The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 17, 2011 23:20:58 GMT -5
Don't look now, but the Bruins' finals series got higher ratings in Boston than the Celtics' finals series last year. The NHL is quietly but firmly climbing back to where it deserves to be. Just wondering...where are the ratings you saw from? Are they the entire New England area, Mass, or just the city? I know that for me, game 7 was the only Hockey game I watched in entirety the entire year. (I think I watched a couple periods of Caps-Pens games) The quotes I've seen are about the Boston media market. Not sure how far that extends. "BOSTON SETS RECORDS: The Boston market earned a 43.4 rating and a 64 share, the best overnight on record for a hockey game in Boston (dating back to 1991) and the best overnight in the Boston market featuring a Boston team in any major sports championship since Super Bowl XLII (Patriots-Giants, 55.6 on 2/3/08). Boston’s seven-game average for the Stanley Cup Final (five games on NBC, two games on VERSUS) was a 28.1/44, 12 percent higher than ABC’s seven-game Boston average for last year’s NBA Finals (25.0/40 for Boston-LA Lakers)." puckthemedia.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/game-7-overnights-bruins-victory-ties-best-game-7-rating-on-record/
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 16, 2011 20:24:48 GMT -5
Don't look now, but the Bruins' finals series got higher ratings in Boston than the Celtics' finals series last year. The NHL is quietly but firmly climbing back to where it deserves to be.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 14, 2011 18:43:48 GMT -5
Couldn't find a newer F1 thread but what a crazy fantastic race in Montreal today. Indeed. Made those 2 hours shivering in the pouring rain totally worth it. It was one hell of a drive from Button, but I'm still ticked at him for nerfing Alonso off. It wasn't intentional, but it was clearly Button's fault (Alonso gave him room, Button just understeered). It was also nice to see Schumacher back in old time form. It was a shame he couldn't hold onto a podium spot, because he really deserved one. F1 has been a bit of a paradox this year. The championship is the least exciting we've had since Schumacher's dominant days, but the individual races have been awesome. It's not an exaggeration to say that the actual racing in F1 in 2011 is the best that it's ever been. I thought the Malaysian GP was great, and then China was so much better. Monaco was pretty much as good as it gets until Petrov ruined it all just as it was about to get even more exciting. Then came Montreal, which showed that rain still adds lots of excitement to an F1 race, even if we don't need it to make a race exciting anymore.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 10, 2011 1:14:44 GMT -5
You lost me at "Chalabi." That scumbag has stolen millions from US taxpayers and gotten a lot of good American soldiers killed. Not just by promoting the Iraq invasion and deliberately feeding the Bush Administration with false intel, but by promptly turning on the US as soon as he got back to Iraq and stirring up anti-American sentiment, fanning the flames of the insurgency when it was at its worst. That shameless bottom-feeding opportunist got more Americans killed than Saddam did.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 9, 2011 22:16:32 GMT -5
If you had told me at the beginning of this series that one of the major story lines of the Stanley Cup Finals would be "Alex Burrows? Vancouver hero or bigger dick than Sean Avery?" I would've said you were crazy. And if you had told me at the beginning of this playoffs that one of the major storylines would be whether a healthy Roberto Luongo will start Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals, I'd have also said you were crazy. If I were running the show in Vancouver, I'd give Schneider a shot. But I think they'll stick with Luongo for Game 5.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 7, 2011 18:57:23 GMT -5
I don't think Rome's play was exceptionally dirty. It was very late, it was over the line, and it deserved a suspension, but it's not in the same category as Cooke on Savard.
For one thing, it shouldn't have been a blindside hit. If Horton had been looking where he was going, Rome would have hit him head-on. The only reason Horton didn't see it and react to defend himself was that he was looking away at the puck, which is basically the equivalent of having your head down (and guys with their heads down are fair game).
Second, it wasn't delivered as a hit to the head. The injury came appears to have come from Horton's head hitting the ice, not from Rome hitting Horton's head. Rome did end up coming up a bit too high (and Horton brought his body down at the last second), but it wasn't a case of the player deliberately targeting the head.
Given the fact that it was a late, unnecessary hit that was clearly supposed to send a message (although not supposed to injure the player) that caused a severe head injury in a time when head injuries are under the microscope, I think a 4 game suspension is about right. On its own the hit probably deserved a 1-2 game suspension (since Rome has no history of this sort of stuff), but given the need to send a message a bigger suspension was needed.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 6, 2011 22:08:05 GMT -5
Wow. 18 penalties, including 7 misconducts in the 3rd period of a Stanley Cup Finals game. 125 penalty minutes overall for the game.
The Bruins were actually out-shot that game, but Vancouver just looked like a broken team at the end. It'll be interesting to see if that carries over into Game 4.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 6, 2011 21:42:29 GMT -5
This 3rd period has been one of the delightfully nastiest periods of hockey that I've ever seen, and there's still over 8 minutes to go. These teams really don't like each other.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Jun 4, 2011 16:14:47 GMT -5
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Jun 3, 2011 18:50:54 GMT -5
The best and most probable location is either a second Toronto team or some part of Ontario. There's more money and more demand there. The Leafs will NEVER let that happen. The Leafs rake in huge amounts of money even though they suck because Toronto fans have nobody else to cheer for. If another team moves into the area, the Leafs are going to be in a world of pain. The Toronto market is easily enough to sustain two teams, but not if one of them is a franchise as dreadful as the Leafs. I think the success/failure of a team depends more on the ownership than the market. Carolina has proven that you can succeed in a small, non-traditional market if the ownership is willing to do what it takes. On the flip side, the old North Stars proved that a team can fail in a big, hockey-mad market if the ownership is bad enough.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 31, 2011 17:41:51 GMT -5
I don't understand why they don't just plug Nashville into the Southeast and put Winnipeg into the Central. It's the most sensible quick fix out there.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 31, 2011 17:22:24 GMT -5
...and hockey (deservedly) returns to the 'peg. The Phoenix moving vans should head to Quebec City Phoenix has another year's reprieve. It would be kind of weird though to have the Thrashers in Winnipeg while the old Jets move to Quebec.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 30, 2011 7:52:52 GMT -5
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 29, 2011 23:11:06 GMT -5
For those of you who haven't seen it, the finish of the 2011 Indy 500 was easily the most dramatic in the 100 year history of the sport.
The major talking point of course is JR Hildebrand's crash in the last corner. Hildebrand is one of the new crop of American rising stars in Indycar. He's got a really bright future ahead of him, but I doubt he'll ever live that last corner down. Ironically, one of the other potential American stars of the future is Charlie Kimball, the driver who Kimball was trying to lap in the last corner when he crashed.
Sadly, one of the things that has been lost in the Hildebrand story is the story of the race winner, Dan Wheldon, and his Bryan Herta Autosport team. BHA isn't even a full-time Indycar team - they're an Indy Lights team that ran the Indy 500 last year and this year. They started last year's Indy 500 in dead last, having only qualified because of crazy sequence of events during qualifying. For them to win the 500 is like a D3 team winning March Madness.
As for Wheldon, he's a former Indy winner and series champion. A few years ago he was with Ganassi, the top team in Indycar, but his performances started to fade and the team dumped him. Panther Racing picked him up, but he never won for them, so they dumped him at the end of last season in favor of a rookie (JR Hildebrand). Wheldon was left high and dry for this season. All he had was an Indy 500 contract with the tiniest team in the series, run by his friend and former teammate Bryan Herta.
The ironic thing is that while Dan Wheldon and Bryan Herta were celebrating in victory lane after the race, Wheldon was officially unemployed, and Herta was not an Indycar series owner anymore, since their deals only covered the Indy 500. Fortunately, the Indy prize money should cover them for a few mores races!
So while everybody feels bad for JR Hildebrand, most people in the racing world feel pretty good about the Indy 500 result anyways, since Wheldon and Herta's stories took almost every Hollywood sports movie cliche and played them out in real life. It's stuff like this that makes you love being a racing fan.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 29, 2011 15:19:42 GMT -5
Winnipeg White Out was second, behind Calgary's C of Red.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 27, 2011 20:50:06 GMT -5
You need a defibrillator, Boz?
Some 0-0 games are boring as hell. This is not one of them.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 17, 2011 17:48:44 GMT -5
Pawlenty could be the John Kerry of 2012. In 2004 the Dems decided that they hated Bush more than they liked any of their candidates, so they picked a candidate whose one and only quality was that he could beat Bush. Will the GOP make a similar judgment in 2012?
Let's not forget that, despite running a godawful campaign, Kerry came pretty close to knocking off Bush in 2004. The strategy isn't without its merits.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 13, 2011 22:54:41 GMT -5
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 10, 2011 18:26:04 GMT -5
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on May 9, 2011 18:15:58 GMT -5
I keep reading about the US wanting to interview Bin Laden's wives. But no one is talking about the tail section of that stealth chopper. We may never hear what happens to it, but you can be sure the US is pressuring the Paks to give it back. Hey, for $20 Billion, we'd like our broken chopper back. You can buy some more F-16's. And preferably before you've taken samples, dimensions, and detailed photos of every part and given them to the Chinese.
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