Monday, December 12, 2005

Hockey Night in Portales!

Red Wings 3, Pittsburgh 1

Ozzie misses a shut-out with 28 seconds left in the game; Zetterberg scores 2, including a highlight-reel short-handed breakaway; and Lidstrom gets a PPG. Sidney Crosby was...uh...there. The kid is good! Most of the rest of the Penguins weren't. There. With the brilliant exception of Marc-Andre Fleury, their goalie. The score should have been more like 6-1 without Fleury's spectacular saves. The Wings outshot Pittsburgh 39-17. I feel sorry for Eddie Olczyk, although I hated him when he played for the Leafs. Rivals, ya know. Back in the day.

What a rare treat. Pop a couple of Fat Tires, sit back and enjoy. Get The Captain on the phone from time to time and actually be able to talk about the play, instead of just listen as he describes what's happening (Buck has the Center Ice package and always calls me during Wings games to give me real-time updates).

I liked it much better when ESPN had the TV contract...there were more games, better in-game and post-game commentary (by an order of magnitude), and I hate OLN's placement of the on-screen banner. I should just be thankful I get OLN; a lot of fans were left out in the cold when ESPN refused to match Comcast's offer.

But being thankful doesn't prevent me from criticizing OLN. They're lame. Bill Clement is border-line competent, but I miss Melrose. The rest of the analysts and announcers are totally forgettable, and I have. Forgotten their names, that is, assuming I ever knew them. And there's that banner, anchored in the lower left-hand side and stretching two-thirds of the way across the screen...which just happens to obscure a good part of the ice from any given camera angle. PUT IT UP TOP WHERE IT BELONGS!

Adding insult to injury is the fact SportsCenter is much less than interested in hockey these days. You're lucky to get a 15-second highlight of two games on SC these days, let alone something like NHL2Night.

OK, I'm done.

Good Game! GO WINGS!

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