not this bracket is completely f*cked.

This hit from the Blackhawks Ducks game was vicious enough to land James Wisniewski an 8 game suspension but the announcer isn't as fooled as everyone else. He knows that Brent Seabrook was just selling like he was unconcsious. Enjoy at the 1 minute mark.

Every year I take a look across the major 4 American Professional leagues to see just what kind of superb merchandise they are trying to pawn off on you on St. Patrick's day. Buy this shirt which you can wear in relevance for exactly one day during the year. Every other day you will look like an idiot for wearing green apparel for a team who's actual colors are Black and Gold. NHL The NHL Provides you with some of the worst of the St. Patty's day merchandise. First you have the boy shorts for the lady of your life with a bunch of clovers and then a random Blackhawks logo (These are available for NFL Teams as well). Next you have the puck which for whatever reason I actually like, probably because its not something you wear. Finally and worst of all, you have the new GRAPHIC-T which is god awful. Nothing says St. Patrick's Day like the San Jose Sharks.

You've probably already seen this somewhere on the interwebs but since I have a tag called Pissin I think this needs to be here... Edmontonians (I assume that's what you call them) did a fantastic job of holding it in throughout the crunch time of the Olympic Hockey Gold Medal match. They waited for the end of periods to run to the bathroom and what with about 27 Molsons drank per person per period I think that's a mighty feat. [ Pat's Papers ]

Watching the Gold Medal game over the weekend I realized something, for whatever reason I don't like Sidney Crosby much. I can't really pinpoint why, but I feel as if he's a bit of a punk on the ice. I feel like he's mostly afraid to go toe to toe with someone and hit with them. Something I feel that Alexander Ovechkin is completely unafraid of, as witnessed by him killing Jaromir Jagr. I feel like he is more likely to throw in some cheap shots throughout the game. For whatever reason I get the impression that Crosby has an aura that says during the game "I am Smug, I'm better than you I should have everything handed to me". Because of this feeling, I enjoyed Jack Johnson giving Sidney Crosby a blatant cheap shot after the period was over and it was blatant. Because of this feeling I was even more annoyed with the US loss than if someone else put the puck in the net. Because of this feeling I will push for the Capitals and anyone else to knock the Peng...

View 2010 US Mens Hockey Olympic Team in a larger map So to sum up the composition of the US Men's Olympic team it is unsurprisingly northern based. The Big Ten Country dominates the composition with the highest concentration coming from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Connecticut surprisingly has more players (2) than Massachusetts (1). The rest of New England has zero players where as Canada and San Francisco both have 1. Yes we have a dual citizen Canadian-American on our hockey team. And yes, spies are the reason we defeated Canada.

When times are tough, you are frustrated and you just need to take your rage out on something inanimate, slashing your Goalie in the face is still not a good idea. H/T The Sporting Blog

The chart shows a tracking through November of the total wins by each New York team. The Yankees won on November 1st so on that date they are at 1. They then won on November 4th so on that date they are at 2. They have not played a game since so they have stayed at 2. What you will notice on the chart is that none of the major New York Teams (Knicks, Nets, Jets, Giants, Rangers, Yankees) have won more than 3 games in the month of November. The Yankees who shouldn't really be playing in November have picked up more wins this month than the Nets, Jets and Giants combined. The chart is a bit tough to see at this size but if you click on it to enlarge you should be able to find humor.

Just for fun, here's a collection of youth hockey checks. Kids of all ages knocking the crap out of others for the amusement of the masses.

Yesterday I read A Look at NHL's October Attendance on Fanhouse. What it essentially said was that average NHL attendance is down this season almost league wide. While looking at the stats they posted I noticed three teams had not change in their attendance per game. The meaning behind this lack of movement is simple. They sell out every single game, no questions asked. What did all of these teams have in common? They all play in Canada. So I decided to take a little deeper dive into the attendance stats and seperate them by regions. The regions are very generic but I think they get the job done. What you gather from the numbers is that hockeys relocation and expansion was completely baffling if not entirely moronic. [Click to expand] The South's best attendance is Dallas at 17. Five of the Six worst NHL attendance spots are located in the South*. The lone team who breaks the South's crap shutout is the Islanders who play in the NHL's worst arena, as said by G...

Here are the wonderful predictions from someone who may watch 5 regular season hockey games this year. Now with new and improved records so I can better evaluate just how wrong I was. NHL West Standings West Conference Finals Chicago Blackhawks over San Jose Sharks - The Sharks will once again be amongst the best teams in the NHL regular season and will once again disappoint massively in the postseason. The Blackhawks are your Western Conference Champs. NHL East Standings East Conference Finals Philadelphia Flyers over Pittsburgh Penguins - Hey look its a battle of Pennsylvania. I can't pick Sydney Crosby to win because I think he plays like a little whiny prick. So we're going CheeseSteaks and Hockey. Stanley Cup Finals Chicago Blackhawks over Philadelphia Flyers The Blackhawks haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1961 so the Cubs aren't the only tortured fan base in Chicago. The Flyers themselves haven't won a title since 1975 so their in a bit of a slump. In t...

I really don't understand why preseason hockey starts before the summer is over. Can anybody justify this? It's a game played on Ice, its supposed to be a winter sport and yet the preseason -> regular season spans all seasons. I'm befuddled. Regardless, here's a fun clip of a guy getting his head knocked in.

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

The NHL is in line for some thrillers over the next two days. They have Sydney Alexander Crosby vs. Ovechkin game 7 tonight. They get the storied Detroit Red Wings in Hockey town in Game 7 on Thursday Night. They get the resurgent #1 seed Boston Bruins in Game 7 on Thursday night. Everything is great in Hockeyland, how could they mess anything up. Oh but of course NHL & Versus can. How? Look at Thursday nights schedule. You might be thinking "Oh look Versus is carrying both the Red Wings vs. Anaheim Ducks game and the Bruins vs. the Carolina Hurricanes game. The Nation will get to see two great hockey games, everything is great." But take another look, notice something about the timing of these games. Yep, they're only an hour a part. That means that if you really want to watch the Bruins game and not the Red Wings game than unless you get NESN, there will be no soup for you until the Red Wings game is over. In the best case scenario if you're a Bruin or Can...

Moving teams NHL teams from Canada, a place where hockey is religion, to the US a place where Hockey is on the mind of youngsters in maybe 5 or 6 states, has never made any sense to me. At least in some cases, like moving the Nordiques to Colorado, the environment was a wintry one. One where theoretical kids could grow up playing hockey in their back yard and grow up loving hockey. But moving a team to the Desert? Ya that never made any sense. Now more than a decade later the mistake is obvious, the Phoenix Coyotes have filed for bankruptcy . What the hell did you really expect? Who the hell plays hockey in Arizona? Who the hell grew up a big time hockey fan in Arizona? And its not like Arizona is a big time market for other sports to begin with, half the people are transplanted retirees, just like Florida, and even the Cardinals struggled selling tickets before their shiny new stadium. So why would anyone think that in an environment with no hockey background and a mediocre market ...

"I'm Barry Melrose, and I would like someone to hire me. Look at my resume and give me a call."