Nice win for Boston tonight. Timmy and Nitty both looked pretty unspectacular, pretty shaky, thru periods one and two. Fortunately for the Bruins, in the third Timmy got his **** together and Nitty didn't. Timmy stopped 16 of 16 in the third, Nitty stopped 1 of 2. Final stats were 30/33 for Timmy, 12/17 for Nittymaki. That line is brutal for Nitty, 5 goals on 17 shots works out to about a .706 save percentage. Ugh. Regardless, on to Hogtown on Tuesday night, let's see if "Hannu And Her Sisters" finally gets some time between the pipes.
Tying back to a previous discussion, it amused me again today to see that on the goalie board I frequent, there was another rash of whining by the dedicated little group of hardcore Timmy haters. Like any other goalie, he has his fans on the board and he has his detractors. There are DiPietro lovers and haters, Fleury lovers and haters, Brodeur lovers and haters, etc. But it amuses me how vehement and borderline irrational Timmy's haters are. It reminds me of how upset some American sportscasters get about soccer, it's not enough that they hate soccer, it really seems to **** them off that other people don't hate soccer. The Timmy haters are the same way, it cracks me up. Every goal he gives up is soft, he doesn't belong in the league, he plays ugly, he's out of control, he's the worst goalie in the league, I could play better than him, guys like him are taking away jobs from better goalies who are stuck in the minors because guys like Timmy are taking up roster spots, etc. There's even a guy who says he met Timmy once in college, thought he was a prick, and never fails to bring it up every time there's a little Timmy-hating ("I met him once, and needless to say I'm not a fan"). Hey, I met him a couple times in college too. Like just about every college player I've met, he came off as a bit cocky. 75% of college D1 and major junior players seem to be, it's a combination of A) having always been the best player on your little local team your whole life, B) playing D1 or major juniors and having boosters and scouts blowing smoke up your ass every day, and C) being a typical 18 year old male. Tends to lead to oversized heads. From what I gather, a decade spent bouncing around the AHL, IHL, and Finnish Elite League knocked a whole lotta humility into him, really changed his outlook. Took him down a peg. I met Tom Seaver once twenty-one years ago, he was having breakfast with his family and didn't want to be disturbed, doesn't me I've permanently branded him a jerk. But that's not the point.
The point is that a lot of why the Timmy haters hate Timmy goes back to what we were saying about what an unorthodox style he plays. It just doesn't look pretty. A good sized chunk of the Timmy haters fall into the 15-20 age bracket, guys who are young enough to still fool themselves into thinking they have the skill to make the NHL someday, young enough to still think they know everything (that staggeringly powerful arrogance only a teen can summon). The typical Timmy hater is a 16 year old male, thinks he's going to play D1 or Major Junior (he won't), has been getting goalie coaching paid for over-indulgent parents since he was 11 (and thus thinks he knows more about goaltending than someone who has an NHL contract), plays nothing but a slavishly consistent butterfly (because there's no other way to possibly play), wears Rbk pads (because they are soooooooooo hot), and thinks that Marc Andre Fleury is the greatest goalie ever to step on the ice (because MAF plays a slavishly consistent butterfly that always looks pretty even though it's currently only stopping pucks good enough to give him the 22nd best save percentage in the league, just .001 better than Timmy). Arguing with folks like that is like trying to have a debate on supply side economics with a doorstop or a coaster. Rationality, statistics, reality have no bearing. I typically laugh quietly myself and avoid engaging them in debate, but every once in while I have to step in. Today's flare up revolved around Timmy's temper, how he hates giving up goals and is demonstrative about that. No biggie. Then one of teens pipes in with a "I heard that when he was in college, his temper was so bad that he used to punch out windows and stuff" comment, which lead to a couple "yeah, he's a jerk" comments. Gotta love the power of idiotic "I heard from a guy whose sister's boyfriend's cousin's girlfirend had a friend who lived in the same dorm" sort of rumors. Now, I've been fairly wired into the UVM hockey scene for a while, in the "Friends of UVM Hockey" boosters, met several of the players at various times, was friends with a girl in college who was dating a guy on the team (who dished up all the dirt there was to dish), all that jazz. I heard all the stories, I knew which players were party guys and drinkers (paging John LeClair, you have a call on the beer-shaped courtesy phone) and which guys were studious, which guys were pricks and which guys were laid back, all that. I was at UVM at the same time as Timmy, St Louis, and Perrin, and I also know the coaches who ran the team at that time. And I know enough to know Timmy wasn't running around punching out windows or any crap like that. At the minimum, I know that something like that would have made the rounds, and today's posting was the first I'd ever heard of it. I also know that coaches never would have put up with it (even if for no other reason than that it would be idiotic to allow a guy whom you have a $100,000 worth of scholarship invested in to run around risking serious injury like that). Didn't happen. I just love sixth-hand rumors and internet gossip, reality rarely intrudes. So when I pointed that out, Mr "I met him once" pipes in with, "okay maybe that's not true, but I met him once, and I wasn't impressed, I've heard some other stories that I know for a fact are true, blah blah blah". In other words, more of the same, more "I knew a girl whose ex-boyfriend's brother's roommate's cousin's girlfriend's sorority sister went on a date with a teammate of his once" style crap. There are some arguments you just can't win, people just believe what they want to believe and no fact will ever sway that. So that was today's development in the world of the Timmy haters. Naturally, there are Timmy fans, too, but the Timmy haters are much more entertaining. Haters always are, because irrational venom is far more entertaining than unquestioning blind devotion. Much like our little MINI world here, it's a whole nother little universe focused on a very narrow spectrum of the world at large (in this case, MINIs and the people who own them, in that case ice hockey goalies) where issues of little or no significance in the big picture become huge issues within that little universe. Every day is a new adventure.
Today's other rant: ESPN has Nascar now. In case you hadn't noticed. Which is absolutely impossible, given how relentlessly they've been ramming it down our throats. I'm old enough to remember when Job One at ESPN was sports, now Job One at ESPN is promoting the ESPN brand. Unending self-promotion is the highest principle at ESPN (the Disney apple doesn't fall far from the tree), and it's really grating on me. Example: Tonight I get back from hockey, turn on the TV, and ESPN is showing SportsCenter, yammering on about Nascar, so I flip to the ESPN2 and see the last couple minutes of a college basketball ending. And the announcers kick in with "how about the end of the Daytona 500 yesterday?". I can tell by the tone and what they're saying that they know nothing about Nascar, couldn't care less about Nascar, but the paymaster in Bristol said push Nascar so they push it. I think it grates more because it's just so damn obvious. ESPN gets Nascar, suddenly things in Nascar that they would have given 30 seconds to (or ignored altogether) suddenly get five minutes. I understand that adding Nascar would mean adding a Nascar re-cap show and all that. But it annoys me that they warp the editorial priorities of their "news" programming (i.e. SportsCenter) to suddenly give disproportionate coverage to things they previously deemed not newsworthy, and it really annoys me that they are interfering with other programming for phony, blatant, staged cross-promotion during non-Nascar events (like the aforementioned basketball game). Am I really supposed to believe that the Nascar conversation from those guys was spontaneous? Please. And it's far from the first time, and will be far from the last. I'm sure we'll get lots of "how about that race!" talk from ESPN's baseball crews this summer, I'm sure more Nascar stuff will be working it's way into shows like PTI (where they previously didn't give a rat's ass). The ESPN radio guys are the same. When I'm on a longer drive, I'll listen to some of the different XM music channels, but when I'm just driving around in town or to the gym/rink or whatever, my radio time on XM (when there's not a game on to listen to) tends to be about 70% Home Ice, 15% ESPN, 15% BBC World Service. ESPN is currently doing all they can do to lose their 15%. Not quite certain when ESPN jumped the shark, when they crossed that line to become just too damn self-promotional, more about flash and catchphrases than substance and sports. I'm guessing sometime around 1996 or so.
-Ricardo
