It’s a holiday, so the quiet NFL offseason is extra quiet today. I hope all the American commentists enjoyed all the barbecues, beers & bullshittery that accompany a holiday weekend and family get-together.

NFL Nuggets:

• Unless you were under a rock, or out sweeping the clouds away, Bart Starr died, aged 85.
  • Tributes flowed in, as – c’mon – Bart. Starr.
    • No one’s going to mourn Donovan McNabb outside of Syracuse.
  • At least Aaron Rodgers loved him more than his own father. He’s practically crying here.

• Forgetting the axiom that you hide bad news on a Friday, Ben Watson announced on a quiet holiday Monday that he’s facing a four-game suspension for a failed drug test.
  • He’s got a pretty good excuse, even though he’ll have to eat the four games:

    • After my contract expired last March I told my doctors I was finished playing, went through a series of medical tests and was prescribed Bio Identical Testosterone Cypionate to assist in healing my body and mind. On March 29, nine days after I started therapy, I was randomly tested under our substance policies. I complied out of habit, never thinking in that moment I’d want to come back.

    • Watson says he is suspended for using it briefly after he retired from the Saints and before he came out of retirement with the Patriots. He said the Patriots knew it was coming & signed him anyways.

• If you ever wanted another reason to hate the Glazer family, here you go: they were trying to claim damages from the 2010 BP oil spill.
  • They claimed that the Deepwater Horizon disaster negatively impacted the Buccaneers’ revenues, and asked for $19.5 million in compensation.
  • On Friday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s decision against the team.
    • The team was unable to prove significant loss, as their revenue drop over the same period a year later was similar.
    • To qualify, they needed to prove that their revenues rebounded upward by 10% the year following the spill.

• He’s settled on a permanent handy provider: JJ Watt announced he’s getting married.
  • To professional soccer player Kealia Ohai, who plays for the Houston Dash of the National Women’s Soccer League.

Stanley Cup Finals Preview: St. Louis vs. Boston

These two teams are nothing new to the dedicated followers of fashion

err… [DFO], as they have been popularly talked about & much discussed this 2019 playoff season. It also helps when a series can have a defined “hero” and “villain”; much like the Super Bowl, the villains in this championship series are Massholes.

Boston:

This is a team that has had one of the quietest runs of success in the 2010s. Sure, they only won one Cup & lost a Finals to the Black Hawks, but in the entire decade they have had quite the run of success. mcubed.net did all the hard work for me, and notes the Bruins have had the 4th most regular season wins in the 2010s, with 442. Teams near them that have won Cups are the Penguins (#1 – 466 wins), the Capitals (#2 – 462 wins), and the Black Hawks (#6 – 437 wins). Those are records of consistency most teams dream they could have had.

They have done so while keeping their core together. While salary cap decisions forced them to trade or release players like Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton, they have managed to work the cap effectively to retain their core of Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, Zdeno Chara & Tuukka Rask for the whole of the decade. Being able to slot in new parts like David Pastrnak, Jake Debrusk & Charlie McAvoy have enabled the Bruins to remain consistent despite having to shed older, more expensive parts of the roster.

They also benefited during this playoff run of having fortune smile of them as the playoff structure helped eliminate better teams before they got to the Bruins. No one can deny that Columbus taking down Tampa Bay & Carolina taking out the Capitals didn’t help the Bruins get to this point. The Bruins took seven games to get past the fucking Leafs! Plus, someone got Brad Marchand to turn down the asshole part of his personality for the majority of the 2019 playoffs. It’s really helped the Bruins that they haven’t had to kill off a bunch of his frustration minors, and staying out of the box has helped him lead the team in playoff scoring. The only reason he isn’t getting more Conn Smyther talk is Tuukka Rask, who has gotten better with each round, and is the strongest reason the Bruins were able to sweep the Hurricanes in the Conference finals.

St. Louis:

St. Louis is a team that most have overlooked this decade, despite having more regular season wins (#3 – 443) in the 2010s than the Bruins. In the 1990s & 2010s they had good to very good teams that were overshadowed by their division rivals the Red Wings and Black Hawks. They were almost destined to be saddled with the “never good enough” curse that the Sharks were able to slough off thanks to their Cup finals run a couple of years ago. But this year has ended all that Sisyphean talk of “never getting over the hump”.

Much has been made of the “last place on…” & “since Craig Berube…” stories, but not enough has been made of the Jordan Binnington story, who is having a run that is having him compared to the rookie seasons of Ken Dryden (1971) and Patrick Roy (1986). I don’t know if it’s that legendary, but you can’t deny that calling him up from the farm coincided with the turnaround this team underwent, and if they win what he has accomplished will go down in lore. It also helps he’s being protected by a rock-solid defensive corps led by Alex Pietrangelo, but really all six main-team defencemen have been the base around which this run – and their goaltending  – has been made.

The offence is led by the 1-2 punch of Jaden Schwartz & Ryan O’Reilly, who have – at times – carried this team on their backs when it looked like they were going to succumb to the dreaded “momentum shift” that takes place in playoff games. Vladimir Tarasenko has blossomed into a sniper at just the right time, and looks to have shaken off the mantle of “not being Tomas Hertl”. And local boy Pat Maroon gives the Blues a tight local connection that can be the impetus to “do it for him”, much like the Sharks tried to do it for Thornton, and the 2002 Avs did do it for Ray Bourque.

Conclusion:

The Bruins are the villains with experience, and last won the Cup in 2011. The Blues are the emotional favourite that most everyone wants to see (finally) succeed on the big stage, since their last time there was in 1970. I like both teams, and their chances for winning. But fuck them both for giving Gary Bettman a series that will draw big US ratings & convince him that everything he’s doing is right.

Prediction:

Bruins in six. Get ready to see that Bobby Orr photo about a billion times.

Tonight’s sports:

• NHL: 
  • Game 1 – Blues at Bruins – 8:00PM | NBC / CBC
• MLB:
  • Mets at Dodgers – 8:00PM | ESPN / TSN2
• WWE:
  • Monday Night Raw – 8:00PM | USA / Sportsnet360

Finally, the hockey returns. Just in time for June.