The competing show… Wings vs. Blackhawks outside

Those of you who aren’t fans of Michigan State, Clemson, Nebraska or my Bulldogs, I hope you at least took in a few minutes of the Winter Classic between Detroit and Chicago at Wrigley Field.

As I learned last year, hockey outdoors is special. It’s awesome.

Here’s the highlights.

Goodbye, Paul…

Everyone and their brother in the blogosphere is saying goodbye to Paul Newman today, and for good reason. There are few actors, ever, that have that “movie star” thing going for them like Newman.

But for me, there’s one special role I’ll always thank Paul for playing: Reg Dunlop. I’m going to leave it to Puck Daddy’s Greg Wyshinski to tell you more about one of the best comedies ever, Slap Shot, and the great Reg.

Catching up

Much to catch you up on… here goes:

The Preds: Are out. After that victory I wrote about, Nashville didn’t do anything else, bowing out in five to San Jose. The Predators had a good, but not great, season, and my guess is that they’ll probably try to skew their roster a little younger, which means guys like Forsberg and Kariya may not be around. We’ll see.

And I won’t pick anyone else to root for in the playoffs. But I’ll keep an eye on things.

Blades of Glory: A very fun movie… Tanya and I went for slightly different reasons — figure skating fan that Miss T is… she had to see that side of it, though both of us were there for the funny, and Will Ferrell brought it.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: After two months of missing concerts, I finally went to see these guys. They were quite good — I still like their stuff from their first album more, although “Satan Said Dance” is an amazing song live.

Finally, my best wishes to the students, faculty and staff of Virginia Tech, and to the victims’ families. I hope there can be some good that finally comes from this.

Preds update — A win, but…

Well, it appears the Predators evened up the series last night, and by the looks of things, both teams changed the whole tenor of this thing — 141 penalty minutes, six game misconducts due to a last-minute brawl.

A 5-2 win, yes. But this thing’s going back to San Jose and it’s gotten UGLY…

 

 

Here’s Jordin Tootoo of the Preds fighting Ryane Clowe of the Sharks. (Photo by AP)

Pred nation update

OK, the Preds’ quest for the Cup didn’t get off to the greatest of starts… BUT… considering that Nashville came back from 4-2 down and scored the game tying goal with 51 seconds left, only to lose in overtime, it’s not a total loss.

Yes, listening to the audio feed (no, I haven’t watched on TV YET) and hearing some guy named Patrick Rissmiller scored the game-winner for San Jose was difficult. But the Preds have shown that they belong and are a much better prepared team than last year, when they were swept by the Sharks.

Tonight… don’t wanna jinx things… but things… are… OK….

Let’s go Predators

I’m sure if you’re a hockey fan you already know that it’s VERY hard to be a fan these days if you want to watch games on TV. I mean, the NHL decided to show its U.S. games on something called Versus, which I think is shown in eight homes nationwide.

(In fact, I think Fox Soccer Channel gets more viewership. Not that I’m complaining.)

But if you ARE a true non-Snow Belt American hockey fan — let’s face it, you get above a certain latitude line, it’s a lot easier — this kind of struggle is nothing new. It makes you love the game even more.

Quick tangent: if you had a gun to my head and asked what my favorite sports are, it’d probably fall like this:

1. Soccer
2. Baseball
3. Hockey
4. College football
5. Swimming
6. College basketball (except in Feb. and March)
7. Pro football
8. Pro basketball (and the NBA’s gaining on the NFL, folks… )
(and depending on the importance of the event, I’ll include figure skating, because that’s Tanya’s No. 1 sport by far. I do get into the Olympics/World Championships type events… so that’s in the mix too.)

So being a fan willing to work for information is nothing new for me.