Hockey On The Pond

Pre-season officially officially started last night with a tilt between the Canucks and the Anaheim Ducks. I was working last night so I watched most of the game online at Canucks.com. The reception was pretty good despite my dank surroundings and it was nice to finally get a glance at some of the off season picks up. It was great to hear the familiar call of John Shorthouse and John Garret rings through the room. While it's impossible to take Pre-season even remotely serious, it's still hockey and it means the season is right on the cusp.

Pacific Northwest Conversation

The first rule in political organization is, control the conversation, control the message.

Out here in the hinterland, thousands of miles from the epicenter of the Original Six, the conversation this off-season has been rather quit. Even the Coyotes fiasco, while submerged by over 1000 legal documents submited in a Phoenix bankruptcy court, is still rooted in the political corridors of New York and Toronto (hockey politics specifically). Out here in the great Pacific Northwest, past the heartless Canadian shield and the wilds of the Rocky Mountain wilderness, the conversation is far less political and aptly bloodthirsty.

Here in Canuckville. Outside the ego-maniacal overtures of a Dany Heatly and the continuing corruption of a perennially corrupt NHLPA. Beyond the bombast of a vapid yet humorous Brian Burke trade attempt or a vestige of healthy Southern hockey offered by the bumbling optimism of Gerry Bettman there lay a simple rudimentary conversation for Pacific Coast hockey fans: are we good enough to win a fucking Stanley Cup?

The message to ownership is simple, the conversation succinct. Give us a Cup. Give us a Cup now. We will not settle simply for a return of the holy hardware to the holy land. Ergo, merely a Stanley Cup consisting of Canadian team like three of the past four finals will not suffice (Note: Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa all lost). It is ignorant, and indicative of Vancouver fans misguided passion for the game, that our support wavers every time the Canucks stumble. But make no mistake there is no excuse, to stumble is bullshit, totally unacceptable by our lofty standards. Lofty standards?

What I mean is winning. Call it what you will. The bar. The standard. The goal. The dream. The whatever the fuck you want to call it. The point is to win. The conversation: Are we good enough? The message, to invert a famous quote from the political kingmakers of New Hampshire: Win or Die.

This is our freedom Lotus Land

And They Shall Eat Macaroni

For those of you not reveling in the demise of Roger Federer or tipping back cold fermented yeast to the ubiquitous glow of Monday Night Football, there was one more sporting event to cap off this official end to Summer: Kraft Hockeyville.

Our Northern brothers and sisters in Terrace B.C. were treated to, thanks to a nationwide contest, a view a pre-season tilt between the New York Islanders and the Vancouver Canucks. While not exactly a rematch of the 1982 Stanley Cup Finals, the game served as a handjob in the back of the bus for hockey fans aching for the drop of vulcanized rubber on the dyed white ice.

Some moments of note were the two goals potted by mystery Russian Sergei Shirokov and the solid play of maid-of-honor contenders Andrew Raycroft and Corey Schneider.

2009/10 Preview

Is there anything at this point to review?

To begin with, this is the new home of Black Ice until some other sucker allows me to suck of the tit of their cyber generosity. Last year Dave Olsen was the kind bastard who allowed me the pleasure of aforementioned sucking over at Canucks Outsider. Now the name has taken on an eponymous tone since CO has disappeared entirely from the Internet.

I thought that was impossible.

Okay, so I'm going to start off basically where I left last year. Periodically I'll be dragging articles over from various places and posting them as Black Ice Issue #1 through-however-far-I-got-last-May (40 something). And I will continue from there, compiling whatever the fuck I feel like compiling until I cease to compile further.

This year I'll be trying for more of the same. Witnessing the Canucks play games in exotic locations with exotic people and writing about it. Imagine gonzo sports journalism, and then stop.

Last year we watched Vancouver play at the No. 5 Orange Vancouver's preeminent strip bar , we got blow jobs while listening to the game on the radio during rush hour and we even had a chance to get frosty with a couple of (unnamed) Canucks after their searing defeat to the Blackhawks last May. This year I hope to continue this trend. Unexpected hockey in unexpected places.

See you in the nosebleeds.