Professional NFL Expert Picks – Week 9

Most print publications have experts picking NFL games every week. Pegasus News, however, is different, in that we have near-flawless methodology in picking teams that will actually win. Our panel of perfect prognosticators — Todd Maternowski and Mike Bullock — will bring the pain each and every week.

Our Graphics & Necromancy Department brought Picasso back to life to make this awe-inspiring graphic.

As an added bonus, we have included three competing methodologies. The first is the return of “Mascot War,” in which we discuss which team’s actual moniker would win in a pitched battle to the death in the wild. Besides being easily the most controversial aspect of this feature, it will probably also be a constant source of embarrassment as our picks routinely show up.

The second and third methodologies are perhaps equally arcane and mysterious to the average NFL fan. There is the “Occult Pick,” in which our experts use the forbidden art of divination to predict each week’s winner; and “Fashion War,” in which Todd’s wife selects each victor based on the relative superiority of each team’s uniforms.

Most of these picks need no explanation: However, our panel has provided some commentary (footnotes and indexing to follow) for certain especially difficult-to-pick games.

Todd M: Giant versus Charger — In previous pitched battles to the death, the Giant has almost always emerged victorious, soaked to the bone in the blood and bile of his hapless victim. This is because it is never a good idea to enter a pitched battle to the death with an adjective: the Giant’s innate corporeal flexibility perfectly lends itself to homicidal rampage. But this week’s opponent, the also-elusive Charger, has the upper hand in this war, as it can pump its enemy with enough electrical current to fry a horse, a house or even a mountain range. And that goes double for a giant horse, a giant house or a giant interstellar mountain range: the carnage from this week just might spill into neighboring galaxies, dousing unsuspecting lifeforms in massive, Cajun-style innards. Charger over Giant

Thursday Morning Cupcheck – Wild West Shootout

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week, we opened a can of unholy soul-searing terror in our Top Ten Hockey Horror Flicks; this week, I was planning on divulging Gary Bettman’s twelve-step program to financial success (Step Four: Keep a straight face after losing billions of other people’s money and simultaneously demanding a 30% raise), but after the Dallas Stars posted yet another overtime loss, it’s time to slap the Stars upside-dey-head, clean out the summer’s cobwebs and get this team on the right track towards, you know, winning games and stuff.

So how should the Stars, who now lead the NHL in overtime/shootout losses, turn those extra-frames upside-down? While overtime closely resembles real hockey, the shootout is a crapshoot –a crapshoot that the Stars have approached with a limp-wristed, lose-first inevitability that continues to cost the team valuable points in the standings.

Time to wake up, Stars

With a shootout goal here or a timely save there, the Stars could’ve converted those six losses into wins, and would be sitting atop the NHL with 24 points. As it is, they’re a respectable 6th in the Western Conference, and a weirdly not-respectable fourth in the Pacific Division (thanks, Anaheim!). Here are eight tips for Closing the Game stolen directly from some of the world’s top internet sales self-help sites.

Tip #1: Stick to a System — Right now, watching the Stars in overtime and the shootout is like watching your grandparents trying google for the first time; too many options, too much information, too many decisions to make. Keep it as simple as possible: eliminate the half-assed fancy stuff, charge the net and hope for a rebound. Period. Overtime hockey is like sex: stop overthinking, hit the crease with everything you’ve got and if you miss, gather up the rebounds and try it again.

Tip #2: Start Small — An overtime win is a series of small commitments made one-at-a-time. We all know you want to score the game-winning goal so you can jump up and down on skates and man-hug your teammates; it doesn’t normally happen on a flashy breakaway with 0.001 seconds left on the clock. Win a battle in the corner. Finish your check along the boards. Block a friggin’ shot. Taking time to do the right things will always have better results than taking lazy shortcuts and hoping for a highlight-reel goal to fall into your lap. Save that stuff for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Tip #3: Have a Sense of Urgency — When the buzzer sounds after 60 minutes and it’s still a tie, you’ve got five minutes to avoid the shootout; you know, that ridiculous, league-mandated circus trick that you totally suck at. So rather than dipsy-doodle in the neutral zone or see how many no-look drop passes you can execute as you enter the zone, remember that you’ve got to score and score now. Get it done, and get it done quickly, stop playing Hot Tomato and start playing Hockey.

No more of this unhealthy stuff in the offensive zone, please

Tip #4: Close Early and Close Often — Getting into the habit of finishing these things as quickly as possible is crucial; as it stands, Stars fans know that a 60-minute tie will result in a disappointing loss. Get a few quick OT wins, and the possibility of a tie at the end of regulation becomes a warm and inviting prospect. Much like the warm and inviting prospects you’ll experience in the hotel bar after an OT win.

Tip #5: Make More Than One Closing Attempt — Taking a shot in OT is a great first step, but if your forwards are peeling off before the puck even hits the goalie’s chest, you’re engaging in unproductive “one and done” offense: great for opposing netminder’s save percentage stats, not so great for your chances of scoring goals and winning. Get a shot, get 2-3 rebounds, cause mass chaos in front of the net and the game will more than likely come to a quick and enjoyable end.

Tip #6: Remain Calm — Too often, Stars forwards will cause a turnover, skate unopposed into the opponent’s zone and… have the puck jump over their stick, leading to unforced errors and, more often than not, a lost scoring chance. Remain calm and confident in OT, and you’ll be fine! There’s still oxygen in the air and the world hasn’t kerploded yet. Relax, skate towards the net and launch your well-practiced wrist shot into the corner of the net. You know, like you’ve done four million times in your hockey career.

Tip #7: Keep Expectations Positive — See Tip #4. You’ve got one point, now expect to get the second one. It’s yours for the taking. You own the rink. Now go out and claim what’s rightfully yours: a Division title will follow. Any other line of thinking will invariably result in shame and embarrassment.

Tip #8: Act Confident — Turco used to have more swagger per square inch than any goalie this side of MegaHasek. Not only did he know the Stars would score on two of their first three shootout attempts (bring back Jokinen and Zubov!), but he knew he could stop two of three for the easy artificial victory. Remember those days, Stars fans? It’s been awhile: Turco’s athleticism is waning, while the shooters miss wide open nets or can’t even get the shot off before weakly steering the puck into the enemy netminder’s waiting pads. Are the Stars playing meekly at the start of the season in a well-calculated game of Rope-a-Dope, lulling the rest of the league into a false sense of complacency? Because that’s exactly what it looks like after the five-minute OT expires.

Use these time-honored used-car sales tips wisely, young grasshoppers, and you will go far…. ther than the Kings and Coyotes, who are inexplicably ahead of you right now in the Pacific Division standings (though not by much). Tune in next week when Brian Burke, Gary Bettman and Sean Avery compete for fabulous cash and prizes in the first-ever episode of Hockey Jeopardy!: their genius-level IQs may surprise you.

Re-Check: Thursday Morning Cupcheck – Goofus and Gallant in the Eastern Conference

Originally printed September 6th, 2007. Without actually looking back, I was pretty much spot-on on 50% of these, and embarassingly off on the other 50%. So it goes with preseason hockey picks.

Good morning, hockey fans! Last week we learned about how athletes are all underpaid no matter what. This week I was planning on doing my annual column on how the NHL would be improve 14% if they got rid of officiating completely, when I casually glanced at my Ziggy calendar — and realized we’re just a week away from training camp! Finally, the long Summer of Sports Desolation is over, we have crossed the Barren Wastes of baseball-only deprivation, and will soon have our unquenchable thirst for real sports slaked. So as a personal favor to Tim Donaghy, I’m using complex technical and statistical formulas to break down the Leastern Conference this week, and will consult the ZuboZen Koanator 3000 for quick Zenarrific gaze at the Bestern Conference next week, since that’s the only conference that really matters anyways, as the entire Eastern regular season and playoff race is held solely to determine which overrated offense-only gaggle of me-first prima donnas will inevitably collapse in the Stanley Cup Finals.

My extremely complex formula for determining the future successes and failures of the 2007-08 hockey season is this: if their goalie is good, they will be good, if he sucks or if there is two of him, they will suck or have twice the losses. As Pat Burns once said before getting fired once again, “Goaltending is 95% of hockey. Unless you’re losing, in which case it’s 100%”. Truer words have never been spoken: a great goaltender will make a mediocre team good, while a bad goalie will make a great team average. An average goaltender makes a bad team slightly better, but a really crappy goaltender makes a terrible team even worse, unless he plays for a really good team, in which case, I guess, he gets better. Or if a really bad team leaves a great goalie out to dry, I suppose the team will eventually suck. Some teams have six goalies on the ice at all times, like Vancouver, while other teams don’t put any effort into capitalizing on their goalie’s success, like the Stars in the playoffs. And some teams “protect” their goalie’s frequent mistakes, like how the Detroit Red Wings cover for their aging, vastly overrated Dominik Hasek. Actually, come to think of it…

Goalies suck! Goalies have little to no influence on the outcome of hockey games. Forget everything I’ve just written, and file it away under the list of “Todd’s Unprovable Bullshit”, right alongside “The Less Sex You Have, the More Religious You Are, and Vice Versa” and “Only Black Guys and Gay Guys Actually Use Their Gym Memberships”. This is hockey, after all, and no simple-minded sweeping generalization is going to help you, the readers, get the straight dope on the facts. Goalies! Pshaw! What was I thinking?? Besides, everyone knows that hockey is 99% coaching.

So now without any further ado for real, here’s my breakdown of the 2007-08 standings. I’m including point totals for no apparent reason, other than it was better than my original idea of actually using win-loss-OT loss records –something no sane person would ever attach their good name to. I’ve included each teams’ weaknesses (“Goofus”) and strengths (“Gallant”) to make it a quick and easy read. And of course I invite all comers that want to argue that the Washington Capitals will finish with 76 points this year rather than 73. That’s precisely the kind of productive hockey discussion we’ve all been missing this summer.

Eastern Conference Standings

Atlantic Division

New Jersey Devils — The hits just keep on coming for this trainwreck of a team, yet they consistently turn it around by December and start winning ugly games. And by “ugly”, I mean winning -1 to -4 every night. Goofus: The team’s former bread and butter, a solid defensive corps, is now a squishy offensive corpse. With Rafalski gone, the d-line is being manned by perennial turnstiles Matvichuk and Colin White, and their greatest offensive threat from the blue line is Karel Rachunek, who scored a terrifying 26 points last season. Gallant: Brodeur played balls-out hockey all of last season, posting one of his best statistical years ever, and should be slightly worse for the wear in 07-08. But this team has some decent forwards, even if guys like Elias and Madden are slowing down with age. The Devils benefit, however, from being the only team in their entire conference that willingly plays “hockey”, and not just trying to score idiotic goals so they can appear on Sportscenter alongside Michael Vick and Barry Bonds.

The Devils' team bus reflects its "winning ugly" ways

Prediction: 1st place, 105 points

Pittsburgh Penguins — Speaking of teams that don’t yet know how to play hockey, the Penguins are case in point. Too many cherry-picking forwards, no defense, an the league’s worst divers. Goofus: Team defense. Poor Marc-Andre-Jean-Luc-Pierre Fleury is left out to dry so often he’s looking like Conan the Barbarian atop the Tree of Woe. Gallant: Since their defense sucks, the Penguins rely heavily on trying to outscore the other team in bunches, which in the pathetic Eastern conference, actually works 60% of the time. Also, it helps when the NHL league office is so completely unimaginative that they decide the only way to save the sport is to give you tons of phantom penalties –another huge advantage for the star-studded lineup. But most importantly, the Penguins’ best player, Jordan Staal –who is not even old enough to get arrested at a bachelor party –kills penalties, provides timely goals and has nowhere to go but up. Barring a likely sophomoric slump, this could be an exciting year for the youngsters.

Prediction: 2nd place, 102 points

New York Rangers — This used to be the biggest joke of a team in hockey, with its huge payrolls and crappy players. Then Glen Sather got rid of the overpriced veterans, brought up new guys from the farm system, and they became a feared hockey team once again. Unfortunately, this past offseason they seem to be heading back down the Road of Suckage, signing even more free agents to ridiculous sums of money that they cannot possibly justify. Goofus: Scott Gomez and Chris Drury. I actually feel sorry for the guys, I really do. They’re not bad players by any stretch of the imagination, and any team would love to have them. But they’re getting set up if anyone thinks they can repeat the success they had in the team-first environments of Jersey and Buffalo. They may score more points in New York, but ultimately when the team collapses, once again, in the playoffs a billion hack writers will fill the two players’ ears with undeserved venom. Tsk! Gallant: Other than a couple of old guys, this is still, technically, a young team, and should be fun to watch when Jagr and Shanahan are not on the ice.

Prediction: 3rd place, 97 points

New York Islanders — Talk about your typical Eastern Conference catastrophe of a team: team leaders vanishing, Smyth and Yashin gone, and nothing to show for it but a few crappy free agent signings over the summer. However, with one of the most underrated coaches in the NHL at the helm, anything is possible. Goofus: Quite possibly the worst front office management in the East. Gallant: Ted Nolan. Cardinal Rule #1 About Sports: a team of nobodies working together will always defeat a team of superstars in it for themselves. Nolan knows this and consistently gets great performances from his guys. Unfortunately, Goofus may rear its ugly head halfway through the season and fire Nolan for a perceived slight –and also to shift the blame of yet another mediocre season from themselves– and the team will tank.

Prediction: 4th place, 82 points

Philadelphia Flyers — It’s a good thing the Eagles are going to march to the Sueprbowl, because the Flyers are clearly one of the worst teams in hockey, if not all professional sports. Not only were they the laughingstock of the entire league, but they couldn’t even get the draft to go in their favor. A decade of mismanagement from uber-suck GM Bobby Clarke will have this team reeling for another half-decade. Goofus Pretty much the entire team. Gallant: With nothing to lose, the Flyers ought to start their entire farm system now in hopes they can be a halfway decent team by 2012.

Prediction: 5th place, 55 points

Northeast Division

Ottawa Senators — Despite their embarrassing performance in the Cup Finals, this is still, on paper, a decent team with strength all across the board. If they can’t repeat as Eastern Conference champs this year, it’ll be because their coach told them to skate in a line towards their own net and kick pucks in for 60 minutes. Even then, they should have a winning record. Goofus No player likes to be called “soft”: however, all of this team’s skill forwards are a bunch of softies. I think I saw Spezza in a tutu at my four-year old niece’s ballerina recital the other day. Gallant: Amazing defensive core, among the top three in all of hockey, makes up for the moronic mental gaffes of the “skilled” forwards and makes this a truly elite team.

Prediction: 1st place, 115 points

Buffalo Sabres — Yeah, yeah, so they lost their top two centers. So what? Buffalo plays a unique style of hockey in which every player is interchangeable with every other player on the ice. Expect whoever fills those top two slots to have career years, and get signed to a huge contract by some mouth-breathing GM in 2008. Goofus: No centers! The Sabres are doomed! Doomed!!Gallant: Coach Lindy Ruff will have a tough first 40 games, until his fast, young team gets the ball rolling once again and catapults through the league in the second half.

Prediction: 2nd place, 100 points

Montreal Canadians — This team has way too many French-sounding names on its roster to even hope to be competitive, but hey, this is the East and there’s plenty of margin for error, even for a team on the decline. Goofus: Hamrlik, Kovalev, Dandenault, Markov… the list of overpriced free agents is almost laughable, and sadly, reflects poorly on former Stars GM Bob Gainey. I can only hope he’s a figurehead and not making these terrible decisions. Gallant: Coach Guy is a true mensch, and single-handedly keeps this team from falling off the same precipice the Flyers and Maple Leafs so eagerly plunged into.

Prediction: 3rd place, 87 points

Toronto Maple Leafs — Average age of the 07-08 roster: 63 years old. Enough said. Goofus: I’m curious, but also too lazy to find out: just how many players on Toronto’s roster actually were drafted by the Maple Leafs? My guess would be “in the single digits”. Gallant: At least they finally have a quality netminder in Vesa Toskala. Toskala was a wall in net for San Jose, and was tempered in the unforgiving hockey forges of the West. This is Toronto, however: the over-under on Toskala’s career there is 41 games, before the Canadian media overreacts and drives him out of towne.

Prediction: 4th place, 80 points

Boston Bruins — A team with no where left to go but up… or they can just stay the course, play uninspired hockey and get their paychecks all the same. Goofus: Behind the towering figure of Zdeno Chara, the Bruins’ d-line is remarkably thin. And when you watch them on Versus, this is painfully, gut-wrenchingly obvious. Also, they have a bunch of “pass-first” forwards that refuse to go into the corners to retrieve a puck, enjoy making dipsy-doodle stick-trick turnovers in their own zone, and cry when someone is mean to them. Gallant: Many Fernandezes have tried, but only Manny Fernandez has succeeded where others have failed. I know that grammatically makes no sense, but any true hockey fan knows exactly what I’m talking about. Fernandez is a mensch.

Prediction: 5th place, 68 points

Southeast Division

Carolina Hurricanes — This is a fast, hardworking team with strengths in all three areas of the ice. Yet, they always play down to the level of their opponents, which, in the Southeast, is like picking fights with five year olds and then getting your ass kicked. This should be the year the Hurricanes use a stellar divisional record to climb back into hockey respectability. Goofus: Cam Ward? Seriously? Wait–really? Gallant: It’s unlikely that Rod Brind’Amour has any years like he had last year left in the tank, but behind that legendary nose could well be a fountain of eternal youth. Also, the Hurricanes, on paper, have one of the best defensive cores in the NHL. This year will prove if any of that matters.

Prediction: 1st place, 101 points

Tampa Bay Lightning — Holy crap this division sucks, again. The NHL could swiftly and effortlessly improve the quality of its product by axing these five teams in the middle of the night, and only Sidney Crosby’s inflated stat lines would notice it. Tampa is not a good team, but they will compete in this division because no one else wants to. Goofus: Although goaltenders are indeed overrated (see: rant above), having five or six that can’t play doesn’t necessarily make one Voltron Goalie that can. Gallant: The Lightning have a solid defensive group, which should hold down the fort long enough for their one effective forwards line to score a few goals every game.

Prediction: 2nd place, 100 points

Atlanta Thrashers — If this team knew what it was doing, it would change its name to the Atlanta Slayers. Or the Atlanta Berserkers. I wouldn’t want to play a team called the Berserkers. Goofus: It’s great to have a bunch of top-flight snipers and all, but when 98% of the salary cap goes to three forwards, the defense is going to suffer. And hockey viewers will suffer even more, having to witness the Thrashers non-existent defense artificially inflating the East’s top scorer’s statlines. Gallant: This team has an excellent, if usually unmotivated, group of forwards and no defense. If they adapt my Berserkers nickname and the style of play to go with it –non-stop attacking offense all the time, no one is allowed to skate backwards (as it is a sign of weakness)– then I would quickly become a Thrashers fan. As it is, a bunch of guys hanging out at the center stripe waiting for their overmatched defense to get them the puck makes for crappy hockey.

Prediction: 3rd place, 93 points

Hey, Kovalchuk, your ride is here

Florida Panthers — This is a bad, bad team that just signed a good, good goalie. Unstoppable force meets immovable object? Goofus: Do I really need to waste my breath on this team? I guess if I talked about the Flyers earlier, I’m legally obliged to mention something about the Panthers –although don’t think I wasn’t tempted to delete the entire Flyers prediction just for that very reason. Gallant: Tomas Vokoun will now backstop a team that can’t score, or skate, or even block shots. But anything is an improvement over Eddie “Elderly” Belfour, whose 6.88 GAA will surely be improved upon this year, if nothing else.

Prediction: 4th place, 74 points

Washington Capitals — Any team where John Erskine and Tom Poti are playing significant minutes on the blueline is in serious trouble. Goofus: The Caps’ starting goalie is 37 years old. His backup? Brent Johnson, who couldn’t even make it in Saint Louis. Gallant: Ovechkin’s long, long tryout for the Rangers or Flyers will soon be at an end, as he becomes a restricted free agent soon and can get the heck out of Washington.

Prediction: 5th place, 69 points

So there you have it: pretty much the exact same predictions as anyone else is going to make in the hockey world, minus the Penguins winning the Cup, since actual hockey games are played on ice rinks and not in fantasy hockey drafts (are you listening, Sports Illustrated??). Tune in next week when I write a column thirty times as long, with one tenth the content!

Professional NFL Expert Picks – Week 8

Most print publications have experts picking NFL games every week. Pegasus News, however, is different, in that we have near-flawless methodology in picking teams that will actually win. Our panel of perfect prognosticators — Todd Maternowski and Mike Bullock — will bring the pain each and every week.

As an added bonus, we have included three competing methodologies. The first is the return of “Mascot War,” in which we discuss which team’s actual moniker would win in a pitched battle to the death in the wild. Besides being easily the most controversial aspect of this feature, it will probably also be a constant source of embarrassment as our picks routinely show up.

The second and third methodologies are perhaps equally arcane and mysterious to the average NFL fan. There is the “Occult Pick,” in which our experts use the forbidden art of divination to predict each week’s winner; and “Fashion War,” in which Todd’s wife selects each victor based on the relative superiority of each team’s uniforms.

Most of these picks need no explanation: However, our panel has provided some commentary (footnotes and indexing to follow) for certain especially difficult-to-pick games.

Todd M: Viking versus Packer — In this week’s pitched battle to the death, the voracious Viking goes boot-to-galosh with the pugnacious Packer. Which meat-related profession will triumph? While the Viking is known far and wide for his ravenous appetite, gnawing mutton straight off the bone while blood and sinew dribble down his filthy beard –the far more civilized Packer has made his namesake painstakingly taking entire cows and processing them into small, easy-to-handle packages. Will this be the week mass production and relative cleanliness beats gastroterrorist individualism? Not this time, dontchaknow– the Viking’s swirling, chaotic vortex of maddening mandible mayhem crunches more than turkey legs this week. Viking over Packer

Thursday Morning Cupcheck – Top Ten Halloween Hockey Horror Flicks

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we used Science to break down the Dallas Stars‘ first nine games into easily-understandable/mockable categories; this week, I was all set to lambast the Stars for becoming the first allegedly-NHL-quality team to lose to the Toronto Maple Leafs — the insane pressure of maintaining the NHL’s winning record against Toronto was building and building to the point where no one wanted to be the first team to suffer the throes of ignominy.

Fortunately for the Stars, Toronto played Anaheim. The sense of relief when Anaheim was clobbered — thereby making Wednesday’s Stars-Leafs tilt just another regular season game with no Stone of Shame attached — was akin to the relief of taking a massive dump. Except instead of me, it was the Anaheim Ducks, and instead of a massive dump, it was a colossally legendary mountain of steaming feces with runny rivulets of diarrhea spreading in all directions across the ice like a dark brown sun. Great job, Anaheim. Awesome.

More on that later. This week we’re delving into the deeply-disturbing dark depths of Halloween Hockey Horror Flicks. Here’s the AFI’s Top ten list, compiled by thousands of film critics over hundreds of years.

Pictured: Pronger stays alive with another life-extending boarding penalty.

10. Rinku — One late night, Chris Pronger pops in an unlabeled game tape into the Flyers’ state-of-the-art VCR, and, after witnessing a series of discordant, seemingly unrelated images, he is informed he has only seven games to live. Can Chris collect enough elbowing and boarding suspensions to avoid playing out his inevitable fate?

9. The Shiny — Wayne Gretzky is a troubled man just looking for some peace and quiet, and feels he’s finally found the answer when he moves from the intense media scrutiny of Canada to the desolate desert moonscape of suburban Phoenix. While at first Wayne is happy with his surroundings, the cavernous emptiness of Jobing.com Arena and the disturbing appearances and disappearances of a ghostly Kyle Turris slowly drives Gretzky into a murderous rage. All work and no goals makes Wayne a dull boy.

8. Night of the Living Thugs — Maple Leaf GM Brian Burke wakes up one day to find out that his office is completely surrounded by slow-moving, brainless flesh eaters in Maple Leaf jerseys. Armed with a sawed-off shotgun and a salary cap, Burke must defend his boarded-up corner office from an entire roster of mindless thugs, until the next clueless, desperate NHL club can swoop in and save him from a grisly demise.

7. An Omen — Brett Hull, a powerful man of international importance, proudly brings his free agent offspring back home to the AAC. But things start going awry when the off-season pickup, Sean Avery, turns out to be the spawn of Satan and a donkey. Does Hull have the cajones necessary to destroy Avery, or will his fatherly love lead directly to the Dallas Stars’ apocalypse?

6. Seen — Three Tampa Bay Lightning forwards are trapped in a game against the Penguins, and forced to make a terrible decision: Do they potentially sacrifice their individual stats and go help their overmatched defensemen in the defensive zone, or do they continue to hang out around center ice, waiting for a clearing pass that may never come? WARNING: The graphic imagery and grisly, real-time footage of Tampa’s defense and goaltending are not for the squeamish or faint-of-heart.

Not listed: Leprechauns, starring the 2009-10 Montreal Canadians.

5. Purple Dragon — Grizzled cop Colin Campbell is a man on a mission: He must find the perpetrator of a string of vicious hip-checks that are making the city streets of Los Angeles run red with blood. The serial hip-checker taunts Campbell, leaving a string of clues — such as making sure his nationally-televised crimes are widely available on youtube and nhl.com — but it’s a race against the clock for Campbell, who must find the culprit before his own son Gregory visits LA to play the Kings.

4. Chokergeist — When Joe Thornton needs a fresh start, he heads out west to the sunny confines of San Jose. But after a series of strange, inexplicable occurances, Joe starts to investigate a little more into his new team — and finds out that the Shark Tank was built on an ancient Indian burial ground. Thornton must find and restore the angry undead Indian bones before the Sharks’ next first round playoff exit, or the streets of San Jose will run with liquid teal.

3. The Flexorcist — While digging around in a forgotten backroom at Vogue’s offices, promising young intern Sean Avery accidentally releases an ancient cacodemon when he unwittingly pops the collar on a 70s-era muscle shirt. The evil spirit possesses the body of Rangers GM Glen Sather, who begins making diabolical free agent signings while screaming obscenities like “Scott Gomez sucks c**ks in hell!!!” Can the grizzled Mark Messier and his young protege Chris Drury exorcise Sather’s demon before it’s too late?

2. Finals Destination — Right before he signs with his next team, Marian Hossa has a vision of that team winning the Stanley Cup — and wisely signs with the Penguins. When he has a vision that they, too, will win the Cup, Hossa again temporarily defeats Fate by signing with the Red Wings. Can Marian successfully avoid his fate a third time, or will Fate finally catch up to him and give him the Stanley Cup against his will?

1. Texas Groinsaw Massacre — Martin Havlat and Marian Gaborik are on a summer road trip from Minnesota to New York when they get lost in the back country roads of rural Texas. After they pick up a mysterious hitchhiker, they suddenly find themselves ambushed by a family of cannibals. Havlat and Gaborik are then subjected to two hours of torture, in which their groins are ritualistically sliced, shocked with electrical current, skinned with a chainsaw, beaten with a sledgehammer, and ground into fine dust with a steampress.

That’s it for this week’s spine-curdling Cupcheck. Tune in next week when we visit with Mike Modano to find out what he’s been doing with his time off; his beating-up-nurses stories may surprise you.

Professional NFL Expert Picks – Week 7

Most print publications have experts picking NFL games every week. Pegasus News, however, is different, in that we have near-flawless methodology in picking teams that will actually win. Our panel of perfect prognosticators — Todd Maternowski and Mike Bullock — will bring the pain each and every week.

Don't just sit there reading this caption, you've got games to bet on!

As an added bonus, we have included three competing methodologies. The first is the return of “Mascot War,” in which we discuss which team’s actual moniker would win in a pitched battle to the death in the wild. Besides being easily the most controversial aspect of this feature, it will probably also be a constant source of embarrassment as our picks routinely show up.

The second and third methodologies are perhaps equally arcane and mysterious to the average NFL fan. There is the “Occult Pick,” in which our experts use the forbidden art of divination to predict each week’s winner; and “Fashion War,” in which Todd’s wife selects each victor based on the relative superiority of each team’s uniforms.

Most of these picks need no explanation: However, our panel has provided some commentary (footnotes and indexing to follow) for certain especially difficult-to-pick games.

Todd M: Eagle versus Redskin — This week’s pitched battle to the death comes down the to classic conundrum of Who Scalps Whom First. At first, it would seem to be the Eagle in a wash, with their tremendous aeronautical advantage, sharp talons and stealthy striking ability. With all those tactical advantages, the hapless, earth-bound Redskin would seem to be toast, provided his fearful eyes were not scouring the skies at all times to prevent such a grisly demise. But etymologically, the very notion of the Redskin is someone who, through the trials and tribulations of the warrior life, now has far more sensitive skin than a normal, run-of-the-mill combatant to the death: the mere flap of the Eagle’s down feathers can be felt by a Redskin scalp over fifty miles away. Lured to his death by deceptively easy bait, the Bald Eagle becomes the Brained Eagle in this week’s natural upset. Redskin over Eagle

Thursday Morning Cupcheck – The Good, The Bad and The Fugly

Top of the morning, hockey fans! You’ll have to forgive my more-atrocious-than-normal writing style this week, as I’ve been sick with the Fever, haven’t eaten in a week and have put my white blood cells on a recon mission to try and find if I’ve got a pair of brain cells left to rub together. Last week we slapped each other on the back and clinked our champagne flutes in praise of the Dallas Stars‘ new head coach, Marc Crawford; this week, after two debacles, a Huet-to-the-rescue and one shockingly solid game, there’s a hefty hunk of hockey heartache to heave-ho.

Waitaminute... whaddya mean there's still 77 games left in the season?

Because the first ninth of the season hasn’t been all bad, it made sense to break down the first nine games into three categories: That Which Rocked to describe that which rocked; That Which Sucked to describe things falling in the opposite category of the ‘rock’ one; and That Which is Lame, to complete the Circle of Threes mandatory in all halfway decent hockey analysis (for example: “Who’s the best player in the NHL today? Crosby, Ovechkin, or…. Enver Lisin? Choose wisely.”) But rather than type out these long-winded, stentorian categories over and over again, I’ve shortened the analysis down to language even poorly-trained dogs can understand: Good, Bad and Fugly.

Dallas Stars Overall

The Good — First place in the Pacific Division (kindof), second place in the Western Conference (more or less), tied with the San Jose Sharks.

The Bad — Those three shootout losses are pretty annoying at this early stage, although eight months from now the “Lose-Your-Way-Up-The-Standings” points might appear very, very important.

The Fugly — Three losses in four home games? Way to make the NHL cower in fear, Stars.

Forwards

The Good — The Stars’ top two lines of Neal-Richards-Eriksson and Morrow-Ribeiro-Benn have been phenomenal when healthy, pushing the play into the opponents’ zone with speed and aggressiveness, and scoring goals in bunches. Few teams in the entire NHL have one top-notch line, much less two.

The Bad — Keywords: when healthy. With Richards, Modano, Lehtinen, and Ott out with significant injury time already, the Stars were forced to dress Toby Petersen as the #2 center for the better part of three games –three miserable, frustratingly lackluster semi-performances. Don’t get me wrong, Petersen is a terrific checking center, with speed and effort reminiscent of a young Todd Marchant. But he’s no power-play quarterback or first-line pivot. Losing Ott was even worse, as the air always completely deflates from the team effort when he’s not on the ice.

Pictured: artist's conception of Fabian's clearing attempts against the Bruins

The Fugly — Two words: Fabian ‘WTF’ Brunnstrom. The kid obviously has some growing pains to go through, but right now he looks about as comfortable on the ice as this plucky lass. With every lethargic, half-attempted “clear” in his own zone, the Unicorn at the Circus moves that much closer to the worst possible fate for a professional hockey player: getting traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Defense

The Good — The top pairing of Grossman-Robidas is still, statistically, one of the best in the NHL, with Grossman leading all NHL players with a +11 plus/minus and Robidas tied for second. Fistric’s been good in limited playing time, and actually quite entertaining as a Hanson Brother-esque emergency forward.

The Bad — Universally-heralded off-season pickup Karlis Skrastins has been inconsistent, blocking an insane number of shots but also having plenty of trouble clearing the zone and getting his tired legs off the ice.

The Fugly — Similarly-heralded off-season pickup Jeff Woywitka has been simply terrible in his own zone, especially on the powerplay where he regularly lets enemy skaters free reign to the crease while covering nobody in particular. And the less spoken about Matt Niskanen, the better.

Goaltending

The Good — Both goalies have been similarly solid statistically, despite their wildly contrasting styles. Both are hovering around the 2.35-2.5 GAA mark, and both sport .910 save percentages, leagues better than where they were at this point last year.

The Bad — Despite overall strong play, both goalies have allowed tissue-soft goals that kept opposing teams in games they had no business being in. I know that happens to every non-Avalanche, non-Coyote goalie in the NHL, but c’mon, fellas! Is perfection really all that much to ask?

The Fugly — Nine games in, and already the Stars have had a season’s worth of goals going in off their own defensemen. Robidas practically had an auto-hat trick in the Bruins debacle, and wild passes in the vicinity of the crease now have a larger-than-zero chance of finding the back of the net.

That’s it for this week’s rah-rah Cupcheck. Tune in next week when we do an in-depth look at the Conferences to find out which one rulez while the other droolz: The Conference of Yalta’s omission may surprise you.

Professional NFL Expert Picks – Week 6

Most print publications have experts picking NFL games every week. Pegasus News, however, is different, in that we have near-flawless methodology in picking teams that will actually win. Our panel of perfect prognosticators — Todd Maternowski and Mike Bullock — will bring the pain each and every week.

This table done using the latest graphics program. You know the one we're talking about.

As an added bonus, we have included three competing methodologies. The first is the return of “Mascot War,” in which we discuss which team’s actual moniker would win in a pitched battle to the death in the wild. Besides being easily the most controversial aspect of this feature, it will probably also be a constant source of embarrassment as our picks routinely show up.

The second and third methodologies are perhaps equally arcane and mysterious to the average NFL fan. There is the “Occult Pick,” in which our experts use the forbidden art of divination to predict each week’s winner; and “Fashion War,” in which Todd’s wife selects each victor based on the relative superiority of each team’s uniforms.

Most of these picks need no explanation: However, our panel has provided some commentary (footnotes and indexing to follow) for certain especially difficult-to-pick games.

Todd M: Giant versus Saint — A pitched battle to the death with an adjective is never a good thing. This week, the Saint’s path to martyrdom will turn into an expressway when he meets the Giant; specifically, St. Punchius Nutskickius of Ulm, who is considered to be one of the three or four Giant Saints recognized as such by the Catholic Church since the Diet of Worms. Can the Regular Saint pull a David to Giant Saint’s Holy Goliath, and fell the foul follower with a well-placed stone? Not this week — in a pitched battle to the death, Big beats Actual-sized with charismatic fury. Giant over Saint

Thursday Morning Cupcheck – Come Together, Right Now, Under Crawford

Good morning, hockey fans! Here’s hoping the first 1/16th of the season has treated you well. Last week, we handed out some pretty impressive hardware for the winners of the 2009-10 NHL On-Pace Awards; this week, I was planning on exposing the new Dallas Stars head coach’s stylistic shortfalls in Chewing Out Crawford: Giving the Old Man A Piece of His Own Medicine, when I casually glanced up at the NHL standings and realized hey, maybe this Crawford guy isn’t as bad as he’s cracked up to be.

One tried-and-true principle of human sports fan behavior is the Roster Potential Phenomenon. Virtually every hard-core fan in any sport can glance up and down his favorite team’s lineup and get unrealistically giddy about his team’s future prospects based entirely on each individual player’s potential.

Crawford may have a few blemishes (and not won anything since the mid-90s), but overall things are looking good

For example, San Jose Sharks fans have, for years, expected to win the Stanley Cup on the basis of players like Thornton, Michalek, Pavelski, Cheechoo, etc performing up to the fans’ maximum expectations. (This is twice as true for anyone putting their hopes on any enigmatic Russian forward). Invariably, some players excel while others fail, resulting in catastrophic blows to the fans’ collective egos.

This year’s Stars team, however, is actually approaching that mythical plane of Maximized Potential that all sports fans dream about. Obviously, they’re not quite there yet –a 2-0-3 record is not, technically, perfect– but each forward on the top two scoring lines is doing exactly what they are supposed to.

First off, the top line of Eriksson-Richards-Neal is, simply put, possibly the most productive threesome since Ba’al joined forces with Lucifer and Beelzebub to bring chaos and disorder to the Material Plane… and the Richards line is catching up fast. Through five games, the Terrible Trio has put up nine goals, just two of which were on the powerplay (i.e., the Eastern Conference Scorer’s Crutch). Richards (3-6-9) is in the top ten in the NHL in scoring, while Neal (3-4-7) and Eriksson (3-2-5) are close behind.

All three members of this line are among the top scorers in the NHL — no small feat there– and with Richards and Neal at +5, and Eriksson at +4, the line isn’t shirking its defensive responsibilities in order to cherry-pick easy goals, either. Thus far in the season, this line is ranked 5th in the NHL in productivity, a single point behind the much-ballyhooed Ovechkin line in Washington.

Making the Stars ridiculously more dangerous is their nominal second line of Morrow-Ribeiro-Benn, which is ranked 6th in the NHL despite getting no love from the hockey media. Brenden Morrow (4-3-7) and Ribeiro (2-5-7) are where we expected them to be, while promising rookie Jamie Benn (1-4-5) is coming along at an insane point-per-game pace.

James Neal (pictured) has been en fuego

Overall, the early results on Marc Crawford’s up-tempo, short-shift aggressive style are in, and the initial reports range from Awesome to Pants-Wettingly Amazing: with four guys in the top 22 scorers in the NHL (two of whom were injured last season, another who was an overlooked rookie) and two guys with statistically-anomalous shooting percentages (Eriksson, the Tony Gywnn of shooting percentage, is 4th in the NHL at .429, Morrow’s 8th at .364), the smart fantasy hockey owners who took these players are reaping the dividends for their surplus of faith.

The team is performing at an impressive clip: 3rd in the league in goals-per-game (3.81), tenth-best powerplay (26.1%, roughly two million times more watchable than last season’s debacle), and even 7th in the NHL in faceoffs (52%). When you’re sending wave after wave of your own men at the enemy netminder, good things happen.

But what about defensively? Strangely enough, the Stars are currently –statistically performing quite well, 4th best in the NHL in goals allowed and 5th best in GAA. Nick Grossman (+10) and Stephane Robidas (+8) are #s 1-2 in the entire NHL in plus/minus, and the Stars have four guys in the top 12 in that category.

More tellingly, despite the public perception of Turco’s troubles in net, the Stars as a team are 8th in save percentage and 5th in fewest shots allowed –not too shabby when you consider the adjustments to the new attacking style. Of course, their 65% penalty-killing clip is fourth-worst in the league, and that stat was artificially inflated by facing the Predators’ pathetic powerplay prowess last night.

But as any Blackhawk fan knows, stats are meaningless when they’re not backed up by wins: in that regard, the first five games have been… interesting. The team still has yet to lose in regulation, meaning they’ve gotten points in every game, but the three shootout losses still sting –a couple of shots ringing in off the post, and the team would be 4-0-1 and the toast of the Pacific Division.

Marc Crawford’s grade through 1/16th of the season? A-, with potential for A+ if he can somehow shore up that godawful penalty kill. Five-on-five, this team blows away the competition (no player is worse than -1, and the team is 20th in the NHL in penalty minutes, both huge contrasts to last season’s catastrophic start). Tune in next week when I detail the results of my time-traveling expedition to July 2008, where I wrest control of the phone from Voltron GM Hulkson as he makes the call to Sean Avery’s agent, thereby preventing the bloodless apocalypse foretold by the Mayan calendar — Hull’s superhuman grip on his Blackberry may surprise you.

Re-Check: Thursday Morning Cupcheck – Michael Vick Needs His Money Back

Originally printed August 30th, 2007. I still feel that Vick royally got the shaft, but hey, he’s back and earning an NFL paycheck so there’s that. More importantly is my absolute vitriol at sports owners (coughcoughjerryjonescough) who use taxpayer money to fund their private sandboxes. When the Cowboys’ new stadium opened a few weeks ago, the sports media made it seem like Jerry Jones physically put every brick and pylon in place with his bare hands. Grade-A morons. I think my dad paid for more of that stadium than Jerry.

Good morning, hockey fans! Last week we dived headfirst into the dark and foreboding world of youth sports, or rather youth and sports, specifically making the argument, once again, that sports teams need to get younger and cheaper rather than older and more costly if they want to succeed. This week, I was planning on unveiling my annual Training Camp Secrets Revealed: What the NHL Commissioner Doesn’t Want You To Know report, but after the Stars’ contractual impasse with forward Jussi Jokinen lit up the message boards over at Andrew’s Stars Page, I had to throw in my two pesos.

The essence of the impasse is, of course, money. Jussi Jokinen feels that he was severely underpaid last year (at around $700k), and is looking for a long-term contract somewhere in the range of $3-4 million a year. The Stars, while they agree Jussi needs to get paid in th’ escalade, are looking for a shorter term contract for less money. Strangely, Jussi avoided arbitration and looks like he might hold out for parts of training camp if a deal is not done soon.

Jussi, pictured here earning another $14.73 for his team

Obviously, there aren’t a huge number of 25 year olds scoring 50 points a season on the third line in this league, so Jussi’s side may have some weight. Not to mention the directly-measurable number of games the little Finn has won for the Stars in the shootout –the kid is clearly worth $3 million a season to the organization, even if he didn’t have the same level of success last year as he did as a rookie. The bottom line? He’s worth it, he’s proven he can win under extreme pressure, he’s fun to watch with the puck, and has nowhere to go but up in terms of production.

But that’s not why I’m bringing it up: the Stars message boards are full of vitriol and spit, angry at the kid for trying to get paid as much as he thinks he’s worth, for a job in which he willingly sacrifices his health and family life 9 months out of the year. Suppose I came up to you and asked you to work in Finland, where Lapps riding walruses would slap you upside the head with frozen fish three hours a day –you would get to come back to Texas for two months in the summer– and then tried to short-change your check? Wouldn’t you be a little pissed? Wouldn’t you try to get as much ca$$h money as possible before early retirement? Why the heck are you getting fish-slapped in Finland? The life of the professional athlete is no different.

On ESPN (a.k.a. “The NFL’s Bitch”) and other places, the idea that athletes are overpaid crybabies has been taken to a new level: apparently the Atlanta Falcons are now trying to take back $22 million they paid to Michael Vick. How wonderful! First the organization drafts him #1, hoping to put butts in seats in the vast, empty cavern they call the Georgiadome. Vick does just that for six years. Remember all those Falcons jerseys you saw before Vick was drafted? You know, the top-selling Steve Bartkowski version? Or that cover of Madden with Terence Mathis on it? Don’t tell me you haven’t saved your commemorative Chris Chandler cover of Sports Illustrated!

Point is, the NFL and the Falcons took Vick and used his image and his flash to sell everything under the sun from bobbleheads to multibillion dollar television contracts. There are few that would argue that Vick wasn’t overrated as a quarterback: that didn’t seem to matter to the NFL, which regularly forced him into undeserved Pro Bowl spots, endless pre-game promos and Wheatie’s boxes. How much did Vick make for the NFL and Atlanta Falcons? It’s impossible to tell.

So when Vick was accused by known drug users and animal abusers as having a role in the dogfighting ring –mind you, this happened way before anyone pleaded guilty, any evidence was gathered and any plea bargain formulated– the NFL and Atlanta Falcons bailed out on Vick. When Atlanta Falcon Jonathan Babineaux was accused of killing his girlfriend’s puppy, Falcon owner Arthur Blank stood by his guy “under all the facts were in”. When Atlanta Falcon Patrick Kearney had a poor black woman raped in his mansion (he claims he was asleep at the time of the incident), Blank stood by his guy. But when some guy gets arrested in a parking lot for possession, then rats out his millionaire cousin: Blank jumped ship. And now he wants his money back!

If any of my former employers are reading this: you’re not getting your money back. I’ve already spent it, sorry. And besides, you can go to hell for even thinking of asking.

Note to current and future Falcons players: cash your checks as soon as you get them, in Swiss Bank accounts that the NFL cannot legally access. Unless, of course, you’re somehow involved in rape or killing a do–well, some dog killing is ok, apparently.

"Pay it back!! Pay it ALL back!!"

A few days ago the excellent sports blog Starting Five pointed this out: ESPN columnist and NFL lackey Gene Wojchiechowski wrote that Vick’s paychecks werent his: that he funded his dogfighting kennel with Falcons’ money, or NFL’s money, or the advertisers’ money. Which in a way is true –if you put tracers on your dollar bills, you can go far enough to find that we’re all getting paid by the U.S. Mint ( but since the Treasury is filled with our tax dollars, ultimately we’re just paying ourselves). The point of the article was that athletes, overpaid whiners that they are, are less than employees of the owners that they serve.

Nice one, Gene. But why stop there? Just because athletes put their intact vertebrae on the line for our entertainment doesn’t mean they’re entitled to the money someone contractually agreed to give them. Frankly, we should apply that corporate-stooge line of thinking to other fields of entertainment: for example, the highest-paid non-golf, non-soccer athlete last year was A-Rod: but he was paid less than fellow entertainers Judge Judy and Anthony Robbins, not to mention virtually every A-List star out there. Tom Cruise’s recent movies all sucked, and his box office invincibility took a possibly-permanent hit after his Oprah and pop-psychology episodes: should the studios sue him to get his extravagant $25 million paycheck back? Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez both got paid mega-millions for Gigli, one of the worst box-office performers in history: should they be reimbursing Sony for directly causing the company to lose $47 million?

My take: athletes, whether overpaid or not, should fleece the owners for everything they can. Especially the owners that got free, taxpayer-supported stadiums. Everyone complains that A-Rod makes $29 million a season, yet no one complains that Steinbrenner rakes in billions more, yet has not won a World Series in six years. When people rag on T.O. for wanting more money from the Eagles after risking his career and playing injured in the Superbowl, they forget to mention just how little risk Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie really takes: with guaranteed revenue-sharing, a legal monopoly, multibillion dollar TV contracts negotiated by the NFL on behalf of the Eagles, owning a sports team is about as financially risky as walking outside to get your morning paper. But who is the one getting raked over the coals? Who else –the guy having his kneecap turned to powder by 300-pound steroid-pumping linebackers. Meanwhile, Lurie just got a papercut from the enormous number of $100 million checks he cashed at the bank today.

That’s it for this week’s ill-informed rant: tune in next week when I break my exclusive interview with Gary Bettman, and find out how he plans to rig the 2007-08 NHL standings!