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Michigan Wolverines Men's Lacrosse Falls to Top-Ranked Maryland Terrapins on Military Appreciation Day

4/2/2022

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Joshua Tenzer

On military appreciation day and in front of the largest crowd of the season, the Wolverines (7-4) fell to the #1/#1 Maryland Terrapins (9-0) by a score of 20 to 12. Ryan Cohen had four goals and one assist for the Wolverines and Isaac Aronson had three goals and two helpers. Four players for the Terrapins tallied a hat trick for the team in red (Murphy, Khan, Donville, and Wisnauskas). Coach Kevin Conry falls to 0-6 against the team he was a defensive assistant for before becoming the second head coach of the Wolverines men’s lacrosse program.

Through one quarter, in a game between two of the highest-scoring teams in the nation, the defense was the biggest factor. Michigan played a tight and physical style of defense that forced the Terrapins to take inaccurate shots that sailed wide of the net more often than not. On the shots that were on target Shane Carr, who leads the Big Ten in save percentage, was able to come up big for his team with two strong saves within the first five minutes to keep the Terps off the board. Carr struggled after the first intermission allowing two goals within 30 seconds of each other twice in the second frame and as the second quarter carried on, the Terrapins continued to expand their lead over the maize and blue. Maryland started to have an easier and easier time getting players open and in all alone against Shane Carr. Too often the Michigan defense allowed players near the crease to have all the time and space they needed to make a move that Carr bit on and lob the ball over the goalie to dent the twine.

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Logan Wisnauskas (1) left open by the Michigan Defense
On the other side of the turf, the Maryland defense put on a clinic in defensive positioning. Ajax Zappitello and BJ Burlace were always exactly where they needed to be. Whenever the Wolverines looked to move the ball there were always players in red in the way. Maryland seemed to fill every passing lane and cover every shot, keeping the shot clock ticking and making the Wolverines take rushed shots that were easily blocked by the defenders in front of the crease. Two of the Wolverines' four goals came with a single-digit number on the shot clock and if it weren’t for the strong shots of Isaac Aaronson and Josh Zawada’s ability to work a strong transition game, the Wolverines would only have two goals going into halftime. Towards the end of the second quarter, the Wolverines were able to convert a few hard-earned chances into goals and trailed by only four before the long break.

Michigan was able to take advantage of both of the man-up opportunities in the first half. With one less defender for the Terrapins, their style of defense faltered. There was always an open pass for the attackers to make across the crease and with quick and snappy ball movement, the Wolverines were able to make the most of the Terrapins’ few lapses in discipline.

Coming back to start the second half, Maryland looked more like the unanimous #1 team that they’ve shown themselves to be during the last 7 weeks where they’ve sat atop the polls. Two goals by John Geppert within the first 30 seconds of the half pulled Maryland up 11-5 over the Wolverines and three minutes later Logan Wisnauskas, the leading scorer for the Terrapins this season, completed his hat trick which is his 6th of the season. After today, Wisnauskas extends his goal streak to 14 games going all the way back to last season with Michigan being the last team to keep him off the goal sheet in the Big Ten Tournament first round. Despite the Wolverines keeping the game close in the first half, Maryland ran away with it in the third and fourth frames.

It seemed that whenever the Wolverines were able to get some momentum going, the Terrapins would come right back and force the Wolverines on their heels. For a team like the Wolverines that thrive on dictating the flow of the game and having their goalie make the stops when they need to, being forced to make a comeback as time slowly elapsed and put more pressure on every shot in addition to Shane Carr’s worst game of the season was an equation that spelled trouble for the home team. 

The bright spot for the Wolverines in this game was Ryan Cohen. Cohen tallied four goals and an assist including the Wolverine’s first of the game, a beautiful goal in tight on the right post as the shot clock expired. Cohen, just a freshman, has been putting in the work to make himself better and better week on week and is quickly becoming an integral part of the Michigan starting trio of forwards. When asked post-game about Cohen’s practice habits and his improvement, coach Kevin Conry said that Cohen is a “low-key kid, and getting him to open up more and talk” and grow his relationships with the coaches and his teammates has helped improve his game on the field. In addition, the team as a whole has no quit in them. Even down by nine with 5:45 left, the Wolverines kept playing hard physical defense and worked for every shot they wanted to take. It led to a beautiful goal scored by Gavin Legg (who had himself a solid defensive day in front of his own net) that he shot from in close while being knocked down and drawing a penalty.
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Ryan Cohen (40) fighting for a ground ball that would be scooped up and scored by Josh Zawada (9)
The Wolverines will continue the season at Penn State on Friday at 6:00 pm and they will return to the U-of-M Lacrosse Stadium for Senior Day and their home closer of the season against Rutgers at noon on April 16th. That game will be broadcast on the WCBN youtube channel.

​All pictures taken by WCBN staff

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What's Next For Braden Holtby

8/30/2020

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By Joshua Tenzer

    ​After the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018, things have consistently gone downwards for the team. Despite 3 straight seasons finishing with an impressive 105 points (including 2019-20 when scaled up to 82 games), the playoffs have been a different story. In 2019 the Caps lost to the Carolina Hurricanes in double overtime of game 7 after a 2-0 and 3-2 series lead. In the Corona-Cup of 2020, The Capitals came in third in the seeding round-robin losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning in a shootout and the Philadelphia Flyers before beating the Bruins. Then in the first round of the playoffs, they lost in 5 games to the New York Islanders.
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Braden Holtby
    ​Holtby has been in net for all but 2 playoff games since he debuted on the Capital’s major league roster during the 2010-2011 season. With his contract ending this offseason (whenever that may be), it’s time to look back at how he has performed in net, what’s next for him, and most importantly, what roster will he be on at the start of the 2020-2021 season?

    Braden Holtby has been outstanding during his decade-long tenure with Washington for whom he has played 565 games, 97 of them in the postseason. He is a 2-time all-star, a Vezina winner, a William M. Jennings Trophy winner, and led the Capitals to a Stanley Cup championship. The team pays him 6.1 million dollars in cap hit which is high for a goalie but not in the top 5 most expensive netminders. The only problem with Holtby is his apparent decline. At the end of the 2016-17 season, Holtby got the second most all-star votes for a goalie, won the Jennings Trophy, came second in Vezina voting, and 10th in Hart voting. That season was also the last where he would receive any votes for any NHL awards or make it to the all-star game. The graphs below show Holtby’s numbers compared to the league averages in the two most useful goalie stats: Save percentage and goals-against average. As you can see, his GAA is increasing and his SV% is decreasing. On both stats he is sub-par. He’s on the wrong side of thirty and it looks like, assuming that he signs a long term contract, this will be his last serious chance at free-agency. How much money will he get?

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    ​It’s a complicated question to answer. The first issue is the flat cap. Every year since its inception, the salary cap in the NHL has increased (except for the lockout-shortened season of 2012-13). Due to the coronavirus, the sports world has faced financial complications. 10-12 games per team were left unplayed and the postseason is without fans so a lot of ticket money was lost. Not to mention the fact that finances went down across the globe. NHL insiders have made it believed that the salary cap for the 2020-21 season will remain the same as the 2019-20 season at 81.5 million dollars.

    The second kink in the chain is the reality of Holtby’s stats. As commented on above, Holtby appears to be past his prime and in a period of decay. His numbers are in a death spiral and it is yet to be seen if he can pull out of it. A smart team would recognize that the likelihood of Holby performing as well as he did in D.C. is slim and would offer him less money than he is making now. However, this is NHL and smart teams are hard to come by. Last year, there was a goalie who was up for a contract negotiation like Holtby, was nearly the exact same age as Holby is, and was on a 3-year decline like Holtby: Sergei Bobrovsky. Bobrovsky left the Blue Jackets, where he developed into a generational talent, and signed with the Florida Panthers for a cool 10 million dollars. Bobrovsky proceeded to have the worst season of his career. The Panthers won only one postseason game: a qualifying round victory over the Islanders, and would fail to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Will teams learn from what happened to the Panthers or make the same mistake and roll the dice again? It’s yet to be seen but I’m not too optimistic.

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Sergei Bobrovsky on the Florida Panthers
    The third variable to consider is his competition. There are 17 goalies whose contracts are ending this offseason. Of those 17, Holtby has played the most games but is 13th in SV% and 12th in GAA. Names above him in both stats include Aaron Dell and Ryan Miller. When you enter the mind-bending fun land of advanced analytics, Holby struggles even more. There’s a stat Quality Start % which takes the total games started by a goalie and sees what percent of those starts have a higher save percentage than the league average. > 60% is good, <50% is bad, and the league average is about 53%. Holtby’s QS% is 46.8%.

    Despite all that, I think that Holtby will get about 6.25 million dollars in free agency this year. While that is an increase in money, it is actually a smaller percentage of the cap than when he signed his current contract in 2015. Bobrovsky also showed that NHL front offices are a sucker for the power of a big name even if the underlying statistics are cause for concern.

    The question to answer now is what team will Holtby start for next season? If the team isn’t listed it’s because they have either finalized a solid goalie situation for the next year or spent too much money and don’t have the room to sign Holtby to a deal that he would take. There are some teams that either have a good goalie situation or no money that I included anyway because I wanted to bring attention to those specific teams.

Chicago Blackhawks: I Think Not
    I’ve seen a few people on Twitter talking about how much fun it would be for Braden Holtby to sign with Chicago. I admit it would be fun to see Holtby play on the same team as other greats of the early 2010s like Partick Kane and Jonathan Toews. However, the Blackhawks already have a post-prime, 6 million dollar goalie they need to give a new contract to Corey Crawford. Prevailing wisdom has Crawford re-signing with Chicago and I tend to agree.

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Corey Crawford
Toronto Maple Leafs: I Mean… I Guess
    There's a rumor going around that the Leafs want to trade away their starting goalie Freddie Andersen and since they just sent their 2nd line winger Kasperi Kapanen for essentially the 15th pick of the 2020 draft, I wouldn’t be surprised if those rumors are true. It’s a very real possibility that Freddie Andersen isn’t on the Leafs come December considering it’s the final year of this contract and he’s played himself into a new contract that the Leafs can’t afford in the 2021 offseason. This then leaves Toronto with the goalie combination in their system being Jack Campbell backed up by Kasimir Kaskisuo which is not a winning combination. The Leafs would be in the market for a new starting goalie but they don’t really have the money for him. There’s some universe where Holtby is in blue next season but this universe probably isn’t it.

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Freddie Andersen
Washington Capitals: A Possibility
    Is it possible that he will come back to the Capitals for the next season? Yes. Is it likely? Not at all. One factor in this is the man who played backup to Holtby during this past season: Ilya Samsonov. In 26 games with the Capitals, Samsonov posted a 16-6-2 record with a GAA of 2.54 and a save percentage of .914 putting him easily in the top 30 goalies stats-wise. He’s part of this wave of young goalies impressing their GMs this season. In addition to being statistically better than Holtby this year, Samsonov is cheap, still on his entry-level contract.

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Holtby (Left) and Ilya Samsonov (Right) at Practice
    Washington is on a tight budget when it comes to the salary cap for the 2020-2021 season. They only have ten million dollars of cap space left and they have two defensemen and two forwards that need to be either re-signed or replaced. Even if all five of those players were allowed to walk by the Capitals and Washington signed five rookies at the league minimum, that would still only leave Washington with just under 6.5 million dollars to re-sign Holtby who, as we showed earlier, can fit into that budget. Of course, the Capitals could try to trade away some players to make some cap space for themselves but most of their contracts have three or more years remaining and the players are either too expensive for their skill level or not efficient financially as they still need to replace players who get shipped away. Having said that, it doesn’t seem likely or possible that the Caps can sign so many players for so little money and maintain enough cap space to re-sign their franchise goaltender.

San Jose Sharks: Could Be
    It is said that the Sharks are a rebuilding team and could definitely benefit from a veteran presence like Braden Holtby. The issues arise when you look at that statement more closely. They already have veteran presences like 41-year-old Joe Thornton and 35-year-old Brent Burns. The Sharks also already dropped a lot of cash on a 30-year-old goalie who hasn’t performed to the standards that they set for him. Martin Jones is paid 5.75 million dollars a year and since signing that contract has posted two straight .896 SV% seasons and a GAA of around 3.00. Jones also has a modified no-movement clause in which he submits a list of only three teams that the Sharks can trade him to. This essentially boils down to the fact that the Sharks are stuck with an overpaid, underperforming goaltender. Would they gamble on Braden Holtby after getting burned by Jones? Maybe, but it seems more likely that they would go for Matt Murray or Linus Ullmark who would cost them less in the event of another flop.

Detroit Red Wings: Top 3
    The Detroit Red Wings are an interesting team right now. They have 11 players who will be UFAs or RFAs in the coming offseason and over 34 million dollars in cap space. Not only that, but they have the truest mark of a rebuilding team: No contracts that go into the 2023-24 season. If the 2019-20 season was the last season of them intentionally tanking, we can expect them to re-sign key players like Anthony Mantha and Tyler Bertuzzi to long term contracts and start building the core that they will run with for the next half-decade. 

    ​The key position that the Red Wings need to fix with a free agent signing is goaltending. They started the season with their trust in Jimmy Howard. Throughout the season he played in 27 games and won only two of them. He’s old, his contract is expiring this offseason and he’s abysmal. He posted a SV% of less than .85 in a third of his starts. You might remember that a QS% of 50% is considered bad, Howard’s QS% was 26%! The goalie the Red Wings switched to was Jonathan Bernier who was better but still had a QS% of 42%. The Red Wings need a goalie and Holtby would be a massive improvement for them. They could sign Holtby and build a defensive core around his playstyle since they have zero defensemen on contract for the 2021-22 season.

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Detroit’s Current Goalies: Jonathan Bernier (Left) and Jimmy Howard (Right)
    While being in the middle of a rebuild is a potential positive for Holtby, it could also be the reason he chooses not to sign with the red and white. As stated, this should be the last contract Holtby signs and where he plays out the twilight of his career. Will he want to spend the first three years out of the playoffs and not have a chance to chase that second ring? Maybe. The Red Wings are a strong possibility but not the most likely option.

Ottawa Senators: Top 3
    Here we start getting into the teams that make the most sense for Holtby to go to. Like the Sharks, they are beginning their rebuild. They have a wealth of draft picks with 9 picks in the first 3 rounds of the 2020 NHL Draft. They also don’t have a serious future in net and their starter isn’t under contract for next season. Whereas with the Sharks, it didn’t make sense for Holbty to go there to be a veteran in the locker room, with the Sens, it would be a perfect role for him. They are poised to take the title of youngest team in the NHL from the Blackhawks and unlike Chicago, they don’t have a Kane or Duncan to give the roster a bit of maturity and guidance for the younger players. Holtby is a positive locker room presence and may even benefit himself from that mentor role.

    The Sens could take the best goalie in the 2020 draft class Yaroslav Askarov with the number 5 pick. Though Askarov is predicted to go at 13 to Carolina, NHL.com has Askarov as the 6th best player in the draft so taking him at 5 isn’t Daniel Jones levels of reaching. Holtby could take the starting role as Askarov develops until they split starts and eventually Holtby gets relegated to a backup role. This can be built into the contract the Sens offer him by front-loading his salary, giving him upwards of 7 million in the first two years, going down to 6.5 million for the next two, and giving him 4.5 million for the last three years.

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Yaroslav Askarov
Edmonton Oilers: Put Money on It
    The Edmonton Oilers are good. They have two of the four best hockey players in the world on the same line. Their top 6 is monstrous, their bottom 6 forwards are a mix of young and old serviceable interchangeable parts. Their defense is young, hard-hitting, and strong. This begs the question: Why didn't they make the playoffs this year? They were the 5 seed going up against the 12 seeded Chicago Blackhawks. When the Blackhawks won, their weaknesses were exposed by the Golden Knights, they should not have been in the playoffs so how did they beat the Oilers? The Oilers scored 3 goals a game which is on par with how they did in the regular season and the league average. The issue is that they let in a total of 19 goals in four games. Mikko Koskinen is a fine enough backup in the regular season but in the playoffs he dropped to a .889 SV%. Their starter, Mike Smith had a .902 SV% in the regular season and .783 in the play-in round. If they want to complete their remake of the mid-80’s team, they’ve already cast Connor McDavid as Wayne Gretzky, Leon Draisaitl as Mark Messier, James Niel as Jari Kurri, and now they need Braden Holtby to play the role of Grant Fuhr.

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Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl: The Modern Day Gretzky and Messier
​    Goaltending is the last piece that this team needs to make it deep in the playoffs. If I were Holtby and I wanted to play for the best possible team, I would go to Edmonton and sign a contract through the 2025-26 season, which is the same year that Connor McDavid’s contract ends. Edmonton would like this because Holtby’s contract would be off the books in time to give McDavid the biggest contract imaginable and Holby would like this because if his decline does continue, he’s still getting paid for years and might even get another ring. On a more personal note, Holtby was born and raised in Loydminster which is on the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The closest NHL team to Loydminster is Edmonton. This makes the most sense.



    The question I posed at the beginning of this article is so complex because of Holtby’s declining numbers, Bobrovsky’s contract, and each team having their own pros and cons. At the end of the day, the teams that make the most sense to me are the Senators, Red Wings, and Oilers. Out of those teams, I would say that he is most probably going to Edmonton in the offseason but no matter where he ends up, I will be watching very closely to see if it’s another flop or if he hoists the cup again.

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Braden Holtby Hoisting the Stanley Cup with Washington in 2018
    I would like to give a huge thank you to Capfriendly and Hockey-Reference for giving me all of the information I needed to compile this list.

Image Credits:
    Yahoo Sports
    NBC Sports
    NHL.com
    NoVa Caps
    Bardown
    Puckprose

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Racism Took Over K'Andre Miller's Q&A Session with the New York Rangers

4/3/2020

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By Joshua Tenzer

    ​Let me start off by pointing out the fact that I am a straight, white, male who has never faced racism of any kind - stupid middle school antisemitism, sure - racism, no.

    Something horrible happened today.

    On Friday, the third of April, the New York Rangers held a Q and A session with recently signed defenseman K’Andre Miller. Miller played for two seasons with the Wisconsin Badgers accumulating 40 points off 12 goals and 28 assists. 2 of those goals and 1 assist came against the Wolverines this year. He was listed by EliteProspects as the #1 Rangers prospect in the NCAA beating out senior Morgan Barron from Cornell for that award. After signing his entry-level contract with the Rangers who drafted him in the first round of the 2018 draft, the Rangers wanted to keep fan engagement going in the Coronavirus induced pause. They decided to let 500 people in a video conference on the platform Zoom with Miller to ask him questions. In hindsight, this was a horrible idea.
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K’Andre Miller at a pre-season NYR training camp
    ​During the video conference, Miller, a racial minority, was answering questions about his quarantine situation when an account with the screen name ‘FBI’ started to spam the chat with a wall of text that was the N-word in all caps over and over and over and over again. Any real questions got lost in the wave of racial abuse. K’Andre did not respond to the happenings in the chat but was clearly visibly uncomfortable due to what was on his screen. The individual was eventually silenced and the session continued.

    4 hours after the incident, the New York Rangers released this statement:
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    While it is nice that the Rangers said this and are condemning this behavior, 4 hours is an unacceptable time frame to take between the incident occurring and the releasing the statement. The NHL also took a similar amount of time. Racism clearly has no place in hockey, or any sport for that matter, yet it exists in almost every conceivable competition. Every month, a new story breaks about a soccer player facing racial abuse from fans, a WWE wrestler getting targeted by racist chants from the crowd, the use of slurs on the football field, and many more show that this isn’t a problem keen on leaving the public view. When incidents like this occur it is up to the team and the leagues to take action swiftly and denounce this as soon as they can. The faster they respond, the more unified the response is. I am ashamed and disappointed in my favorite sports team on this planet for taking FOUR ENTIRE HOURS to denounce racial abuse on the newest member of their NHL roster. ​
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New York Rangers podcaster Joe Fortunato echoing the feeling of the Ranger’s fan base during the time it took for the Rangers to respond to the racism
    Furthermore, fans are having different reactions to this. Some are calling it out, some are calling to ignore the abuse as the person with the ‘FBI’ account was clearly a troll trying to get a rise out of people, some are thanking K’Andre for his professionalism. While it is obvious that the fan base of the New York Rangers are behind Miller and in support of the young man, no matter what anyone calls for to respond to this, a whole subsection of people attacks in disagreement. If we call it out we are being stupid and giving the troll the attention they seek. If we ignore it we are letting the hatred bubble under the surface. If we thank K’Andre Miller for being professional we are being condescending. (I don’t really understand that last one but it’s happened. I’m willing to learn as well.) When something like this happens, there really isn’t one unified correct thing to do. No one has the answer to how to get rid of racism. We should not be attacking each other at a time like this. We should be together and supporting K’Andre Miller.

    ​One response to this that I have seen that makes me happy is the masses of New York Ranger fans and players saying how they are excited for K’Andre to come to New York and sharing highlights of him, including his beautiful snipe on the power play from the blue line against the Michigan Wolverines in Yost.
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Fellow New York Rangers players Jacob Trouba, Tony D’Angelo, and Ryan Strome on the K’Andre Miller incident
    ​​We can share all the love and highlights we want but that does not excuse nor make up for the hatred that K’Andre Miller endured today. We need to see better from humanity, especially at a time like this, and we definitely need to see better from the NHl, the New York Rangers, and any league or team where a player endures racism from fans, teammates, or opponents. 

Image Credits
Yahoo Sports
Twitter

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An Open Letter to Eli Manning

1/26/2020

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Dear Eli Manning,
    
    I’m an 18 year old kid and honestly, I didn’t like sports as a small child. By the time I started watching sports and getting emotionally invested in the teams you were out there every game and as the rest of the team retired or left, as Victor Cruz went away, as Hakeem Nicks, Mario Manningham, Osi Umenyiora, and Justin Tuck went away, the one player left on the team from when I started watching was you. Now that’s over. No one from that 2011 team that I can recognize by name is still on the roster. It’s the end of an era.

    ​The first Super Bowl I watched was LII when the Giants played the Patriots for the first time. I watched because I was a loyal New Yorker and I had been to some Giants games in the past but when David Tyree caught that ball I had no idea about the significance of that play on my life. Over the next few years I started to watch weekly and really root for the Giants. My favorite sports moment of all time was watching Super Bowl XLVI with my best friend, a Patriots fan, and watching you go down the field in another drive at the end of the fourth quarter to put the Giants ahead for good. Everyone remembers the David Tyree catch but my personal favorite has always been University of Michigan alum Mario Manningham’s beautiful toe-tapping sideline catch that would not have ever happened without the perfectly placed pass from you. You gave me my favorite sports moment, thank you.

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Mario Manningham's toe-tapping catch on the sideline in the 4th quarter of Super Bowl XLVI
    That’s really what this comes down to: thank you for all you have done for my city and this team. I hate the New York Yankees so the only New York championships I’ve ever cared about are the ones hoisted by you with red, white, and blue confetti raining down. Whenever it seems like the Giants will never be good again I turn to the highlights from those great seasons and watch. Needless to say, these past few years have seen me going to those highlights more than a few times.
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Eli Manning on December 15th 2019, his last game in the NFL
    You’ve stayed playing for New York City for a long time, 16 whole years. You should know by now that New Yorkers are fickle creatures. Some may not think you’re all that great. They’re wrong. People across the sports world are debating about whether or not you’ll make the hall of fame. It’s ridiculous. Recency bias is defined by the oxford dictionary as “a common distorting effect within systems of performance appraisal. It refers to the appraiser assessing employee performance, not on work undertaken across the full performance management cycle, but only on recent events or activities that can be readily recalled.” They remember the years with Pat Shurmer and the greasy haired monster Ben McAdoo (who never should have started Geno Smith over you). They remember that your record in the past three years is 9-26. That’s honestly not great. What they forget is that without those past three years your record in the regular season is 108-91 and you are 8-4 in the playoffs. They forget that you’re 7th all time in passing yards, 7th all time in passing touchdowns, and 7th all time in passes completed. You are great, don’t let Stephen A. Smith tell you otherwise. You’re going to wear that golden jacket and it will belong on your shoulders.
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Eli Manning after winning Super Bowl XLII and taking down the 18-0 Patriots
    So what happens next? Do you join your brother in a calm and relaxing retirement? Do you become a quarterback coach for the Giants and continue grooming Daniel Jones for success? Do you even join a broadcasting team like Tony Romo? I have no idea and honestly, I couldn’t care less. You deserve a break. You’ve been in the NFL for 256 regular season games and started in 234 of them. You’ve broken Giants record after Giants record, done insane amounts of charity work, won two super bowls and were the MVP in both. Thank you for these past 16 years.

    Once a Giant, always a Giant.

    Signed,
        - Some New Yorker

Photo Credits:
The Star-Ledger
Bleacher Report
Giants Wire
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In Memoriam: Kobe Bryant

1/26/2020

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By Joshua Tenzer

    ​“Continuing to move the game forward @KingJames. Much respect my brother #33644” That was the last tweet sent out by Kobe Bryant 15 hours and 45 seconds before TMZ first reported about his untimely demise in a helicopter crash. That tweet was congratulating LeBron James for surpassing Kobe on the all time point total list, bumping the retired NBA player down to 4th all time. He wasn’t upset or salty about the success of others, he was classy and proud of LeBron’s success on the court.

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Kobe Bryant in his first year and last year in the NBA
    TMZ was the first major news outlet to break the news of Kobe Bryant’s passing. When I first saw it, I was in shock. TMZ is a glorified gossip magazine with a television show, they could be wrong. Then Yahoo News released a statement, then Bleacher Report, ESPN, ABC. It was real. I sat there for a long time in silence. I wasn’t alone in that. The hall of my dorm exploded into shouts of disbelief and confusion. Hockey writer Steve Dangle tweeted “At an airport restaurant in Charlotte and the whole place went quiet when ABC and ESPN broke to the news.” The world seemed to stand still and no one really had words. 

    ​Kobe Bryant transcended his sport. He was accomplished both on and off the court. He is the only person to win an NBA championship and an Oscar. Not only did he win an NBA championship, but he won 5, was MVP for two of them, has the second most three-pointers made by a player in one game, 2nd most points by a player in a game, the only player to have two numbers retired by the same organization, two Olympic gold medals, and a 17 time all-star. In a rapidly shifting offensive game, Kobe played all around the court. He led his team in scoring for twelve of his 20 years and made 12 all defensive team selections.

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Kobe Bryant and his 5 NBA Championship Trophies
    Besides the five championship wins, most people’s first thought at the mention of Kobe’s name is his 81 point game against the Raptors on January 22nd 2006. He played almost 42 minutes and his 81 points came in the form of 28 field goals going in out of 46 attempts. He was 7 for 13 from beyond the arc and collected 18 points from the free throw line. If he kept that pace for the other six minutes that he was benched he would have ended the game with 93 points. An average game for Kobe that season was impressive: 35.4 points per game, he played significantly better on that day to say the least. The rest of the Lakers team attempted 4 less field goals than Kobe and made less field goals than Kobe made free throws.

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Kobe on January 22nd 2006 vs. the Toronto Raptors. He put up 81 points that night
     On December 13th 2019, just weeks before his death, Kobe Bryant was seen helping to comfort victims of a car crash before first responders arrived on the scene. He owns the Mamba Sports Academy, a space for youth athletes to train their skills in a multitude of sports. He spent his time after the NBA being a family man and helping others. Just like when LeBron passed him on the scoring list, he lived his life with class and should be remembered as such. 

Photo Credits:
The Philadelphia Tribune
NBA
The Wrap

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Part of the Hype: In Conversation with John Bartman

12/1/2019

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By Joshua Tenzer

On the Monday before my very first class of college the experience of a game in the big house still rang in my mind. I remember the energy of the crowd, the mass of students all chanting “go blue” in sync, arms swinging above heads as if controlled by one overwhelming hive mind. The student section was massive and I felt a part of something larger yet somehow still insignificant. In a sea of maize, what is one person, I felt like Pink Floyd had told me what I was: “just another brick in the wall.”
    My view of Michigan sports changed on that Monday as I made the long trip down to the University of Michigan Soccer Complex where I watched the Wolverines take on the Cougars from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. I was told that the student fans in the soccer complex were called the Ultras. The crowd was smaller and closer to the field. The Ultras in the back of the section were less than 8 feet from the grass of the pitch. For 90 minutes we stood, looking down at chant sheets for lyrics as we kept up vigor as we watched our team score again and again.
    In front of us all, banging on a drum marked with the shield of the Ultras was a man who seemed to control the crowd on a whim. He had a power over us, he was our leader. He taught and lead the chants, he was the one everyone centered around. He was the loudest and proudest in a loud and proud bunch. I found out who this man was: John Bartman. As I went to more games with the Ultras, he was there leading progressively smaller and smaller crowds as the season carried on.
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The Ultras on October 29th during a game against MSU
    I knew about the Children of Yost: one of the rowdiest and vocal fan sections ever. The Children are the fans of hockey at the University of Michigan. As I went to my first game sitting with the Children, who else was in the front but John Bartman again, so I reached out to him.
    Here is my interview with John Bartman of the Ultras and Children of Yost about fan sections, home field advantage, and Michigan sports. Since there is a lot of concern in the political arena of what is verbatim and not, I will come out and say that this is not a word for word transcript of the interview as thinking word such as um and words of agreement like “gotcha” and “absolutely” are cut out.

    WCBN: I am here with John Bartman, a senior here at the University of Michigan. John, would you accept the term Michigan Superfan for what you do with the Children of Yost and the Ultras?
    John: I think superfan has a negative connotation with it. It is reserved for people who do only sports, they live and breathe Michigan sports, which obviously is part of being high up in the student fan world. But I wouldn’t say I’m a superfan, I follow most of the teams closely and I’m definitely a fan, don’t get me wrong. I think I follow teams but I wouldn’t say that I’m crying over a loss or putting my emotions in the team’s hands. Most of the superfan stuff is for the people who latch onto teams and every part of them is the team and the team is part of them. I wouldn’t say I’m a superfan, I would just say I am someone who is a fan that just enjoys the environment.
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John Bartman
     WCBN: Do you go to mostly soccer and hockey games or do you get to volleyball and others? I heard you work at the Chrisler Center.
    John: I’m actually an intern with the athletics department, that started sophomore year. Freshman year when I was trying to get my footing on campus I went to a soccer game on the Monday before classes started and it was pretty fun. There were a lot of students there being rowdy and I thought ‘Hey this is pretty fun, I might come back.’ Over time I started going to more and more soccer games, both men’s and women’s. I’ve always been a hockey fan so it was only natural for me to get. I realized how energetic non-traditional sports can be. Because when people think of student sections they think football, they think basketball, they think Cameron Crazies at Duke, they think the Izzone, unfortunately, at MSU. Some of these hidden gems are well kept secrets but they’re also wide open and so over time I go to a lot of hockey games. I’ve been to almost every hockey game since this time last year. I miss one or two games a  year because of work or family stuff but I try to get to as many games as I can because they’re just fun.
    WCBN: The Ultras are known for their noise and rowdiness, most notably their bass drum. You’ve been going to games with the Ultras since you were a freshman, did they have the drum back then?
    John: Yeah. I know the Ultras started ten years ago and I think ever since the beginning they had the drum. I know it’s been upgraded, the original one got worn out two or three year ago and the athletic department bought a new one. It was used, but it was new for the Ultras.
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The Ultras and their drum
    WCBN: Would you consider yourself a leader for the Children of Yost and the Ultras?
    John: Yeah, I think so. I think that when I started out, I just wanted to be part of the environment, part of the noise, part of the hype. As I progressed throughout freshman, sophomore, and junior year, I realized that a lot of the draw of the events of hockey games aren’t really the game itself, it’s more people wanting to be in a community. There’s a lot of out-of-state students, a lot of people who come to Michigan not really knowing that many people. Everyone loves sports so I think that getting to the games and realizing that there’s a bunch of people who have the same interests as you, but also different interests at the same time, you can really bond over that. Once I got to junior and senior year, it’s more of big-knit community to make sure everyone is involved, make sure everyone enjoys it, listening, giving feedback. That’s kind of what I think my role as a leader is. It kinda came naturally, I wasn’t selected to be a leader, it just kinda happened. I was at the games, I was vocal, people started recognizing me until over time it developed into that. As a leader, I have a duty to make sure everyone is enjoying themselves and making the environment the best it can be.
    WCBN: Do you see these home field crowds as important?
    John: 100 percent, yeah.
    WCBN: So what is the importance of a home field advantage to these teams?
    John: I mean, if you look at our hockey record right now, we’re 3-3-2 at home and 0-4 on the road. One of my friends actually told me that last week he saw a stat that the opposing goalies’ goals against average in Yost is about two and a half points higher than it is at other away arenas (stat can not be confirmed). Obviously an environment, especially like Yost, where every single game they turn it up to 11, it definitely gives us an advantage. I think our team builds off of that. Getting in the other team’s heads is part of it and at soccer it’s really easy because you’re quite literally on the field and so if you get a player to think about how to respond to you for a half second, that’s a half second they’re not doing their job on the playing field. If you’re really effective at getting in the other team’s head while supporting your team and giving your team the drive they need that can be the difference between a win and a loss sometimes in a one goal game. We saw that with MSU in soccer a couple of weeks ago. The team was lagging in the first half, we kept the energy up in the second half. Obviously the team improved their play, it’s not all because of us but I think if people would have left at halftime or if we would have stopped cheering then there would have been no shot at us coming back.
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The Children of Yost waving goodbye as a spartan enter the penalty box
    WCBN: I think it was one of the Minnesota games or the Michigan State game where the opposing players were interviewed afterwards and said that they wanted to play harder because of the stuff that the Children of Yost had said. Do you think that sometimes there is an opposite effect of what you were just talking about where the other team will get more riled up?

    John: The Minnesota goalie, Jack LaFontaine, went to Michigan my freshman and sophomore year so we knew him personally and knew a lot about him. When preparing for the game we were thinking, ‘Well, do we treat him like a friend or do we treat him like a foe?’ We decided to treat him like a foe because that’s what the Children of Yost do. No matter who you are, you’re wearing the other color, you’re in the other team’s net, we’re gonna come after you. That’s all we can control. We can only control what we do and if the other team uses our energy to their advantage, good for them. I don’t think we could do anything different, it’s not like we can score goals or block shots. We can’t kill a penalty. All we can do is make as much noise and be as energetic as we can and however that transpires into the game is not really up to us. Obviously, we’d like to see our team use that more than the other team but props to Minnesota for seeing that as an attack on one of their brothers and stepping up to the plate. That’s not really anything we can control, so.
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Minnesota and ex-Michigan netminder Jack LaFontaine
​    WCBN: I believe it was the Saturday Minnesota game where it looked like the Children of Yost got censored. Did something go down there?
    John: The Children of Yost have always been rowdy, more so over the past handful of years, since we got section 18, the one right behind the opponent’s bench back. When we were meeting with the athletic department we were running over the ground rules of what you can and can’t do behind the bench and the main thing is that you can’t reach over the glass but they said pretty much everything else was up to us, as long as we don’t go over the glass, they don’t care. We tried to make that section, those couple of rows behind the opponent’s bench as rowdy as we could, understanding that as long as we’re not going over the glass, nothing is off limits. Over the past two years, especially from the ushers, we’ve received a lot of warnings for saying, not slurs or anything, but naughty language. We’ve received a lot of backlash for that which I don’t really understand. It’s part of who we are. There are obviously other ways to be rowdy which are not dropping f-bombs or whatever but, occasionally one will slip out and if they’re trying to put a damper on our rowdiness in whatever way, I think that’s going to be harmful in the long run. People will start to wonder in the long-run ‘can I say certain things or should I just be quiet and play it safe?’ We do get complaints before every game. An usher will come up to us and pull a few of us aside and say “Watch your mouth. If you say one f-bomb, you’re out of here.” I know last year we played Ohio State at Yost and that game was nationally televised. A couple of F Ohio chants got started and then grew throughout the stadium and apparently you could hear them on tv really well. The arena management did not enjoy that and since that game they have been putting the clamps on pretty tight in regards to naughty language. That’s why at soccer the ushers are more hands off. You can use that language to your advantage in a smart way.
    WCBN: Naturally, refs are supposed to be unbiased but there are a lot of Children of Yost chants specifically attacking the refs. Do you think that those are important cheers to keep in the wheelhouse?
    John: I think so. Just like the hockey team, no one is trying to do a bad job, they’re just trying to do the best that they can do, refs and umpires included. I think that that's just part of sports. We don’t take anything personally against the refs. Because of how they schedule the referees, based on location, a lot of the refs are at a lot of the games. I think keeping those is necessary because it is part of the environment. Everyone is mad at the refs and I hope they don’t take it personally. We’ve had a couple of the refs play the game a little bit. Pre-game when we’re telling them to check the net or whatever, they’ll motion that they can’t hear us, play with us a little bit. I think it’s part of the environment and less of a personal attack against referees. Of course, when we think they make a bad call, we’ll let them know. It’s not personal, it’s just part of the environment I’d say.
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The Children of Yost celebrating a goal against Notre Dame
    WCBN: There is a Children of Yost Research Division to find dirt on opposing players before the game. How do you find all of this information on them?
    John: Without giving too much away, I think a lot of it is out in the open. We volunteer a lot about ourselves whether it’s social media, or to our friends, or mutual friends, a lot of it out in the open. I mean, it’s not hard to find things about a lot of people. Our phones volunteer basically anything you need to know about someone. A lot of kids played sports in high school with these guys and I know I’ve had a couple friends who we’ve played in other sports, not hockey, so if someone were to come to me and ask if I know anything about this guy or that guy, I wouldn’t tell them their darkest secrets because some things are off-limits but it’s part of the fun. We try to find little bits to make it unique to each game so we don’t just chant “let’s go blue” 50,000 times. It’s something different and mixed up.
    WCBN: There’s a good relationship between the Children of Yost and the Hockey Student Band. Do you consider the band part of the experience of the Children of Yost?
    John: Absolutely yeah. We can’t do anything without the band. If the band starts something, we’re on board. If we start something, the band is on board. I think communication between us and the band is crucial for our success because the band is vocal, the band has fun, the band is energetic, and if you don’t have them you lose a good chunk of the student section right there. Although they’re playing instruments during the breaks, during the game they’re Children of Yost in my mind. With communication being good and recognizing that sometimes they have to play over us because of some of the rules that Michigan has made and some of the rules that the Big 10 has made, they’re in it as much as we are. They’re into it, they put the time in too, so we’re unopposed. Everyone who wants to have fun should come out and have their fun, that includes the band.
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Umich Hockey Pep Band
    WCBN: Since you go to all of the games and are sitting up front, how do you think that the hockey team is going to do this year?
    John: It hasn’t been the season that they have wanted it to be so far. There’s a lot of inconsistencies and the power play isn’t where they want it to be. I believe in the team, I know that they’re a talented group, I know no one is going out there trying to lose, they're a good group of guys trying to put the most in every night. My sophomore year, when they made the frozen four, the year started off pretty rocky but they found their groove late in the season so anything could really happen. College hockey is a wide open landscape. You’ll see teams turn it on at the start of the year and then fall apart. A couple years ago, St. Cloud State was the #1 seed in the tournament, never came close to losing a game the second half of the year, and then got kinda worked by Air force who were the last team in. Anything could happen, the team needs to put their heads down, keep grinding, and believe in each other. Hopefully it all works out.
    WCBN: A lot of people who will be reading this are mainly football fans and they go to the football games and sometimes the basketball games. What would you tell them in respect to the non-revenue sports like volleyball, baseball, softball, and soccer.
    John: Football is special because it’s 110,000 people, there’s a lot of tradition, there’s a lot of people who have been going to games for years. Obviously the student section is what it is at football. I don’t think you could coordinate students to do the same thing at the same time without the band, which is controlling football especially because they’re really the only ones you could hear from anywhere in the big house. I think that on the flip side, these smaller sports like hockey and volleyball… I mean, you’re right there in the action, you can hear what everyone is saying. It’s high energy, there is nowhere to hide if you’re the other team. I think football has its pros in the size but these other sports have their pros in lack of size. Going to a hockey game may be eye-opening to some people. A lot of people know that Yost is intimidating and loud but until people experience it, I don’t think they know what the magic of having a small turnout is. 5,000 people fit into Yost but having all 5,000 on board, chirping the ref, chirping the other team’s goalie after we score, that’s the magic of it.
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Children of Yost celebrating against Miami (OH)
    WCBN: Any last things you want to say?
    John: We’re always open. Children of Yost are always open for new people. As I said, I didn't get into it because I was elected to it or because someone chose me. If you show up to any event and you’re loud and you’re rowdy, and you’re there on a consistent basis, and you’re bought in, it’s really not hard to get noticed. Once you’re in it it’s all to you, there’s no selection process. I know Maize Rage has elections and board meetings and all that, the Ultras and Children of Yost, the two I mostly oversee, I don’t think that’s necessary. I think the people that want to be there will be there. Whichever students may think ‘I don’t know the chants’ or whatever, come try it out. We’ve got chant sheets, no one knows all the chants during their first or even their second game. Come out, we’re all about having fun, that’s the one requirement. You show up, you have fun, win or lose it’s a good time.

    ​If I were to sum up what I took from my conversation with John Bartman in one word, it would be atmosphere. There is no energy like that in the Ultras section during a corner and hell hath no fury like playing against Michigan with the Children of Yost present. I would recommend that everyone makes it to a hockey game as soon as they can and a soccer game next year, they’re free for the students and you’ll never forget it.

Photo Credits:
Michigan Ultras
John Bartman
Michigan Daily
University of Michigan
Evan Pesch
Ann Arbor News

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4 Reasons American Sports Fans Should Watch Hockey

11/19/2019

3 Comments

 

by Joshua Tenzer

        ​Hockey is the least watched of the four major sports in America. In fact, in a 2018 Yahoo Finance article comparing the viewership of sports, they neglected to even include the NHL (1). As someone who has been a hockey fan since I still had all of my baby teeth, I think that America’s ignoring of hockey is a sin. I am here to give you, the average American Joe, five reasons that you should turn on the television and find a hockey game to be absorbed in.

Reason One: It combines the best aspects of every sport Americans like
        Hockey is undoubtedly a bizarre sport. Ten skaters chase a rubber circle around with wooden sticks trying to slap it past a goalie with to score a goal. Despite being like no other American sport, it has all of the best parts of every other sport followed by a majority of the country. 
Americans love violence and football has it in spades. Football actively creates situations where the only way to stop the opposing team is by forcing a player to the ground through hits and tackles. Hockey has the same big hits without them being a necessity on any given play. An offensive rush can always be stopped with a fancy move from a stick but hits are undeniably a part of the sport.
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Max Martin with a massive hit on Keith Getson in the Memorial Cup
        Hockey has a similar speed to Basketball. Play on the basketball court goes back and forth without much of a break until one team scores; hockey is very much the same. While play on the rink does stop for non-scoring reasons more often than basketball, play stops due to scoring much less often. In addition, the players on a hockey team are able to make substitutions on the fly, ensuring that everyone on the ice is fresh and able to move at a pace that fans find entertaining.
        ​The best aspect of baseball is that it is truly a team sport. Hockey also has that emphasis on the team. In football, there is no doubt that without a decent quarterback, your team has no shot. In fact, the NFL MVP has been a non-quarterback only four times since 2000. Football has approximately 12 positions depending on how you count them and only four are represented in the history of the NFL MVP award since its inception in 1975. Basketball teams can rise and fall with one player. When Lebron James was with the Cavs, they finished first in the central division every year. They also made the finals all four years. When he left, they fell to near the bottom of the eastern conference. While there were other lineup changes between those two years, most of their offensive production walked out the door as Lebron went to free agency. Hockey is like baseball in  that the MVP award is tied to no position and no team’s success is determined by one player. For example, in the summer after the 2017-18 season, John Tavares left the New York Islanders. Tavares was the team’s captain and had 84 points (37 goals and 47 assists) after playing in all 82 games. He was an important figure both on the ice and in the locker room. When he left the team to play in Toronto, a significant portion of the team’s offensive production left with him. This didn’t cause the Islanders to fall to the bottom of the league like the Cavs, quite the opposite happened. In the 2018-19 season, the Islanders went 43-27-7 and finished 2nd in the Metropolitan Division. They actually improved by a sizable margin after losing their captain despite the fact that no player on the 18-19 Islanders had over 62 points, 26 less points than Tavares had during his first year in Toronto. When the best player on a hockey team leaves, the team isn’t doomed to failure like in the NBA.

Reason Two: The referees are awful
         I know that sounds like a bad thing, but this isn’t an article on why the NHL is a good league, it is about why Americans should watch it. The NFL is the most-watched league in the country and one of the hobbies that football fans enjoy most is complaining about bad officiating. Whether it is about pass interference calls, questionable catches, or roughing the passer, the referees in the NFL get a lot wrong. They get calls wrong that can easily be corrected through the usage of replay. 
        The NHL is very much the same. In the first round of the 2019 playoffs, the San Jose Sharks were down three goals to none against the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Off of the faceoff, Cody Eakin cross checked Joe Pavelski in the chest causing him to fall backwards. In a freak occurrence, Joe fell on his head and he started to bleed. The referees saw Pavelski down in the ice and bleeding from his head so they assumed Eakin cross-checked Pavelski in the head. They gave Eakin a five minute major for this perceived act.

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Cody Eakin cross checking Joe Pavelski in the ‘head’
        ​For those who don’t know, in a normal penalty the offending team plays with one less player on the ice for two minutes or until the other team scores a goal. A five minute major, on the other hand, is a stretch of five minutes where the offending team plays a man down no matter how many goals the other team scores. 
        The referees made a judgement call based on the aftermath, even though there was a massive scoreboard right above the referees’ heads showing the replay again and again. The Sharks scored four goals on the power play to make it a 4-3 game. Las Vegas tied it up but lost the game in overtime. Did I mention it was game 7 in a best-of-7 series

Reason Three: The game is fast
        Baseball was once a sport known as America’s pastime but recently people have stopped watching. Baseball viewership is plummeting because fans think the game is too slow. According to the Wall Street Journal, a baseball game has about 18 minutes of action. Action is counted as any time the ball is in movement from when the pitcher throws the ball to when the play has stopped or when the catcher catches it. Baseball is given a three hour time slot on television. This means that the action of the game is only 10% of a broadcast.
        American fans like fast-moving sports such as football and basketball where the breaks in action are limited. Basketball is a 48 minute game played on a 2.5-hour time slot equating to action being 32% of the broadcast. Football is similar as it is a 60 minute game played in a three-hour time slot so it has an action percentage of 33%.
        Hockey has the highest percentage of action. It is a 60 minute game and it is broadcast in 2.5 hour time slots. This means that 40% of a hockey broadcast is time spent playing the game. Hockey is played in three periods so there is less time between sections of the game, and stoppages can be as much as 8 minutes apart because there is no set way to break the flow of the game. Of course, it should be noted that soccer has an action percentage of 75%.

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Reason Four: The Stanley Cup playoffs is the most exciting bracket in sports
        America loves a good tournament. March Madness is lauded as the tournament above all tournaments for its massive bracket. 64 teams compete in a winner takes all competition. What people don’t know is how few NCAA D1 teams make the tournament. The Stanley Cup is the only tournament where over half of the teams make it to the bracket, allowing the most number of fans possible to have a stake in the postseason. Only 18.2% of all NCAA D1 basketball teams make it to March Madness, 50% of NBA teams make it to the playoffs, 37.5% of NFL teams play in January football and 33.3% of MLB teams make it to the World Series playoffs. By comparison, since there are 31 teams in the NHL (for now) and 16 of them make it to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, 51.61% of hockey teams compete for the oldest trophy in organized sports.

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Mark Messier holding the Stanley Cup in 1994
        ​Some sports have predictable playoffs. No one is ever surprised when the Patriots make the Super Bowl. Lebron James made the NBA finals eight years in a row with two different teams. In the second half of that stretch, his Cavaliers faced the same team all four years. People were starting to tune out of the playoffs until the final because why should someone watch a series if they know what the outcome will be? 
Hockey is one of the least predictable brackets in sports. In the NHL playoffs there are four 1, 2, and 3 seeds, one from each of the four divisions. During the first round of the 2019 playoffs, all four 1 seeds lost to the four wildcards. That includes the Tampa Bay Lighting, a team that tied the NHL record for regular season wins, getting swept. The eventual Stanley Cup champions, the St. Louis Blues, were a 3 seed and had to upset four separate teams on their way to winning it all.
        When looking at 2019 and all of the major sports tournaments in America, the Stanley Cup playoffs had the most upsets. The graph below plots what percentage of series, or single games in the case of March Madness and the NFL, ended in an upset. The World Series had plenty of upsets while both basketball tournaments went mostly as predicted.
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        Hockey is great sport full of loud people, upsets, action, pacing, and bad officiating. It is the quintessential American sport. I’m not asking you to become a die-hard fan yelling at you TV after every game, nor am I asking you to find a team to root for and know every player. All I am asking of you, America, is to turn on your television and find a hockey game, sit down, and watch it. You might find your new favorite sport.

Sources:
(1) “Which U.S. Sport Had the Highest Viewership in 2018?” Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo!, 30 Dec. 2018, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-sport-had-highest-viewership-141700953.html.

All statistics came from Hockey-Reference

Photo and Gif Credits to:
Sportsnet
NBCSN
NHL

3 Comments

A Church of Personality

10/25/2019

0 Comments

 
by Joshua L. Tenzer

        It’s no secret that New York sports fans are among the most insane anywhere in the United States. They are fickle, rash, illogical extremists yearning for the good old days of the 80s and 90s, and I am proud to be one. If you sift through the hot takes, the calls to fire whoever, the constant panic, and the armchair GM-ing, every once in awhile you find one having fun. When you do, you find some of the funniest and most devoted fans in existence. The perfect example of this: Ryan Mead and the Church of Kakko.


        Kaapo Kakko is only 18 years old and has only played 8 games with the New York Rangers, but he is already seen as the future of blueshirt hockey. Drafted #2 overall in the 2019, the Finnish 18 year old already has a spot as a top 6 forward in the garden. He competed in three international competitions before being drafted winning gold in all three. In the 2018 IIHF U18 World Championships, he tied for leading his Finnish team in points racking up 6 goals and 4 assists in 7 games. He has an assist and a goal through his first 8 games but a plus/minus of -8 and a negative point share. Regardless of these early concerning statistics, rangers fans are sticking with the young man and putting all their faith in him, most notably Ryan Mead.
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Kaapo Kakko taking a shot on opening night against the Jets
        Ryan Mead is an employee of The Athletic, a subscription based sports news website. He runs a podcast about the New York Rangers with Greg Kaplan called the Blueshirts Breakaway. However, his most significant contribution to New York is his prized creation: The Church of Kakko. What can almost be described as a religion, the Church of Kakko has its own 10 commandments, clergy, donation box, and Ryan Mead has even taken on a clever nickname for himself as the leader of this new cult of fans: The Kaapope. 

        The church has a central prayer to greet people on the face of the church’s website: “Kaapo Kakko is chosen, our lord and savior, a Finnish miracle, Cup-raiser. You are here because you acknowledge Kakko as our lord, let him be praised.” They sell posters of stained glass windows depicting Kaapo skating with a halo over his head and sweaters with the logo of the church.  1127 people and counting have purchased C.o.K. merchandise or signed up for the mailing list and have gotten their names on the clergy list on the Church of Kakko website. The whole thing is ridiculous, but it goes further into the realms of insanity.

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The Church of Kakko's emblem
        The Rangers opened the season on October 3rd at home hosting the Winnipeg Jets. Ryan Mead was at the game dressed in his Kaapope garb. Dressed similarly to the catholic pope he wore a mitre (the pope’s tall hat) and white and red robes - underneath a Kaapo Kakko Rangers jersey, of course. He was stopped constantly for pictures now proudly displayed on his twitter and made it to the front page of Finnish news website Ilta-Sanomat.
Picture
The Kaapope himself at Madison Square Garden on October 3rd
        At first glance, this church seems like a joke taken very far but under closer inspection, it is what sports fans can be at their absolute best. Throwing all your faith behind a player to the point of forming your own church for him is an admirable task. As fans we all love to love our team so even as Ranger’s fans expectations of Kakko are reevaluated, the church continues to grow. Yes, the Church of Kakko is silly, ridiculous, and bizzare and yes Ryan Mead has made a cult but it’s also just a concentrated form of how good it is to love your team.

        Praise be to our lord, Kaapo Kakko.

Photo credits to:
  • Getty Images
  • The Church of Kakko
  • MSG
  • Nick Depalo (The Bishop of Branding)

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